What do you do when you see snorkles 300 ft into a cave?

[OFG-1]

I would not have any problem with snorkles, unless there are two of them, coming out of the mask, with ping pong balls in them. Then, I would have questions.

[sskasser]

IMO the Park staff at Manatee is making a very bad decision to continue to allow O/W divers to access the water via Catfish.

They allowed it during a flood and manatees happened to be in the head spring basin during this time so they lifted their "ban" a year and a half or so ago and allowed O/W in at Catfish, was supposed to be temporary but they never reinstated the rule.

I understand the sentiment, BUT...I would guess that most OW divers dive there within their limits. These two were idiots and obviously diving where they knew they were not supposed to be. By banning all OW divers, we are entering a slippery slope of "protecting" trained (albeit non-overhead in this case) individuals from themselves. Next thing you know, we'll "protect" trained cave divers by banning them, too.

[MORGAN]

I would not have any problem with snorkles, unless there are two of them, coming out of the mask, with ping pong balls in them. Then, I would have questions.

Damn, I will have to modify my cave snorkeling configuration!

Mike

[giles45shop]

Don't they have a "no lights" rule for OW divers?

Absolutely correct, but difficult/impossible to enforce w/o someone standing at the steps doing a pat down search before they enter the water. It's kind of like a lock on a screen door, it keeps out the honest criminals

If we had more personal reponsibility and less litigation things would be a lot better in the world

John

[sskasser]

If we had more personal reponsibility and less litigation things would be a lot better in the world

John

[FW]

While personal responsibility would be nice, a lot of new divers don't even know all the dangers. For awhile in the early 80's most OW classes were mentioning the dangers of overhead. Are they still doing that? If not, how could new OW divers know that caves are dangerous?

[fixxervi6]

In my world, we'd burn the laywers at the stake, and let the darwin canidates roll their dice.

What would I do if I saw snorkels 300 feet in? nothing, following them out and reading them the riot act will do nothing but help empower the attitude that cave divers are a-holes.

I don't know of any OW class material that doesn't talk about "don't go into overhead" so reading them the riot will do nothing, you can't fix stupid.

At manatee I guess the best you could do is tell the park staff or something.

[FW]

The political part of this thread was moved to the Fill Station.

[cavemark]

While personal responsibility would be nice, a lot of new divers don't even know all the dangers. For awhile in the early 80's most OW classes were mentioning the dangers of overhead. Are they still doing that? If not, how could new OW divers know that caves are dangerous?

My oldest daughter and I took Open Water together in June of 2005. The instructor (a certified Cave Diver) made us watch "A Deceptively Easy Way To Die". He stressed throughout the course that overhead required additional training. I took AOW with him again 6 months later and he stressed it again. My middle daughter did her OW this past summer with the SDI/TDI online course and doesn't remember if there was anything in the course but said that she knew that before taking the course (she saw me go through all of the training) so she may have glossed over it.

Mark

[Serota]

This discussion reminds me of why NACD is inviting OW divers to and having information for them at the "Spring Into Safe Cave Diving" event at Ginnie Springs on April 11: http://www.cavediver.net/forum/showthread.php?t=9629

I don't know if any OW divers are planning to attend, but if even one gains an understanding of why their training has not prepared them to go into caves, it will be worth the attempt to educate them.