Introduction
Contents
This guide book aims to give a brief introduction into the different types of scuba diving. As well as listing a sample of popular dive sites (locations) for each type of dive. The guide book can be used in conjunction with the scuba guide map which has the dive sites plotted onto it. You can also use this guide to keep a record of your own dives and use the stickers provided to plot them on the map.
Cave Diving
3
Ice Diving
7
Drift Diving
11
Deep Diving
15
Wreck Diving
19
Wall Diving
23
Reefs
27
Dolphins
31
Sea Turtles
35
Cave diving is a type of technical diving in which specialized scuba equipment is used to enable the exploration of natural or artificial caves which are at least partially filled with water. In the UK it is an extension of the more common sport of caving, and in the US an extension of the more common sport of scuba diving. It is much more rarely practiced due to the skills and equipment required, and because of the high potential risks.
Cave Diving
Despite these risks, water-filled caves attract scuba divers, cavers, and speleologists due to their often unexplored nature, and present divers with a technical diving challenge. Caves often have a wide range of unique physical features, such as stalactites and stalagmites, and can contain unique flora and fauna not found elsewhere. Cave diving is one of the most challenging and potentially dangerous
kinds of diving or caving and presents many hazards. Cave diving is a form of penetration diving, meaning that in an emergency a diver cannot swim vertically to the surface due to the cave’s ceilings, and so must swim horizontally or diagonally to escape. The underwater navigation through the cave system may be difficult and exit routes may be at considerable distance, requiring the diver to have sufficient breathing gas to make the journey. The dive may also be deep, resulting in potential deep diving risks.
Visibility can vary from nearly unlimited to low, or non-existent, and can go from one extreme to the other in a single dive. While a less-intensive kind of diving called cavern diving does not take divers beyond the reach of natural light, true cave diving can involve penetrations of many thousands of feet, well beyond the reach of sunlight. The level of darkness experienced creates an environment impossible to see in without an artificial form of light. Caves often contain sand, mud, clay, silt, or other sediment that can further reduce underwater visibility in seconds when stirred up.
Caves can carry strong water currents. Most caves emerge on the surface as either springs or siphons. Springs have out flowing currents, where water is coming up out of the Earth and flowing out across the land’s surface. Siphons have in-flowing currents where, for example, an above-ground river is going underground. Some caves are complex and have some tunnels with out-flowing currents, and other tunnels with in-flowing currents. If currents are not properly managed, they can cause serious problems for the diver.Cave diving is perceived as one of the more dangerous sports in the world. This perception is arguable because the vast majority of divers who have lost their lives in caves have either not undergone specialized training or have had inadequate equipment for the environment. Cave divers have suggested that cave diving is in fact statistically much safer than recreational diving due to the much larger barriers imposed by experience, training, and equipment cost.