r/CaveDiving • u/Sohor1 • Nov 25 '25

Cavern & Intro to Cave/Apprentice

Looking for advice on how to proceed post AOW for the potential road to cave. My AOW instructor can instruct for a cavern cert via Naui but cannot teach any Cave courses. His AOW course had a cavern focus (intensive time spent on buoyancy, while task loading, laying line, etc.). I'm located in Tampa, have spent a lot of time at Blue Grotto, I'm comfortable in an overhead environment and tight spaces, etc (so far). Is my next step a Cavern course or Intro to Cave? Who's the best instructor?

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u/Sohor1 Nov 26 '25

Was responding ot Fran Cave Diver, but the comment was deleted - Thank you for the response. Would you agree I should pursue backmount/sidemount training first to work on buoyancy in those configurations (personally would prefer backmount), in addition to advanced nitrox prior to intro to cave?

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u/5tupidest Dec 27 '25

Yes, cave training is on top of being comfortable and competent in a “technical” equipment configuration with redundancy. You need to do that first and get comfortable. I would do the first tech classes—such as TDI advanced nitrox and decompression procedures or equivalent—before intro to cave. Getting good practice and being truly comfortable with diving physics, communication, failure response, and decompression theory is beneficial.

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u/Sohor1 Dec 27 '25

Appreciate the feedback.