Want to know how you can tell the difference between an open-water diver and a cave diver? Look at their equipment.
That’s right. While both activities involve diving under bodies of water, the type of equipment they carry varies differently. Cave diving equipment is much more specialized and very much suited for cave diving itself than other types of diving equipment despite similarities. This means that actions that you would take during an open-water dive may not be something you would want to do at all in cave diving.
For example, you want to reposition your weights to tilt your head downwards more than normal, which will help keep your fins away from the bottom of the floor and reduce the chance that you might stir up sediment, soil, and other forms of the earth underwater. You also don’t want to drop your weights ever, as this will cause you to become more buoyant, and in an overhead environment, you will simply end up hitting the ceiling instead of surfacing.
The other equipment that you will see be used in cave diving will be different as well, such as…
Fins
Scuba divers use fins that are long and thick, as they are designed in such a way to give more powerful kicks to help a person propel through the water.
On the other hand, cave divers much prefer something that isn’t flexible, light, and black in color. This means that black fins are ideal.
The reason why this is so is because cave divers cannot exert the same amount of force that a scuba diver can. Remember the difference in environment here. A scuba diver will have all the space in the world to kick as much as they want. A cave diver will not have such luxury, as they are surrounded by rocky formations and walls in all sides, which means they have to be much more careful while swimming. If their fins are flexible, this makes them liable to kick up sediment underwater due to the way physics work, potentially clouding the vision of the cave diver.
This is also why cave divers use the breaststroke instead of the flutter kick while swimming, as flutter kicks will kick up everything behind the diver.
Masks
Cave divers prefer masks that are simple, choosing standard masks. Like fins, they would also want the color of said mask to be black. The reason why cave divers would want such dark equipment is because the color black is great at absorbing light.
Now, this might seem contrary to what a cave diver would want, because of the lack of light underwater in the first place, but the color’s main use is not to reduce as much light as possible, but to have better control on how much light is around. While having light is important to see underwater, if it is too bright, it can be distracting instead, which can obstruct a diver’s vision and cause them to lose sight of things like entrances, branching paths, and other spots.
Another thing: cave divers don’t use snorkels, unlike open-water divers. This is because cave divers stay underwater for a long period of time and will always use oxygen tanks to allow them to breathe.
It’s not just because they want to either. Underwater cave layouts will often force cave divers to stay underwater, due to the water hitting the ceiling, making them unable to surface easily. They would need to find space with enough elevation that it reaches past the water level before they can breathe on the surface again, otherwise they would need to keep swimming underwater. As a result, snorkels are pretty much useless for cave divers and would only be dead weight to the person carrying it.
Body Suits
Since cave diving involves, well, diving, of course you will want body protection as well. For cave divers, you have the option of using a dry suit or a wet suit. A wet suit uses a layer of water that will keep the body insulated, while a dry suit will use a layer of air while also being fully sealed to prevent water from entering the suit and coming into contact with the skin. The main idea is to keep the body insulated, to ensure that the cave diver isn’t as risk of getting hypothermia. In this case, dry suits are a better choice overall, as they cause less heat loss. This is thanks to their material, neoprene, being a synthetic rubber. Plus, it allows divers to wear extra undergarments. Though, wet suits can still work for water that may be warm or dives that aren’t expected to take too long.
Conclusion
There is a good reason why cave diving equipment is specialized, and it is because the environment it is in is very specific and dangerous if one goes in unprepared.
To this end, divers carry extra equipment. So instead of having, say, just one mask, a diver will carry two on the instance that, say, one of them cracks or fails for whatever reason. This applies for all equipment, so divers will carry something mundane like an extra mask or even extra fins, or something that can save your life, like an extra oxygen tank. It means they will be weighed down a lot, which is why they need to be picky with their equipment, especially in terms of weight.