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At 09:58 PM 11/27/95 Mark Long, wrote: >The PBS Series THE NEW EXPLORERS will be airing a documentary on underwater >cave exploration in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. It was produced by Wes >Skiles and Jeffrey Haupt. The title of the episode is "THE MOST DANGEROUS >SCIENCE" and it will air on WTTW Chicago on November 29th at 9:00 p.m. >Eastern and 8:00 p.m. Central Standard Time. .. The title of this documentary is very correctly described. Cave diving in the Yucatan, widely regarded as a relative cave diving paradise when contrasted to North Florida [warm water, great visibility, magnificently decorated shallow caves] has become a MOST DANGEROUS activity of late, judging by the growing fatality checklist. You might ask yourself why people continue to get killed in what otherwise should be one of the safest and best cave diving venues in the world? The final accident analysis for most of these fatalities contains the all too familiar "diver error" clause. This conclusion is very similar to a medical examiner ruling that all deaths are due to heart failure. The real reason for some of these fatalities is the criminal NSS official policy (not NACD or WKPP) of cutting back lines from sinkholes to supposedly prevent untrained people from entering the cave. Unfortunately, this has prevented trained people (in certain cases very well trained people) from getting out of the cave. Caves such as Mayan Blue and Temple of Doom, which have multiple entrances, are prime examples of the exit conundrum. Just imagine the horror you might experience, while exiting one of these "tour" caves, when you hit what you think is the end of an exit line only to see no sinkhole, because someone has cut the line back so far from the entrance that the daylight is not perceptible(god help you if its nighttime). Now, you're getting low on air and you backtrack, only to find yourself on another exit line to a distant sinkhole, which is similarly cut back. Try to picture the last thoughts going through the minds of the divers who perished (while on a fun, safe diving vacation to the Yucatan). You know that they kept repeating to themselves that "this is supposed to be the end of the line why don't I see the exit, who has done this to me ??". For those of you unfamiliar with Yucatan caves, might I call your attention to the ridiculous 300' cut back of the lines in the Peacock I cavern. If you think for a minute that experienced and well trained divers shouldn't be confused by this nonsensical line policy, think again. If George Irvine and Lamar English can get confused in the Temple of Doom, then anyone can. The chronic reason for not running lines directly into the cave is that untrained open water divers will enter the cave and get lost. Well gee whiz, maybe they could find there way out on the same lines. This is not a new idea (the late Parker Turner argued endlessly about this with the NSS). I suspect that the real reason for this, homicidal line policy, is out some official concern about maintaining "privileged access" to the caves for the "privileged". Bill Mee
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