The article made it sound like they were using recreational diving rules. That doesn’t make much sense. How exactly did they plan to decompress? I think it could have been more thorough. I think they were mixing various diving concepts.
Also, plus 1 on the idea of using drones.
This is so sad. Rest in peace, all of you.
I’m a diver but not that qualified, and far from an expert, but the fact that five (supposedly experienced) divers died, and now even a rescue diver has died, tells me this is in big part to do with the location itself rather than failure in the divers part.
I don’t remember the names, but some caves have water currents pulling in, and others pushing out. Out are the safest ones because it’s easier to get out. In are the most dangerous, because you might be going further than you realize and to come back you have to swim against the current - you won’t have enough air to make it back. That said, usually even experienced cave divers stay far from those caves, precisely because they know how dangerous they are. Also, if you are diving in a foreign place, you should really go with a dive guide who knows the area. AFAIK, there was no guide.
So even then, there was probably some type of mess up on the driver’s side. Because it seems they should not have been performing that dive, much less with no dive guide.
And statistically, the majority of victims of cave diving deaths were people who are not certified cave divers.
I’m saying all this because I’ve seen so many people talk about how dangerous it is, but statistically if you are qualified it’s safer than free diving. But no one complaints about that being dangerous.
EDIT: I should also mention I could not read the article, I got paywalled. I’m having to go just by the title.
I’d like a source for that “it’s safer than free diving comment.” By any measure cave diving is very dangerous. If free diving is statistically more dangerous I would guess those are untrained free divers as well.
Cave diving is pretty dangerous. It’s as dangerous as diving, as well as caving.
It depends on what you mean by dangerous. Of course it is by definition a dangerous sport, but if you have the proper training, you prepare properly, and you don’t go being your skill or what you planned for, the chances of death are actually not high.
Like, rock climbing is dangerous. If you go scale a huge mountain with no training or proper gear you’ll die. But with training and proper gear and planning you should be fine.
Plan for your level, and dive the plan. Like I said in the other comment, most deaths are from people who didn’t have the training.
I watch a lot of Scary Interesting on YouTube, friend. I do want to go cave diving, one day, but by this point I’ve seen hundreds of videos of experts getting lost in silt outs, getting stuck under falling rocks, getting lost after guide ropes snap, nitrogen narcosis, … so much shit. If you have to breath helium to survive, you’re somewhere the Earth doesn’t want you to be bro.
Right, there are a lot of accidents and deaths, but it’s still unlikely to happen. Both things are true. And a lot of those deaths are from unqualified people who dived into a cave anyway. It’s sort of like saying “flying a plane is dangerous, I’ve seen a lot of videos about crashes and people dying - people were not made to fly”. As long as the pilot has proper training and the equipment is in proper condition, it’s not really that dangerous.
There are a lot more deaths caused by free diving (even in percentile), for example, but those stories aren’t as interesting and don’t make for good videos, so they don’t get talked about much.
When the margin of error between life and death is small, it’s dangerous. That’s all I’ve gotta say. The margin is a lot thinner with cave diving than with flying, no matter how you put it. I like the idea of doing it, but I also respect that it can kill me. In that environment, it’s much more likely for something outside my control to kill me. Even more likely, that I accidentally kill myself somehow.
How’s the fatality rate between free diving and cave diving, rather than the raw numbers?
Condolences. :(
And please, people, this is what drones are for.
Bravery is commendable, but darkness, floating sediment, high pressure (immediate ascent not possible - this got Mohamed Mahudhee) and working under a time limit imposed by oxygen reserves in an environment where one can get lost: these are not conditions suitable for a human being.
Please send a machine, it has no life, has a sonar, the operator on a ship won’t panic, if fiber stops working, acoustic communication is still possible, a drone can work for days without running out of anything, etc.
Damn. Didn’t even die trying to save a life but to recover their bodies.
Getting anxious just thinking about it.
It sounds like diving at that depth is already very dangerous, and that’s before you add going into a cave into the mix.
It will be very interesting to read any incident report that comes out.
I was just freaking out from reading into the Nutty Putty Cave situation from many years back, how awful!
What’s that, six dead now? What absolute clusterfuck.
Our army diver died of decompression sickness. not a good outcome
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