Comparing apples and oranges, is what wreck diving is to cave diving. Today is my 24th day of diving down here in North Central Florida this winter, on an expedition that began on December 15th. While my first love is wreck diving and while I was trained in Va Beach, I transferred up to NJ in 2001, and took right to the cold ocean diving, on our many shipwrecks. Progression in training and adapting new techniques and technology, I have embraced CCR's as the future of scuba diving. From there, I wished to push the limits of what the rebreathers could actually do and exploit their merits. The caves were the answer. While ocean diving is very challenging due to the limits of weather and logistics and face it, politics, the caves don't suffer these shortcomings. You can dive just about any time, day or night, weekday or in a windstorm if you like, solo, if you wish. We now can push the limits of the technology to far end, something I never imagined when I first splashed in an open water course. With scooter s and rebreathers, we can now venture thousands of feet, miles into caves and hundreds of feet deep. There are limits of course due to decompression obligations, and how long the human body can withstand, we are talking 3, 4, 5 and up to ten hour dives now, not nearly an hour or ninety minutes in an ocean dive. I dove a cave (Indian Springs) where they have a habitat where you can decompress at 20' inside the cave, out of the water. Incredible to be warm and mask off (still on the loop of course) for an hour or two, while on deco. It's not science fiction. So, as a boat captain said to me: "We are not in the same universe." It's true! Thousands of feet back into a cave and hundreds of feet deep, captured on GoPro video, where very few have ventured. It makes a nice getaway from the cold NE winter as well, but I admit it's time to rinse of this fresh water for some Atlantic salt! Dive safe and often!
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