Ginnie Cave DPV

[Kelly Jessop]

Thanks James, throwing the dog pound a bone stops the barking

[OFG-1]

Look at that guy in the back. See how that stage is rigged all wrong and sticks up? Obviously the product of a Florida instructor, no one in Mexico would instruct that way. And that guy in the front with his wing all taco-ed. Someone should call their instructors and let them know how bad they are. Probably CDS instructors. Maybe even Canadians.

[jerrwhy01]

this thread is just ridiculous, people essentially saying there is some sort of conspiracy between GSO and instructors to make money. Bashing FL instructors, and to top it all off...bashing by name. Wow, people! First its not the job of an instructor to make someone a "good diver", whatever that means? There are about a million different definitions of that, are you a good diver if you can do a 1 hr swim dive in a shallow cave and not be all jacked up? or do you have to push the EOL in deep caves and do 18 hour dives? Each person is given a licence to learn, assuming they complete the required skills and the instructor judges that this person is safe to do these types of dives, at each level and must take it upon themselves to put in the work and time underwater to become a proficient diver at their level. No one is just born a great diver. How about everyone just relax and maybe if you do see someone who is all jacked up and your so concerned: educate them, dive with them, and teach them. And as far as GSO outdoors is concerned as is the topic of the initial thread, maybe just maybe they want to enforce the rules and make sure people dive with in their limits? just a thought

It's definitely not a conspiracy between the Ginnie and instructors. However, I am convinced that the Rothchilds are definitely involved somehow. What I can't figure out is if they're in league with Ginnie or the instructors. What certification Soro's and the Illuminati require next should provide some insight into that matter.

[bamafan]

For what it is worth I was trained in Florida and if I have someone ask me where they should go for sidemount cave training I tell them that there are only a handful of descent sidemount instructors in Florida. I had a buddy of mine who I think said it better than I can when he said " There are lots of good sidemount cave instructors in Mexico and a lot of crappy ones in Florida." My point is that people seem to want to attack the messenger instead of the message. Does anyone think the configuration in the posted video is a good setup? Is this the CDS standard? If you answered no to those two points then why did a CDS BOD & CDS property manager post the video? Was it because he was proud of it? If not then why would he allow the diver to go into a cave he manages when the CDS is supposed to value conservation? I personally would be embarrassed by this video if I was a CDS instructor and offer to mentor both divers as this is not anything I would want associated with my agency. Each to their own and you certainly don't have to agree but I haven't seen anyone argue that my basic premise is wrong.

[Germie]

I never met the diver of the video in real life. I have pictures of instructors standing on the fins while students doing a valvedrill. I have a picture of a sidemount diver with the tanks totally getting up (where they more empty than is normal if you follow the rules?).
It looks like every region with caves has the idea 'We are the best'. In France you see normal bcd's in caves with independent doubles, longhoses on their back and not wrapped around the body. To make steel tanks more bouyant they use foam. Steel tanks with decogases and foam are seen there too. But some of these 'strange' cavedivers have done real explorations in Europe.
In the UK they prefer solo cavediving as the viz is mostly bad and the caves narrow. http://cavedivinggroup.org.uk/solo-cave-diving/
They all do it wrong? Or do they it a different way? Is there a safety risk? A conservation risk? Then we can discuss it.

Private owned divesites can make their own rules. As I can say you are not allowed in my garden, they can say same. In Belgium and Germany there are sites only divable with a CMAS cert. Some mines are only allowed with cards from agency XYZ. CCR Cave cards are needed there too. So this is not different from Ginnie. Most mines in Belgium are only accessible for members of a dry caving club. The problem there is: if you don't live there you cannot become member. If you want to get the key via the speleology club of your country you must be member and have successfull completed a dry cave course, and they ONLY accept their own SRT course. The waiting list for the course is 3 years.
So what happens in Ginnie is already done here in Europe.

More pictures please

[Kelly Jessop]

. Does anyone think the configuration in the posted video is a good setup? Is this the CDS standard? If you answered no to those two points then why did a CDS BOD & CDS property manager post the video?

I think people fail to understand that being on the CDS board doesn't mean you live and breathe CDS. They have personal opinions, and even some board members have certifications that aren't CDS. Matter of fact there isn't a qualification to be a cave diver, let alone an OW diver to be on the board,but then again the membership probably wouldn't vote for someone without these credentials.

Have I watched the video? No,I really get tired of watching the large number of videos that get posted by everyone with a GoPro. But, as a past chair of the CDS conservation committee, what exactly concerns you? Where in the video are these issues? In reality John Kimbrell identified a conservation faux pas in the picture that is frequently practiced as SOP,but has a past history of damaging caves.

[Draker]

More pictures please

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[Troglodyver]

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Oooooooo . . . pics like this will put some lithium in your battery . . .

[bamafan]

Kelly pretty much the whole video is atrocious when there is actually a diver in the picture. But anyway I definitely don't call this sidemount and towards the end of the dive around 9:57 or so it appears the diver is actually standing up in the cave to turn around.

