Like wow wtf, these incidents are really just endless, huh? I must’ve gone through hundreds of these now. It seems like it doesn’t matter whether someone is an experienced scuba diver or not, these caves have a tendency to just fuck up your shit.
People who you could call not just world class divers, but world class cave divers apparently routinely enter these things en masse and are never seen alive again. Rescues are extremely rare because they tend to run out of air before anyone even realizes something went wrong. Then the only hope of retrieving the body is to fly in another world class cave diver, very likely a friend of the now rotting corpse floating in the cave. This isn’t a very commonly practiced hobby as you can imagine.
Good chance this guy fucking dies in the cave too. At that point the property owner tends to just block off the entrance and let the two spend eternity together. It’s very touching.
Most common scenario seems to be losing their guide rope back to the cave exit, accidentally stirring up previously pristine and undisturbed silt, reducing the visibility to literally 0, and then totally losing track of the claustrophobic passage that they originally shimmied through to get into that chamber. This is very obviously the perfect time to panic, hyperventilate away most of your air supply, and swim around wildly kicking up even more silt while trying to find the way out. Kind of like being stuck under a sheet of ice, but far worse because you probably still have something like 30 minutes left to think about the fact that no one can possibly rescue you in time.
I can’t imagine being in this situation, what a shit way to go. I’d rather go fucking wing suiting than get anywhere near an underwater cave.
friend’s bf has been posting diving photos on facebook the past few years and he’s definitely headed in this direction. Last year he took a cave diving safety course, which of all safety courses in the world ironically increases your risk of death the most (followed by avalanche safety courses). Then just this month he posted some photos of him trying a rebreather. It’s so over, there’s basically a countdown over his head at this point.
Underrated fact about diving (not even very) deep is nitrogen narcosis, you basically get drunk and your decision-making ability is extremely inhibited. Throw that in with a fuck ton of objective danger!