North Florida Springs Alliance

Kelly Jessop

The North Florida Springs Alliance is a Citizen Support Organization (CSO) for Peacock and Troy Springs State Park.  What is a CSO?  It is a nonprofit cooperative between state parks and the users, created by Florida legislation to conduct programs and activities to better the state park. Read more »

Repairing Broken or Failing Guidelines

By Jim Wyatt

Cave divers are trained how to deal with broken guidelines during cave classes since repairing broken or failing lines is part of the curriculum.  However, divers can go years following their training and never encounter a problem so it may be advantageous to review the protocols. Read more »

Complex Navigation

By Jim Wyatt, Photo by Jill Heinerth

Editor's Note: The following discussion is for review purposes only and is not a substitute for training from a qualified cave diving instructor.

Complex navigation in the cave environment is critically important. Taught at the Apprentice Cave Diver level, it is further refined at the full Cave Diver level. At the Cavern and Basic/Intro Cave Diver levels we discourage complex navigation and train divers to stay on the main line. No jumps, no circuits, and no traverses. Cave diving fatalities have occurred when team members mismanaged complex navigation and lost their reference to the direction of the exit. Read more »

Four Stages of Learning

• Unconscious-Incompetent
• Consicous-Incompetant
• Conscious-Competent
• Unconscious-Competent

Technical diving, and specifically rebreather diving, is a continual learning process. If we closely examine how we learn, we can better prepare for the pitfalls associated with each stage of the learning process. Read more »

No one wants to exit the cave without their buddy — or, worse, not exit the cave because you did a lost-buddy search without paying sufficient attention to your own safety and well being. In this article, Safety Coordinator Jim Wyatt reviews the right way to conduct a lost-buddy search. Read more »