Cave training is among the most rigorous dive training you can undertake, exceeded in difficulty perhaps only by introductory technical courses. This is more or less universally agreed. The training is so rigorous because the cave environment is among the most demanding environments you can dive in. It is full of both obvious and subtle dangers. Yet with proper training, recreational cave diving has a fairly good safety record. Consequently there is heavy emphasis on proper training among cave divers.

Training today is segmented into progressive modules. If you train with NAUI/TDI/IANTD/NSSCDS, they look something like this:

• Cavern
• Basic Cave (also called Intro to cave)
• Full Cave
• Stage Cave

These are the “main track” courses. Typically the level of certification is something like:

• Cavern - penetration within the daylight zone (daylight is visible), gas rules vary by agency
• Basic cave - penetration limited to gold line, 0 or 1 navigational decision (e.g. 1 “tee” intersection) penetration gas limited to 1/6 of total supply
• Full cave - unlimited navigational decisions, penetration gas limited to 1/3 of total supply - but at this level you are expected to know what reasonable gas management looks like for your specific dive
• Stage cave - adds use of stage bottles (extra cylinders carried in addition to your main or “back gas” supply)

GUE approaches training a little differently, their courses are:

• Cave 1 - penetration limited to 1 permanent navigational decision (a tee or gap), penetration gas limited to 1/3 of 2/3, no siphons
• Cave 2 - unlimited navigation, use of stage cylinders, penetration gas limited to 1/3 of total supply (rule of halves for stage cylinders), but again, by this point you should know what is reasonable

There is also Cave 3, which is a “mastery level” class that is understood to be more of a formal mentorship than anything.

Then you have the various specialization courses for equipment:

• Cave DPV - for use of scooters (dive propulsion vehicles)
• Cave CCR - for using rebreathers in caves

Every agency has a smattering of others.

Like any other sport cave diving has its own culture. This culture is informed by a rich history which I'll touch on in another section.

Cave diving has a surprisingly rich history, replete with legendary explorers, close calls, adventures, hair raising tales, records, triumphs, struggles, tragedies. I find it very interesting. It turns out that swimming into holes underwater to see where they go is an undertaking not dissimilar from something like exploring a new continent with all the human stories that come along with that.

The sport is commonly perceived to be among the most dangerous. This perception largely stems from the early days of the sport when the fatality rate was staggering. At that time there was limited understanding of the causes of accidents and people were dying from all sorts of things - light failures, getting lost, silt outs, poor gas planning, etc. This changed when Sheck Exley performed a survey of cave diving fatalities and published his conclusions in the short book Basic Cave Diving: A Blueprint for Survival, identifying a short list of mistakes that most accidents could be assigned to.

Today the sport is relatively safe for people engaging in what is considered “recreational” cave diving - within reasonable depth limits (150ft or so), in explored and lined systems, with proper training. Yet the perception lives on, in part due to the innate appetite for disaster every person has which leads to shock sites like this one and a wealth of youtube videos exploiting tragedies for advertisement views. Deaths still occur, but they are almost never out of ignorance now - it's nearly always people ignoring the cardinal rules and/or exceeding their training. Fatalities also appear to occur at an elevated rate among explorers, but as most cave exploration is now in the realm of what would be considered “extreme” diving by most (poor conditions, depths exceeding 200ft, tight squeezes, very long penetrations, etc) these fatalities are not really representative of the sport that the vast majority of cave divers engage in. In the 70s, cave diving of any kind was extreme - now, while the environment is still very demanding, it's closer to a recreational pursuit than an extreme sport.