Trashing the caves, do you not feel any shame?

[nakatomi]

Yesterday I saw hundreds of up to 15’-20' long deep SPG tracks, along with an equal amount of tank and fin marks, past 4000' back in Jackson Blue in the Middle Grounds area. I'm convinced these traces were not there, at least not nearly as many, last time I dove there in February.
I stopped counting at one point and went into some of the silty side passages at the end of Middle Grounds, in the hope of escaping the chaos. Guess what, even these areas were full of such marks :-(

Whoever is doing this, what on earth are you thinking?
Stirring up the silt is bad enough as it is, especially since the passages there are huge. But leaving traces in the clay is nothing but shameful since they will stay there for longer than you and I will cave dive.

If you are reading this, you know exactly who you are. Get the proper training to make up for your complete absence of diving skills, before you not only destroy the caves for others, but endanger or even kill someone.
And while you’re at it, consider getting a DPV card too.

I could go on ranting forever, but I won’t. Everyone else, please let me know what you think could be done to fix this.

[FW]

.. Everyone else, please let me know what you think could be done to fix this.

Ask Michael Angelo for suggestions, he repaired the damage in Cow.

[Kelly Jessop]

Ask Michael Angelo for suggestions, he repaired the damage in Cow.

Ironically there is a session Saturday at the NFSA's Advanced Skills Clinic that has Michael Angelo and myself going over cave restoration projects.

The real pity is that caves are treated as play grounds and not respected as being the delicate ecosystems that they are,so cave conservation is regarded fairly lowly. Cave divers need to be forewarned that for people who own these systems it is a great concern. I know of at least 3 systems that are inquiring about cave damage,with the solution limiting access eg. number of people per day. Time to wake up.

[nakatomi]

Ask Michael Angelo for suggestions, he repaired the damage in Cow.

Forrest, I'm afraid this may be way beyond repair. We are talking about an area the size of the Peacock cavern just covered with these marks.

Ironically there is a session Saturday at the NFSA's Advanced Skills Clinic that has Michael Angelo and myself going over cave restoration projects.

The real pity is that caves are treated as play grounds and not respected as being the delicate ecosystems that they are,so cave conservation is regarded fairly lowly. Cave divers need to be forewarned that for people who own these systems it is a great concern. I know of at least 3 systems that are inquiring about cave damage,with the solution limiting access eg. number of people per day. Time to wake up.

I'll attend the workshop tomorrow and hope we may be able to talk about this.
Limiting access to a certain number of people may just slow the process a little, but it won't help fix the root causes. In my opinion only better training and the development of proper awareness and skillsets will help.

[jj1987]

Yesterday I saw hundreds of up to 15’-20' long deep SPG tracks, along with an equal amount of tank and fin marks, past 4000' back in Jackson Blue in the Middle Grounds area. I'm convinced these traces were not there, at least not nearly as many, last time I dove there in February.
I stopped counting at one point and went into some of the silty side passages at the end of Middle Grounds, in the hope of escaping the chaos. Guess what, even these areas were full of such marks :-(

Whoever is doing this, what on earth are you thinking?
Stirring up the silt is bad enough as it is, especially since the passages there are huge. But leaving traces in the clay is nothing but shameful since they will stay there for longer than you and I will cave dive.

If you are reading this, you know exactly who you are. Get the proper training to make up for your complete absence of diving skills, before you not only destroy the caves for others, but endanger or even kill someone.
And while you’re at it, consider getting a DPV card too.

I could go on ranting forever, but I won’t. Everyone else, please let me know what you think could be done to fix this.

I haven't been back to that area in nearly 5 years, but there were scratch marks all over back then. Honestly I'm guessing a lot of this is older damage back from when people were swimming that far back.

[Kelly Jessop]

I'll attend the workshop tomorrow and hope we may be able to talk about this.
Limiting access to a certain number of people may just slow the process a little, but it won't help fix the root causes. In my opinion only better training and the development of proper awareness and skillsets will help.

I will look forward to talking to you.
You are right prevention is the best medicine,and having a better skill set too. Although the perception by noncave diving landowners is the way to reduce these problems is to reduce access-yes I have seen this in writing!!!!! Does it work? Yes, guided sites have less damage because the amount of traffic is less,and the guide keeps you away from very sensitive areas. These type of limitations go into place we only have ourselves to blame.

The real tragedy is how little or poorly we acknowledge cave conservation. Land owners , the people who own the places we access, have a strong concern. They even look at those Go-pro videos posted here and You Tube and question what they are seeing.

[Greenwood_60]

I think we can use these damning GoPro videos to our benefit. People should be shamed for poor form. They'll either stop posting the videos, which isn't bad if that's what the property owners are using against us. Or they'll consider their own form.

[Kelly Jessop]

I think we can use these damning GoPro videos to our benefit. People should be shamed for poor form. They'll either stop posting the videos, which isn't bad if that's what the property owners are using against us. Or they'll consider their own form.

Maybe so,if big brother is watching maybe they will be more concerned,or stop posting. I was surprised when I watched two videos by two exploration groups recently,and saw some alarming things in reference to cave conservation. If I and others voice our complaints will it stop these practices,or we will just see less video postings.

The bottom line is cave conservation in cave training needs to be less of a footnote that is breezed over,but a continuous part of the course and debrief. Only then will it be given high regard by that person in the future.

[TracyN]

It's the 15 to 20 dive OW wonders who think that the next coolest class to take is cave diving and they find some crappy instructor to teach them. They barely know how to dive in OW and this makes me mad. I was a beginner once and although I had no real frog kick, it was some kind of hybrid thing that didn't silt anything up but it certainly didn't give me any propulsion. My instructor was a moron for not correcting it. Even so I never bounced off the cave floor nor put hand marks in the clay. I was very conscious almost paranoid about doing any damage to the cave and when accidental contact occurred to the side of a passage from a tank banging it I felt awful. It's disheartening to see huge gouges out of clay blanks and mud that don't need to be there. Most of the passages are huge and there is no need for anyone to be hugging the bottom. How it happens is poor trim and buoyancy. It's no wonder land owners don't want to admit squared away cave divers to their caves. They dont want them destroyed. Cave diving isn't a fad to be conqured it a journey of discovery into places very few humans will ever get to see. Unfortunately they will never see what true pristine cave passage looks like.swesw

[mdax]

I don't believe those people actually do know who you are talking about. I think they are oblivious or don't care.

I'm not sure how to make progress, cave instructors aren't even held to a higher standard and this seems like the logical and most important part of the puzzle.
Instructors can take children cave diving, abandon students and make crappy decisions and they are not sanctioned or in some cases even named.

If you spend a lot of time in Ginnie you will see instructors hitting the sides and bottom, students causing silt outs and all sorts of nonsense. One time I thought that ET had landed at the hill 400 jump, massive silt clouds with lights flashing around, it was wild. I blacked out and watched and thought "damn if that doesn't look exactly like the ET landing scene"...but no, it was just a cave instructor with his rebreather students pulling the reel.
We can't even agree that scootering and simulating/creating zero vis in twin cave is a bad idea.

I don't believe we are any better stewards to the environment than any other group; trash, catheters and damage in the caves may reflect a small subset however we fail at self policing and instructors will never really be held to a new higher standard as there is too much money and ego involved.