The problem is like was mentioned and what this thread is about is that the owners of Gennie are generally clueless about cave diving and look to people such as BOD members of the CDS for what their requirements should be. You apparently have BOD members of the CDS who are clueless about what effect a proper configuration has on cave conservation. You also have an instructor base who seems to not care what type of divers are representing them. This same BOD member has other video on his YouTube channel with a diver who has a bm stage on that is done the old Edd way and is sticking up at a 45 degree angle banging on the ceiling at Ginnie. I don't care as I rarely dive Ginnie and I have all the appropriate cards for any dive I might want to do there. It just seems to me that the CDS would want to be the leader in something instead of being a laughing stock. I would think the instructors with the CDS would take more pride in what image they are putting out in public but sadly it doesn't seem.so.

[DA Aquamaster]

Ginnie can do whatever they want, as they own the property, but I find the certification requirement an odd justification. There is clearly a need to be cavern certified in order to dive in a cavern and I'm unaware of any training agency that (actively, in writing) endorses diving in an overhead environment without additional training. So, if the motivation was purely liability and certification, it would seem that requiring a cavern card to access the ballroom would naturally follow.

The larger issue is that CCR diving is perceived as more dangerous than OC diving, a perception that hasn't really been helped by a lot of big name cave divers or even CCR manufacturers.

I agree with the idea that properly done, CCR diving isn't any more dangerous that OC diving. The risks are different, and CCR is more demanding in terms of maintenance and pre-dive checks and is less tolerant of gross errors underwater, but that's offset by more time to problem solve, more efficient gas at depth (at least on a significantly multi level dive with a single bottom gas) and (theoretically, but less in practice) more efficient off gassing during deco.

We checked in at Ginnie yesterday after several months of not diving there with our annual passes. They consulted a list of annual pass holders and then wanted to see our CCR Cave cards to verify that we in fact had "CCR Cave" cards, rather than just separate "full cave" and "CCR" cards. They did not ask to verify our Cave DPV cards, since we presented those in the first place when we got our first annual passes several years ago.

I gathered from this that they were pretty serious about CCR cave divers actually having CCR Cave certs.

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I think the difference between becoming sticklers for Cave DPV and Cave CCR certs, and ignoring the fact that the ballroom is a cavern by pretty much any agency definition, is that there seem to have been a number of fatalities involving rebreathers and DPVs in Ginnie, but few if any involving open water divers in the ball room. For an insurer, nothing predicts actual risk better than prior accidents.

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Frankly, I've seen a lot of DPV divers in Ginnie who don't seem to have a clue about the gas management complexities involved. Maybe I've been spoiled in that regard, having had both a Cave DPV class and experience with a Mako where the question isn't if it'll fail, but when. Both promote good gas planning.

My concern is that we're now in an era where high dollar scooters will take you 8,000 feet in a cave, and will do so with a fairly high degree of reliability. The problem is that the high degree of reliability, breeds complacency at the same time the long penetration distances mean you may not be able to easily carry enough gas to exit if you have a problem. Is that an issue in Ginnie? Theoretically it probably isn't, but in practice it has been, given the death a year or two ago of a diver who managed to lose or leave his scooter in a silt out, did not bring a stage, and did not have adequate back gas to swim out, given the additional delay of the silt out. I don't know if he had a cave DPV card or not, but his gas planning was obviously not sufficient. That failure is arguably less likely after a Cave DPV class where about 90-95% of the class is focused on gas planning and related bottle management rather than on actually driving the DPV. That gas planning focus is the difference between a "Cave DPV" diver and "DPV" diver who also has a full cave cert, but who may not have been exposed to the additional complexities that DPVs bring to a cave dive.

CCRs fall in the same category, although with varying degrees of reliability, varying strengths and weaknesses / potential failure modes, and varying potential for recovery from different failures. The common factor is that they allow much greater cave penetration and increase the potential for divers to make those penetrations with inadequate bailout.

Similar to the effects of a Cave DPV course on gas planning, a Cave CCR course has a better potential to highlight the factors that can motivate a diver to more realistically evaluate the bailout needs. At the same time a Cave/tech oriented CCR course will ensure the diver can fully utilize the other bailout modes (SCR, etc) in order to stay on the loop for as long as possible before having to bailout to OC. In addition, a strictly Cave CCR course can focus on how those different bailout modes will work in a cave where the diver has very little control over the depths and depth changes that are required during the exit.

There's a school of thought that says "you are a 'cave diver' and you are a 'CCR diver', so you should be competent to dive a CCR in a cave". In theory that might be the case, but in practice the little details matter, and even a technical CCR course may not be enough to ensure a full cave diver knows what he or she needs to know.

And given the DPV and CCR involved deaths that are occurring in Ginnie, I can see why they are asking for Cave DPV and Cave CCR certs.