Okay, So What Exactly Is a “Safe Exit?”

Both NSS-CDS and IANTD training standards require that cave diving students maintain a continuous guideline to a safe exit. What they do not make as clear is exactly what constitutes that “safe exit.” The problem is that safe exits are like pornography — hard to define, but you know them when you see them.

Safe exits are also conditional.

• What constitutes a safe exit for an experienced diver with hundreds of dives in a particular cave system may not be as safe for a new cave diver who is unfamiliar with the site.

• What is clearly a safe exit in the middle of the day may not be at night, or when the basin goes tannic.

So why not just maintain a continuous guideline to open water? That’s what we used to require (and some training agencies still do).

The problem with tying off at the bottom of the open water basin is that, depending on circumstances, it may not be sufficiently safe — or it may create more problems than it solves.

Before going any further, I should mention that this article is aimed primarily at those of us diving in north-central Florida. I can think of few sites in Mexico where it isn’t just as convenient to tie off in open water as it is just inside the entrance, or where there is any significant down side in doing so.

If you cave dive in Florida, however, you are most likely all too familiar with the issues I’m going to address here.

What’s Wrong With Tying Off in Open Water?

Possibly nothing…and, possibly, quite a lot.

The basic theory behind tying off at the bottom of the open water basin is that, should you return to your primary tie off and find it enveloped in zero vis, all you need to do is go straight up and you will surface in air. This is a nice theory. In practice, it may not work.

• To start, if you try to surface in zero visibility without the benefit of a guideline, you may find yourself trapped — and blind — under an overhang or log.

• You may even find yourself accidentally swimming back into the cave (it happens).

Therefore, if you are starting out in bad visibility, or you think there is any possibility the vis could zero out while you are in the cave, you should not be tying off at the bottom of the basin. Where you need to be tying off is at the surface. This is the only way to be guaranteed of getting back there.

• Anyone who has dived Little River when the entrance is under a layer of tannic knows about tying off to the stairs.

• Every summer, when Peacock I succumbs to an algae bloom, the gold line gets extended from the cave entrance to the first step.

• Recently, two divers who entered Madison Blue while the river was rising returned to find a basin filled with tannic water and had to hunt for their deco bottles. They would have done well to run a line from the stairs and clip their deco bottles to it.

What about the more common situation — a crystal-clear cave entrance with no possibility of the vis zeroing out during a dive? How often have you seen the following at some of our most popular north-Florida cave sites?

• You are exiting Devil’s Ear and want to get out as quickly as possible to keep deco to a minimum. Unfortunately, you find your exit blocked for several minutes by a team of divers struggling to run a primary reel through the narrow opening from open water.

• Same situation, but this time you are fortunate enough to not find a bottleneck of divers struggling with a reel. What you do have to contend with, however, is a spider web of poorly run guidelines, waiting to entangle the first hapless diver who gets too close to them.

• At Peacock I, the main line runs to within a foot or two of the entrance (much closer, in fact, than the log we used to tie off to years ago). It is inconceivable that, in clear water, any diver could come to the end of the gold line and not be able to find his way out of the cave. Yet how many times have you seen this exit clogged with primary reels?

This last example points out an aspect of reel running few cave divers (and instructors) consider: The damage that running a reel causes to the environment.

• Every time a diver runs a reel, no matter how carefully, some amount of environmental damage occurs.

• Although this damage is minimal, its effect is cumulative. Given sufficient time and hundreds of dive teams, its impact can be significant.

• All of us who have been doing this for a while remember favorite tie offs that have been broken or worn away through use.

Obviously, when the choice is between diver safety and the environment, safety must take precedence. However, when running a reel has no bearing on diver safety (and, in fact, may increase the risk of entanglement to others), doing so out of force of habit is unconscionable.

That having been said, we certainly don’t want to discourage divers from running primary reels when they feel that doing so is essential for safety. They just need to think more carefully about where they make their primary tie offs.

Case in point: When entering Devil’s Ear, is there anything wrong with waiting until after you get just inside the cave entrance and out of the flow to tie off your reel? Is there any way you could get back to this point and, given daylight and clear water, not make it out of the cave? Imagine not only how much easier and more convenient this would be for you, but also how much less risk of entanglement doing so would pose to both yourself and others.

The “Safe Exit” Concept

Some time ago, both NSS-CDS and IANTD realized that a dogmatic “continuous guideline to open water” philosophy was unrealistic in light of what we have learned about specific caves over the decades (not to mention the shear number of teams who may enter a cave at any given time). Thus, the standard was changed to a continuous guideline to a safe exit.

However, as I mentioned at the beginning of this article, you would be hard pressed to find a clear definition of what a “safe exit” is.

Just after last year’s DEMA Show, I was discussing this situation with Karl Shreeves from PADI. (For those of you who don’t know, Karl is one of the driving forces behind PADI’s Tec/Rec program and one helluva good cave diver.) Karl made an observation that I think brings the definition of a safe exit into crystal clarity.

“We all subscribe to the No Lights rule…right? Thus, when we return to the daylight zone and find a recreational diver swimming around without a light, no one gets particularly excited. Certainly if it is safe enough for the recreational diver to be there without a guideline, it should be sufficiently safe for us to do the same.”

So, in other words, continuous guideline to a safe exit can also be construed as a continuous guideline to the No Lights zone. That works for me. Let’s see what happens when you apply this principle to real-world dive sites. (Note that the following examples assume daylight hours, clear water — and no possibility of the basin suddenly going tannic.)

• To start, the ends of the gold lines at Peacock I clearly constitute safe exits. (And, when the basin goes dark, someone always extends the line to the stairs anyway.)

• At Madison Blue, there is nowhere you can go from the end of the gold line except out. (Just make sure the river isn’t rising as you enter.)

• At Little River and Devil’s Ear, whether or not the end of the gold lines constitute safe exits is subject to debate, and may depend on the experience level of individual team members. One thing is for certain, however: Tying off a primary reel just inside the entrance poses less overall risk to other dive teams than doing so in open water.

In any event, that’s my take on the situation. What’s yours? I’d like to see comments from other instructors. (PS: Please sign your name to your comment, so we all know who it is coming from.)

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article do not reflect the position of any agency or other individual and are intended solely to stimulate further discussion,