What exactly makes cave diving so risky, even if you have experience or are with a guide?
In: Other
Diving is far from a risk free pursuit, but at the amateur level is done with the knowledge that you are generally swimming in open water, and if anything goes wrong you can just go up.
As you go to deeper depths and start doing more interesting dives, the risk increases further – from depth even just the act of going up can leave you in serious trouble if you do it too quickly, so you need the correct skill, knowledge and equipment to dive safely.
Cave diving takes all of this and then makes it even more complex and risky.
Because you are in a cave network, you can no longer just surface – you need to follow a specific route to the point you can safely surface. Get lost in any way and you cannot just sit tight and wait for your friends to find you – you are on a limited air supply and if that runs out it is game over.
And getting lost is easy. You are working in darkness with only artificial lighting, you are in an environment where visibility will vary and it could be very easy to completely blind yourself by disturbing sediment, and the route you need to follow has become 3d and far more complex than the 2d navigation humans are used to.
So while very simple cave diving can be done easily and safely, when it gets more complex the risks can pile up quickly – and it can be very easy for a simple dive to turn complicated very suddenly with little more than a wrong turn.
Latest Answers