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George, There is a cave diving video doing the rounds down this end of the planet which we call "doing it wrong". It is a documentary made by three young divers in New Zealand who have discovered a 300m deep shaft in a cave and decide they're going to break some deep diving records. When I was lent the video, I was asked to see how soon I could pick which of the divers die during the making of this piece of self-induced misery. I'm not a cave diver. But after having been exposed to the WKPP configuration and methods on techdiver and cavediver, even I could see something dreadful was unfolding. The team leader talks about "having the right attitude and the technology" for record-breaking deep dives. The poor, sorry fucks. They were diving air. In 4degC water, their support divers, wear wet- suits. Which I guess doesn't matter that much because they don't even gear up while the deep team is in the water. One of the support divers has a panic attack and is too scared to swim out over the shaft. A pathetic sequence shows the deep team coaxing her through the passages and out over the shaft where she swims, overweighted and with bc inflated, with her hands. The next time we see her, she has line tangled round her fin. The team leader is an authoritative know-nothing (stroke?) who's done a pied-piper on the other idiots and is leading them merrily to their doom. We see him on camera a lot, pontificating about individual resonsibility. It isn't hard to figure why. He is living proof of how dangerous a little knowledge can be. He wears one of those self-sharpening kitchen knives rubber-banded to his forearm, and two tanks bungeed together on his back. And those wet-breathing side- diaphragm oceanic regs. This is for a record attempt. The second diver has a goal. He wants to go deep. Really deep. Really really deep. The third diver of the deep team is one of those frighteningly optimistic close-call artists. A close-up shows him test breathing one of his second stages which, because its hose comes over his left shoulder, is upside down. He has never been deeper than 30 metres and never ever should. EVERY time he goes into the cave he manages to fuck himself over, almost drown, and somehow scramble out again. He's as useful as a spare hole in a bucket. On their first 'deep push' the second diver (really, really deep) freaks out at 40 metres and bolts. Nevertheless he decides to do fifty the following day, sixty five the day after, seventy five metres after that, etc. I don't want to go on. And you don't want to hear about it. George, I admire the intelligence and clarity with which you've arrived at the ultimate gear configuration, and the discipline and the procedures you have in place which have enabled eighty divers to develop skills and accomplish things that should be the envy and the goal of everyone doing exploratory diving. But while I accepted the vehemence with which you push the 'right way', I never fully understood it. Until now. To watch these young dudes on video - all bright eyes and ignorance - made me absolutely furious. I wanted to yell at them; torch their rotten gear; beat some sense into their stupid heads; anything except watch them kill themselves. The sorry thing is, If these kiwi kids had been exposed to your configuration and procedures, I don't think they would have set such a dreadful trap for themselves. If you like, I will send you a copy of this depressing documentary. Not for any prurient reason but rather because, no matter how often, and in how many ways you WKPP guys present and push 'the right way' there seems always to be some divers who think 'their' way is just as valid; and the rules of life and death somehow don't apply to them. You might be in a position to get this video to them. Because, If they can't get the message from having the right way shown, described, and hammered into them, over and over, maybe, just maybe, they will get the message by seeing the result of it being done completely and horribly wrong. rgrs billyw
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