The history of cave diving: How accident analysis has shaped cave Diving
A Brief History Cave and Cavern Diving has existed slightly longer than the advent of actual SCUBA diving. The first cave dives took place sometime in the mid-1930s, with the forming of a dive organization following suit shortly after. These dives were conducted using equivalent hard hat diving gear with surface supplied air, whereby limiting the distance these divers could explore. With the advent of SCUBA gear by Jacques Yves Cousteau, cavern and cave divers were able to reach deeper depths and expand their range into the caves even further.
Unfortunately, these forays into the dark and unknown often lead to the death of the explorers who lacked the fundamental skills necessary at the early dawning of the SCUBA age. Catalyzed by accident analysis, cave divers were able to create protocols for cave diving that made it inherently safer for trained cave divers; technology was shaped by the methodology and protocols that were created as a result of the accident and incident analysis.…show more content… The group was created to explore the flooded caves of the Mendip Hills under Somerset. There early efforts were crude and rudimentary. They used a homemade dry-suit and a modified bicycle pump in order to pump air down to their divers. Their first forays into the cave wisely utilized a piece of equipment they referred to as a "AFLOLAUN," which stood for "Apparatus For Laying Out Line And Underwater Navigation." (Contributors, Wikipedia Cave Diving) The AFLOLAUN consisted of lights, reel and line, compass, notebook for surveying, and batteries. Other methods used by these early divers, which contradict more modern standards include bottom walking, lack of buoyancy equipment, redundant gas sources, or proper decompression charts and