Cavern specialty! Learn to safely explore the daylight zone of Florida’s spectacular freshwater springs. If you are interested in becoming a cave diver, it all starts with the Cavern Diver course where you will work on buoyancy control and horizontal trim. You will learn about the additional equipment and skills required to handle issues in the overhead environment like gas management, air sharing, lights out, lost buddy, and lost line procedures. Cavern divers are limited to the daylight zone of the system.
Intro to Cave! To safely dive in the cave environment, additional equipment and redundancy with dual first and second stages is required. This class can be completed with a standard OW rig with a high capacity steel tank, but a Y- or H-tank manifold is mandatory. A sidemount or backmount double configuration is highly recommended. Excellent buoyancy control and horizontal trim are essential at this level. A certification at this level opens up many more options in the springs. Divers at this level, however, must remain on the main line in the cave system. You will learn about air share drills, lost line and lost buddy skills.
Apprentice Cave and Full Cave! To do longer and deeper dives into the aquifer, the diver needs to be trained to handle more challenging situations including jumps and gaps off the main line, as well as out-of-air, lost line, lost buddy drills.
The courses are offered under TDI and PSAI, although a PADI Cavern Diver certification is available upon request.
For more information, click here: Cavern and Cave Diver Info Sheet
