What is Cave Diving? On the uninitiated, the mention of term cave diving may envision images of someone standing on a diving board and diving on to a cave below. In fact this is not what cave diving means. It is in reality an amalgamation of two popular varieties of recreation, namely caving and diving.

Caving will be the exploration of cave systems as being a pastime and in some circles is referred to as spelunking. This is in contrast to speleology, which can be basically the same thing except it is done for scientific purposes. Diving involves underwater navigation by persons while utilizing scuba gear to breathe during the process. So as was stated previously this sport could be the result of combining caving and diving and is also considered by some to be a sport in its own right. The caves in question here will likely be at least partially water-filled.

Cave diving is considered a relatively recent phenomenon. Not much mention is made of it just before 1935 when an informal cave diving group was established. The goal of the group at the time would have been to organize the training of personnel in the use of equipment to be utilized for accessing and exploring flooded caves. One Jacques-Yves Cousteau is acknowledged as the world’s first cave diver, making use of scuba gear in the act. Incidentally he is the co-inventor of said deep-sea diving gear.

Over the years the attire worn during cave explorations has evolved from its bulky and cumbersome origins from what is now basically called the frogman rubber suit that we are accustomed. Within the early days “bottom walking” or walking along the floor of the cave was the most preferred mode of movement instead of swimming. This is because it absolutely was considered to be far less dangerous.

The sports of caving and diving each have attendant risks this also is even more in order it relates to cave diving. It could in fact be argued this is potentially very dangerous of sports in existence. One of the factors that produce cave diving so dangerous may be the matter of visibility. It isn’t unusual to find that caves extend to regions where natural light does not penetrate. If someone cannot see where they’re going then that paves the way to a range of possible accidents plus a misstep could prove fatal.

Additionally it is often the case that silt, clay, mud and sand might be in the caves then when disturbed add significantly towards the visibility problem. As a result of nature of this sport, in the case of any emergency returning the way you came to the exit isn’t as straightforward as merely swimming on the surface. One of the main considerations here is an adequate supply of available breathing gas.