After enjoying your cavern diving course and discovering diving in the overhead environment, it is time to move on to the TDI Intro to cave diver course in the Cenotes.
You will tune up your skills further into the cave and adopt additional techniques and procedures required for simple cave dives.
Of course, upon satisfying the intro to Cave course requirements, you may enroll in the Full Cave Diving Course.
Prerequisites
- Cavern Diver certification or equivalent
- Intro to tech or Side Mount (course available and can be combined with the Cavern Diver course)
- Minimum age 18, 15 with parental consent
Qualifications of a certified intro to cave diver
- “Rule of thirds,” OR 1/6th if using doubles
- Maximum depth of 40 meters/130 feet.
- Proper cave diving equipment must be used
- Maintain a continuous guideline
- Progress on to the next level: Full Cave Diver course!
Intro to cave diver’s gear
- double cylinders or dual valve manifold
- Two independent first and second stage regulators; one regulator equipped with a long hose (2 meters / 7 feet)
- Buoyancy compensator device (BCD) with power inflator
- Exposure suit adequate for the diving environment
- Line cutting device
- Three battery-powered lights; 1 primary and 2 back-ups
- Safety reel/spool
- One primary reel
- Computer, watch or bottom timer and depth gauge
- Slate or wet notes with a pencil
- Submersible dive tables or backup dive computer
- Directional and non-directional line markers
Duration of the Intro to cave course
- Minimum 3 days
- Open water training
- minimum 4 cave dives
- Theory: minimum 4 hours
What do I learn during the intro to cave training
- Policy for cave diving
- Gas management
- Psychological considerations of cave diving
- Equipment choice and configuration
- Communication (light and hand signals, touch contact)
- Swimming techniques
- Body posture/trim
- Buoyancy control
- Line following
- Physiology
- Breathing techniques
- Stress management
- Cave environment
- Cave conservation
- Problem-solving
- Emergency procedures
- Equipment failure
- Silting conditions
- Accident analysis
- Cave diving etiquette