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Cavern and Cave Diver Workbook
Book Review By Peter Buzzacott
Softcover, 170 pages, many photographs and maps, available from NACD outlets.
This latest edition of the NACD Cavern and Cave Diver Student Workbook is excellent. The information is current, the advice measured, (a reflection on the collaboration that produced it), and the language plain. The illustrations are clear and examples of a jump or a traverse use popular dives many of us make, like the Expressway Circuit and the traverse from Peacock I to Olsen Sink. Describing how to make two-dive complex traverses and complex circuits might raise an eyebrow or two but otherwise the main content is fairly standard, such that even other agencies could adopt this text as their preferred training resource. The workbook is divided into sections that progress through Cavern Diver, Intro-to-Cave, Apprentice Cave, Full Cave Diver and beyond Full Cave, with some useful appendices, maps and controversial topics at the back-end of the book.
The Cavern Diver section is, as one would expect, the largest and takes the novice through a logical sequence with safety first, then conservation, types of caves and then you are into the meat; how to dive. Buoyancy, trim, gear, reels, signaling, planning and gas management follow, then a mention of stress management and finally problem solving and emergency procedures. The cave-level sections each begin with the limitations of that level of training, followed by a statement about accident analysis, a description of equipment related to that level and then relevant navigational knowledge, for example line markers at Intro level, simple traverses at Apprentice and complex traverses at Cave level. I would like to have seen an actual example of a fatality briefly described in each section, one where the knowledge covered at that level could have been relevant to the diver who died. For example, an entanglement in unsuitable line at Intro level, a visual jump and silt-out in the Apprentice section and a Mexican complex circuit fatality in the cave section. Whilst this will have to wait till a future revision, the section on decompression and diving physiology in the Apprentice section is an unexpected bonus and well written.
There is a section then on blind traverses, visual jumps, trust-me dives and solo diving and I like the way the authors cover these, by placing the hazards up front and advising the diver to set their own level of risk whilst also saying they are not NACD endorsed practices. Choosing one’s own risk exposure is, after-all, what humans do. Post Full-Cave training is then briefly described, including survey and mapping, stage-diving, sidemount use and DPV training, followed by a collection of excellent cave maps. Although they are mostly the popular caves in Florida and Mexico, which will of course suit the majority of NACD course participants, it is nice to see a few international maps in there too which not only encourage NACD divers to consider overseas trips but also place our most popular caves in an international context. The same goes for the dual use of imperial and metric systems throughout the book. No doubt one day the world will be wholly metric but during this time of transition modern texts need to appeal to users of either system and the authors have managed this well.
The manual ends with some useful re-prints of NACD Journal articles including an excellent overview of HID lighting by Marius Clore. No doubt many divers on the path to Full Cave already dive rebreathers in the open water so perhaps this would have been an appropriate section for an opinion article on the transition from open circuit to rebreathers in caves. Nonetheless, this is the best Cavern/Cave Diver manual on the market and hundreds of NACD course participants are going to enjoy reading this text, and referring back to it. We have come along way in the last 50 years and this book now sits at the forefront of modern cavern and cave diver training.
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NACD Cavern/Cave Diver Student Workbook
$30.00
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