Scuba Geek

Suwannee County is the #1 cave-diving destination in the world July 14, 2006

Posted by Andy Carroll in : CaveDiving , trackback

There is an interesting article in the suwanneedemocrat website, which highlights the great cave diving available in the region. Suwannee County is apparently the world’s most popular cave diving destination, and in the article Janet Schrader interviews a cave diving instructor, John Orlowsky, who has been cave diving and teaching cave diving for many years;

“I started coming down here when I was teaching scuba diving at the University of Pittsburgh,” Orlowsky said. “I talked my students into trying it, took a class in cave diving and fell in love with it.”

Inevitably the article focusses a little too much on the danger involved when cave diving, and John obviously had some stories to tell;

Orlowsky has had some close calls in caves, but said he is rarely scared. “Sometimes I get scared,” Orlowsky said. “I had some rocks fall on me in a cave in Mexico pinning me to the floor. I was scared then.”

I’m not so sure that so much space needs to be taken up with the bad side of cave diving, as the vast majority of dives occur with no problems whatsover. It is the attitude and training of the diver which influences whether an accident happens or not, and that is the same in open water too.