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Well, it was nice meeting you , anyway. I do not know what happened to you, but I suspect it could happen to any of us in the early going, or even late going of diving. Water and underwater skills are not easily acquired - they take time. It is too bad that the focus out there is on accellerating this pace trough all kinds of technical courses for which there is a certification level at the end. While the skills learned in a cave course are great tools for any diver, cave diving itself is not a real good idea, and should be taken very slowly. The same guy who recovered you recovered Jim Fernandez a few years back. He was taking a "nitrox" course having just finished his cave course and about every other course and was on about his 50th dive ever when he toxed an died right near where JJ found you. When I first learned to dive, I refused to go below 40 feet. It was not until I took a PADI course years later to get certified that I went to 70 feet. When I went cave diving, I refused to go more than about 1000 feet into a cave - ask Alton, he used to get pissed at me for thumbing the dives. Luckily, I got the shit scared out of me early on in every form of diving, and took it very seriously. I gradually practiced and learned, I aquired the techniqes and skills to remove what would have been risk to me ealier on in my diving. Now the risks are more clearly defined, and we address them accordingly. For instnce, the WKPP has a whole set of writen proceedures for dealing with toxes and drownings put to gether by Scott Hunsucker and the US Navy, and implemmented through the SOP's of the WKPP support operations. JJ and I never stop looking at these possibilities and working on them. I have seen a lot of risk in what we do. A kid just got eaten by a huge shark swimming down here last week. My buddies all went in the rough, cloudly , bait-filled water - I thumbed it and got out. All of them got stung, one got wrapped up pretty badly by a Man 'O War. Up the coast, the kid got killed . One of the Ocean Rescue guys nearly drowned on a bad flip turn hitting a faster swimmers wake at the wall in the 50 meter pool. Water is water. I remember talking to Alan Janusitis at Ginnie about an hour before he got killed. Dave Milhollin writes about this in this months UWS. Attemtpting too much too fast, and then getting left by buddy - two bad choices. I remember talking to Ian Rollin and Kenny Broad at Ginnie the day before they left to go to Huatla . Ian did not come back. The promise of the glory of cave exploration. I remember talking to Sherwood Schile the week before he got killed . He was trying to do something for which he was not suited as he felt it held some great importance - it does not. Diving is a fun sport, but it is a business for those to whom we look for instruction - this is a big problem. So is perr pressure and "achievement". Certainly the business aspect would not necessarily preclude an instructor good a good job. What seems to be very necessary in my opinion is that the instuctors to whom we go for learning either themselves have a history of personal diving or invovlement , or can steer you into a group of divers where you can continue to practice and learn. The shop I learnd from was alaways running local trips and setting up travel trips, and there were always a large group of divers doing something. The cave diving group I got involved with was obviosly very active. I see active groups in Mexico, other countries, and in several states of the US, but in "cave country" ( north Florida ) and "tec diving", I see only the cash resgister ringing and no follow up. James Henderson wrote: -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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