It is not viable for cave exploration, much less body recovery.

Salt water already makes communication hard enough at that depth I think, the rock layers make it harder. The subs also cannot get everywhere a person can. A person can drag themselves through tight holes if needed, the drone cannot. Finally, body retrieval. The bodies are bloated and decomposing in salt water. How would you attach the drone to them, much less get the bodies out of the cave without risking rubbing them on the harsh and shredding rocks of the cave? The way divers do it, is by putting them in a body bag before taking them out.

I hate the discourse and ignorance surrounding this topic, especially having it come from non divers who want to speak with authority.

They were neither qualified, nor had the equipment, to perform the dive safely. The dive itself however is relatively safe, in the context of cave diving.

It’s like if a 10 year old got behind the wheel of a car with no seatbelt and went on the highway. It’s a death sentence. That does not mean driving on the highway is “deadly dangerous”. In the context of driving, going on a highway is perfectly safe.

These people were not qualified. They did not have the proper equipment. Theirs hubris is what killed them. That, and probably peer pressure for the more inexperienced ones in the group. The one who survived is the one who stayed behind - probably because she realized how terrible of a fucking idea ir was and dos not succumb to peer pressure.

The rescue diver himself turned out to also not be qualified for it, nor have the proper equipment. He was a military diver, but that does not mean he knows anything about cave diving. He was also using rec gear, and only had one or two tanks. He died because his superior’s pressured him into doing it without the proper equipment and training, instead of waiting for qualified personal. Qualified personal who, btw, volunteered. No one was forcing them to do this, despite what so many seem to think.

I don’t know much about rescue procedures like that. In cave diving you do always have a guide line, but that’s so you have a way to find the exit if you can’t see anything, but it’s not used to pull anyone. What your saying seems different, but I don’t know about it.

It’s hard to find hard data for cave diving, but you can make some estimates. I talked a bit more about this in another comment, but a high estimate I got is 0.16 deaths per each cave dive. For free diving there’s several places I found saying there’s 1 death for each 500 recreational free dives, so 0.2 deaths per dive.

Cave divers have multiplies of everything because they know redundancy is important, and they have protocols to deal with different problems. In free diving you just hold your breath and try to estimate how much time you have. If you mess up you pass out and probably drown.

To be clear, I’m not saying cave diving is without risk. I myself have no interest in it because caves are boring to me, and so it’s not worth the risk which does exist. I just don’t like the over the top fear mongering I see whenever there is a story like this.

I’m on a phone so it’s not convenient, but the first study I found showed like 3 cave diving deaths in 2007 (most recent year they showed), although the trend seemed to be for it to get lower. Still, this year we are at 6 already just from this incident, so let’s purposely overestimate and say 6 per year. As for the total number of dives, there are extremely famous caves all around the world that get year round activity. It’s hard to find hard data, but if we play it conservatively we can estimate and say 10 per day, that’s like 3650 per year. So 6/3650 -> 0.16 divers die in each cave dive.

There might be unreported deaths, but there’s also a lot of unreported dives in caves people don’t really know of and in remote areas. This dive might have gone unreported if not for the deaths (it was illegal for them to be there at that depth). And it’s important to remember, if early reports are accurate, these people were clearly not qualified to be diving at 50m, much less in a cave.

Now free diving: Number of fatalities in 2007 was 42, and the number seems to have increased slightly (52 in 2017). Data is easier to find for some reason, and plenty resources seem to indicate that the rate of death in recreational free divers is 1/500, so 0.2 deaths per each dive.

So despite inflated number for cave diving deaths, and low estimate of cave dives in a year, free diving is still more deadly.

It’s not too hard to figure out why. It’s still scuba. When cave diving you can recover from mistakes. You have information on how much air you have left, and multiple of everything you need as redundancy, and so you can sort any problems you have. There are drills you do in case you lose the guide line, for example. In free diving you are just going by feeling. If you miscalculate how much air there is in your lungs and how long it will take you to resurface, you’ll pass out and probably drown.

To be clear, I’m not saying cave diving is without risk. I myself have no interest in it because caves are boring to me, and so it’s not worth the risk which does exist. I just don’t like the over the top fear mongering I see whenever there is a story like this.

Right, there are a lot of accidents and deaths, but it’s still unlikely to happen. Both things are true. And a lot of those deaths are from unqualified people who dived into a cave anyway. It’s sort of like saying “flying a plane is dangerous, I’ve seen a lot of videos about crashes and people dying - people were not made to fly”. As long as the pilot has proper training and the equipment is in proper condition, it’s not really that dangerous.

There are a lot more deaths caused by free diving (even in percentile), for example, but those stories aren’t as interesting and don’t make for good videos, so they don’t get talked about much.

It depends on what you mean by dangerous. Of course it is by definition a dangerous sport, but if you have the proper training, you prepare properly, and you don’t go being your skill or what you planned for, the chances of death are actually not high.

Like, rock climbing is dangerous. If you go scale a huge mountain with no training or proper gear you’ll die. But with training and proper gear and planning you should be fine.

Plan for your level, and dive the plan. Like I said in the other comment, most deaths are from people who didn’t have the training.

I’m a diver but not that qualified, and far from an expert, but the fact that five (supposedly experienced) divers died, and now even a rescue diver has died, tells me this is in big part to do with the location itself rather than failure in the divers part.

I don’t remember the names, but some caves have water currents pulling in, and others pushing out. Out are the safest ones because it’s easier to get out. In are the most dangerous, because you might be going further than you realize and to come back you have to swim against the current - you won’t have enough air to make it back. That said, usually even experienced cave divers stay far from those caves, precisely because they know how dangerous they are. Also, if you are diving in a foreign place, you should really go with a dive guide who knows the area. AFAIK, there was no guide.

So even then, there was probably some type of mess up on the driver’s side. Because it seems they should not have been performing that dive, much less with no dive guide.

And statistically, the majority of victims of cave diving deaths were people who are not certified cave divers.

I’m saying all this because I’ve seen so many people talk about how dangerous it is, but statistically if you are qualified it’s safer than free diving. But no one complaints about that being dangerous.

EDIT: I should also mention I could not read the article, I got paywalled. I’m having to go just by the title.