The story I read indicated it was a planned "expedition", so presumably they had torches and such? You can't go far in pitch black in a cave and not injure yourself.
It doesn't really add up as it's been told. The death of the expert diver too seems very strange.
It's strange to me. I've only dived at a novice level and never in a cave:
An expert diver who was delivering spare oxygen (or was it air), with a buddy, in a system in which a static line had been placed, and in which presumably a dive leader was managing operations and wouldn't allow a diver to return without a suitable amount of air .. in that situation they simply ran out of air? It seems so unlikely.
I just assumed that he got trapped, or carried by a current, or died in what might be perceived as a "stupid" way and they didn't want to mention it as it might hinder the rescue or sully the man's memory.
I’ve done both caving and cave diving. Other than free diving (single breath), cave diving is the second most dangerous form of diving. Cave diving is really technical. As you’ve said, there’s a 1000 things that can easily go wrong.
Imagine you are in pitch black darkness, with limited visibility even with torches. The water is moving, there isn’t a GPS equivalent, it’s real hard to keep track of position other than markers on a rope.
There can be castrophobicially small tunnels that you need to crawl through. Add bulky gear to the scenario. There can be sharp edges that can tear through skin or gear. Worse, there can be stones in the water stream shooting at you.
There is so much that is an element of luck.
This is one of the reasons that interest me so much in robotics. Imagine being able to send 10’s of robots that can map the entire cave in parallel and send the accurate position of the kids. Not only that, but they can autonomously deliver important gear like food, oxygen, heat blankets e.t.c while human divers prepare for rescue. The man-machine patnership can potentially save so many lives.
I strongly believe the future of exploration/rescue is all about how smart + cheap we can make our robots. It’s so much cheaper sending robots than humans to dangerous missions.
Cave diving is a much more difficult version of diving. Many of the Thai seal team divers are open water divers. This is why there was a large contingent of foreign divers involved. Those with the requisite skills levels are widely dispersed. It's entirely likely that Saman Gunan could have done a hundred more open water dives and survived then all, but due to the difficult conditions in this situation it is possible he got disoriented and/or panicked and ran out of air. I think because the boys survived many people perhaps underestimate the difficulty of the situation now that it is resolved.
Would be interesting to know if at some point they were separated and if not, how they kept together in the dark.