Diving on deep wrecks or in caves takes skill and experience to achieve results, and then come back from the dive safely. Diving deep is always a difficult task in any environment. But diving deep on wrecks and in caves is definitely the most difficult form of tech diving anyone can undertake, and unlike diving in caves, deep diving in the ocean is less forgiving and requires a much bigger skilful support base, where is in caves a much smaller team can do a dive in an environment that is much more controlled, that allows you to prepare for the main event, something that is not possible in the open sea.

The purists amongst us who only believe in wreck diving would not venture into caves; likewise for cave divers, who do find that sitting on a rocking boat and tangling seasickness as a bad idea.  In the middle are technical divers that will and do venture into both environments. I believe that it is these divers who benefit from the skills involved to undertake difficult dives.

Being able to posses the skills for both wreck and cave diving is definitely the ultimate for any tech diver, if the desire to expand the skills to both environments is there, then a diver will reap the benefits.

Cave training must be one of the most personal & technical difficult (in-water) challenging a diver can venture into. Line work, confined spaces, trim, finning technique, zero visibility and managing emergency gas situations are all skills and much more will make a diver much safer in wreck diving.

Consider penetration dives - there are plenty of wreck penetration programs out there which cover skills specific to wrecks and are highly recommended for serious wreck diving. Though adding cave skills will expand your skills and knowledge toolbox dramatically.

The downside to completing caving courses is that if you are only doing the courses for the sake of it, then consider taking up chess as your sport – because badge collecting in tech diving will get you killed!

For me, cave divers are a tough bunch of divers especially those who dive in extreme remote places, at times living underground for days or weeks. Many cave divers had to expand their skills to deep diving to tackle the ever-deepening sites around the world. Deep diving in caves adds a real challenge on top of an all ready technically challenging situation. But one thing that is an advantage cave divers have in deep caves and that is a stable environment that gives the time to prepare.

Deep dives in caves usually involve staging dives to set the back up gas, habitats, and any other required equipment for the push dive to be undertaken. Then once the push dive is complete, you have the time to clean up the equipment and everything else from the cave. But for ocean environment it’s a completely different story.

Open-ocean deep diving is a challenging affair, the stable environment that a diver had under their feet in a cave is now a rolling and rocking balancing act along seasickness that can debilitate the toughest of divers having them curled up like a child wishing someone to end their misery!

Unlike a deep dive in a cave that can be completed over several days, a dive on a wreck is a one-day affair – hopefully to be finished before sunset! This time restriction is the ultimate test to your mental strength. Not only you are waking up before sunrise to start a fully charged day, a deep wreck diver is constantly challenged in keeping his or her mind alert to the plethora of activity going on, while attempting to maintain your own headspace to prepare. From the moment the shot line is dropped in the water, the chaos on the boat starts, and while you trying to keep your mind stable with the pitching and yawning boat, you start getting ready in the confined spaces of the boat, dealing with heat of your drysuit, and hundred’s of kilos of gear that you need to don, and then make sure everything is working. Add a camera to the cocktail and you have pushed your mental barrier to the edge, and all this before even getting in the water!

Once in the water and battling the currents and the odd too curious marine animals that can cause harm, the diver is faced with hours of decompression looking at nothing but the empty expanse of blue water (if one is lucky to have clear oceans). On occasion an animal of some kind will keep company.

The priority though is ensuring everything is going well with the equipment, and that you don’t end up sinking down into the depth if anything happens. Unlike decompressing in a cave, there are no ledges to rest on, no habitat to take away the cold or hot food and drink to help your body in a safe decompression. In the ocean it’s just you and the gases you breathe to make sure upon surfacing you are not taking a ride to the chamber.

The key to success of a deep wreck dive is in having a solid support team, and it’s important to make sure that every member of support team have the skills to being able to handle the challenges the same way the deep divers do. In cave diving this support team will be even more skilled, and often themselves very skilled cave divers providing the support.

The mental toughness that wreck divers have is a major skill to bring to cave diving. It keeps you focused and ready to tackle any issues at the worst time possible, deep and far into a cave in poor visibility with very cold water, it’s this mental and physical toughness that cave divers must have when you know that as you push forward, you have all that distance to go through again to get back. The thought of doing such a dive can make any tech diver weak in the knees. It’s something that serious divers dedicate a lifetime to achieve in order to keep on doing for years to come.

Those that pushed beyond their limits – paid the ultimate price. This is not something that we must take example of and as much as these individuals opened a whole new world to tech divers, ultimately it’s what not to do we learn from them. Mostly they were either cave divers or wreck divers, but very little numbers of these individuals were both. It’s the all rounders of tech divers that we often see doing the big dives, pushing the limits and still around to tell their tale.

This is who most new divers to tech diving will benefit from, regardless of what form of tech diving they are most interested in, they will learn a great deal from someone who has experienced both spectrums of tech diving in its toughest form.

Being able to be a push diver on wrecks and caves, and combine the skills from both types of diving is ultimately the formula one driver of the diving world. This is the pinnacle of tech diving.

The Sydney Project is a technical diving club that welcomes new members, so if you’re interested in joining or just keeping up with our activities, then check out our website at www.sydneyproject.com