TDI Full Cave Diver Course in Playa del Carmen

This is the third and final level of cave training here in Playa del Carmen — where everything you built in Cavern and Intro to Cave gets pushed further and put to real use. Advanced dive planning, real cave systems, real scenarios. Worth saying plainly: this course sharpens and expands the skills from your previous levels through actual cave penetration — it's not designed to cover every possible facet of cave diving, no course can claim that honestly.

Who this course is for:

• The certified TDI Introductory Cave Diver (or equivalent), who has interest in moving forward with overhead environment diving and expanding their diving techniques, capabilities, range, and more!

What you can expect to learn:
The TDI Full Cave Diver Course takes an in-depth look at all of the following and more.

• Standard cave diving policies
• Gas management procedures and management to include dissimilar volumes
• Psychological considerations of cave diving
• Equipment considerations including:
  • Cylinder options
  • Regulator options
  • Buoyancy compensator/harness options
  • Proper weighting
  • Reel options
  • Equipment configurations
• Communication (light and hand signals)
• Swimming techniques
  • Body posture/trim
  • Buoyancy control
  • Line following
  • Propulsion (finning) techniques
• Physiology
  • Breathing techniques
  • Stress management
  • Decompression theory and its application to cave diving
• Cave environment
• Conservation
• Problem solving
  • Emergency procedures
  • Equipment failure
  • Silting conditions
• Accident analysis
• Cave diving etiquette

Required skills you will have to demonstrate include:

• Properly deploy a guideline
• Properly use directional and non-directional line markers
• Properly follow a guideline with eyes open and closed (simulating loss of visibility)
• Air share with a buddy with eyes open, following a guideline
• Air share with a buddy with lights off and eyes closed, using touch contact while following the guideline
• Remove and replace mask while in contact with the guideline
• Demonstrate conservation, awareness, and back referencing techniques
• Demonstrate light/hand signals and touch contact
• Demonstrate anti-silting techniques
• Simulate a primary light failure and use back up light to exit the cave
• Demonstrate lost line and lost diver drills
• Demonstrate use of reels to perform jumps and gaps required in circuits and traverses to maintain a continuous guideline to open water
• Demonstrate buoyancy control, proper trim, and propulsion techniques
• Demonstrate proper stress analysis (detection and management)
• Demonstrate specialized propulsion techniques in varying types of flow
• Equipment check and matching
• Demonstrate adequate predive planning