Cavern and Cave diving courses give you the opportunity to explore an underwater world that very few people ever get to see. These courses train you to navigate overhead environments with limited visibility.
Diving in overhead environments requires extensive, specialized training due to the unique set of risks and skills of this environment. Your entry to this area of diving is the cavern zone. The cavern zone is the area of the cave still reached by natural daylight and limited to a total linear distance of 40m from the surface.
At DJL we offer the Cavern Diver specialty, a solid introduction to the world of diving in overhead environments. In this course, you will learn the foundational skills to conduct the dives safely, including line laying, marker use, and emergency procedures for exiting overhead environments in zero visibility conditions.
At DJL Tech we have some of the most experienced tech divers in the country and a reputation as one of the original tech diving schools on Koh Tao. Both cavern and cave diving courses are conducted on the mainland.
The Cavern Diver course runs in line with Tech 40 and is conducted over 3-4 days. Dives will penetrate into the cavern while remaining in the daylight zone with limited decompression. Can be conducted in sidemount or backgas configuration with 1 decompression tank. The skills that divers require to complete this course revolve around safety and include line laying and out of air drills.
3-4 days, 4 Dives at Song Hong cave or Spider Cave on the Mainland
Once students reach the standard to dive a cavern, the next step is full penetration of a cave. This course runs in line with Tech 45 and is 4 dives with two gases and accelerated decompression. The level of skills required to successfully complete the Cave Diver course increases significantly from the safety based skills of the Cavern Diver course.
You will be introduced to full cave systems outside the natural light zone. Students will learn the procedures for locating their buddy if they get lost, getting out of an entanglement situation, and what to do if you lose the main line. You will be decompression diving on double tanks as you venture further into the cave system.
3 days, 4 Dives at Krabi, Song Hong, Khlang cave (Mainland)
The Full Cave course runs in line with Tech 50 (or max certification depth). Course includes 8 dives, can be done in any configuration, in a minimum of two cave systems. Students will continue to drill safety skills, learn how to do line repairs, jumps and gaps as well as how to contend with smaller restrictions.
Part of the Full Cave course focuses on teaching students how to stage tanks which enables additional penetration. Your instructor will bring this into practice on 2 of the dives where 1 tank will be staged and 2 further dives where 2 tanks are staged.
5 days, 8 Dives in minimum 2 cave systems on the mainland
Combine Cavern to Full Cave with our package special and save.
The Cave Exploration course teaches students how to dive in deep caves. Narcosis is an issue to avoid in this kind of overhead environment. Therefore students need to be using optimum trimix gases. During this course we teach students how to stage multiple tanks, set up a habitat and breathe o2 whilst they are in a habitat.
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