Not having rigid operating procedures published in training manuals allows cave instructors to teach to their local protocols. I can understand their annoyance, but from an instructor’s standpoint, I prefer it this way. Every instructor from every training agency I have spoken with has stated more or less the same thing: While agencies may have general guidelines, navigation procedures are left up to the instructor.Īs a TDI instructor, my students have mentioned that it’s frustrating not to have exact navigation protocols written out in the textbook. Interestingly, there is not much to compare! From my research it seems that TDI, IANTD, NSS-CDS, RAID, PSAI, and GUE agree on a basic philosophy: specific navigational markings and protocols are often region-specific and even cave-specific. This article began as a comparison between different cave training agencies’ navigational standards. Don’t confuse yourself or your teammates.Īs one can imagine, the latter is the more difficult to accomplish.Ĭave Training Agency Differences vs Regional Navigation Differences.Since that day, I have viewed cave navigation in Mexico as a two-part responsibility: If I hadn’t had a regulator in my mouth, my jaw would have dropped open. I signaled with my light to the solo diver, and gestured, That’s my jump! He shrugged nonchalantly, turned around, swam back over my jump spool to the main line, and trundled on down the principal cave passage. My jump spool had a neon green line, and all of our markers were clearly marked with reflective tape and our names. Had he even noticed my jump spool? Did he realize he was swimming into a side passageway? My buddy and I both had personal markers on the main line, as well as markers on our spool. I stared in disbelief: the diver had not installed his own jump spool, he had just swum over mine. Exiting the cave, my buddy and I approached our jump line, but were pushed out of the way by a solo diver who elbowed his way over our jump line and into the side passageway. The most idiotic cave navigation mistake I ever witnessed happened on a dive in Cenote Chan Hol about eight years ago.
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