The Cave Divers Quotes

“The biggest downfall of the cave divers in the 60s and early 70s was deep diving,” said Wes Skiles. “We’d figured out all the other things about the dangers of incorrectly using lines and lights, the air rules, and we now had pressure gauges. We had no excuse. When I came into the sport in 1973, there was really no reason not to operate safely. But deep diving they hadn’t figured out. A number of trained cave divers—all in a short period of time—lost their lives in caves.”
― Robert F. Burgess, THE CAVE DIVERS

“When you are out of air, who wants to feel restricted? It’s a horrible feeling to barely survive an out-of-air ordeal only to get air from a person who has this little hose that’s jerking you around, holding you close to a person you do not want to be near. You want freedom. You want to go to the surface.”
― Robert F. Burgess, THE CAVE DIVERS

“For example, since there was no such thing as a means to control your buoyancy, the earliest buoyancy compensators were plastic milk jugs. To keep themselves out of the silt that obscured visibility, cave divers took the regulators out of their mouths, shot air into the jugs, and clung to them or clipped them off on their belts to give themselves more buoyancy. After that they started using jerry cans. First they tied them to their arms but found it tiring to have their arms lifted, but nothing else. So they put them back on their waist. Then they decided to use two for balance, attaching them to a military style cartridge web belt. About the time cave divers were saying there had to be a better way, the dive industry came out with what was to be called a “buoyancy compensator”
― Robert F. Burgess, THE CAVE DIVERS

“All the rules had to be invented from the beginning. No one knew what the rules were, but gradually figured them out. The basics were: We’ve got to take a line. We’ve got to stay up off the floor. We have to have enough light to see. And we have to save enough air to get out.”
― Robert F. Burgess, THE CAVE DIVERS

“Experienced cave divers are fond of pointing out to the public that caves do not kill divers, divers do.”
― Robert F. Burgess, THE CAVE DIVERS

“Here we are on a technological cutting edge of a historical moment in underground exploration and such thoughts as, I’m going to die if I leave you, and possibly kill you if I stay with you,’ is bouncing around in the heads of people and you’re not aware of it. You don’t know that that’s what the person is thinking. And when we do get ready to turn, to head back, suddenly you’re confronted with this near fight or flight syndrome for Tom and Paul who are both getting dangerously low on gas. Actually, I could have gone on if I had had more line. But at this point, I had”
― Robert F. Burgess, THE CAVE DIVERS