Cave diving is extremely dangerous. This is an example of a guy who absolutely knew what he was doing, a certified professional, and it still cost him his life. Not something you wanna fuck around with, because in this case, finding out is the last thing you’ll do.
Rest in peace.
The cave those divers entered is at 160ft of depth, which is crazy. First, you’ve only got maybe 15 minutes before you’re either gonna run out of air, or if you have enough, you’ll still need a long decompression stop to avoid getting the bends. Second, you can easily get narced at that depth, which makes you act like you’re drunk, fumbling around like a fool, being reckless. Third, if you have any issue, you cannot drop your weights, because you don’t have a clear shot to the surface. Fourth, unless you’re breathing a special mix of gases, oxygen can be toxic at that depth. That’s not something a group of recreational divers should ever be doing.
A huge number of cave divers use re-breathers instead of an open system. It gives them much more time underwater and it doesn’t create bubbles which in turn can cause the silt in those caves to become suspended in the water taking visibility to zero. Cave divers even kick water differently to avoid this. It only takes one person to start kicking water in panic to screw up everyone in that cave. This is exactly why cave diving requires certification and why many of the entrances have signs telling people not to go in.
Also, the article calls them rescue divers but the more appropriate term is a body recovery diver. It’s extremely rare that anyone gets rescued alive.
Edd Sorenson is one of the most legendary recovery divers alive and he has amazing stories about it. That quy has nerves made of steel.
Tragic. Cave diving is one thing where I truly don’t understand why it hasn’t been replaced by submersibles or underwater drones. It’s just so incredibly dangerous to everyone, even the people who come to get your corpse.
ROVs are big, bulky, and hard to use. Robot claws aren’t nearly as good as human hands, nor cameras as good as human binocular vision. And they have to be tethered because most wireless links are blocked by not much water, which in twisty-turny caves doesn’t work too well.
Those all seem way less inconvenient than being dead, even though they’re legitimate issues.
I’d say tethering shouldn’t be a problem - just look at fiber optics drones in Ukraine.
Yeah it’s not like theres anything for the fibre to get snagged on like rocks and stuff.
It will only work in Ukraine where there are no rocks and stuff I guess.
You can always reinforce the cable.
why not just leave the bodies there. they got there themselves
One could only hope they were a big family of billionaires. They passed doing what they loved.
