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- Cave diving is underwater diving in water-filled caves. The equipment used varies depending on the circumstances, and ranges from breath hold to surface supplied, but almost all cave diving is done using scuba equipment, often in specialised configurations with redundancies such as sidemount or backmounted twinset. Recreational cave diving is generally considered to be a type of technical diving due to the lack of a free surface during large parts of the dive, and often involves planned decompression stops. A distinction is made by recreational diver training agencies between cave diving and cavern diving, where cavern diving is deemed to be diving in those parts of a cave where the exit to open water can be seen by natural light. An arbitrary distance limit to the open water surface may also be specified. Despite the risks, water-filled caves attract scuba divers, cavers, and speleologists due to their often unexplored nature, and present divers with a technical diving challenge. Cave diving venues can be found on all continents except Antarctica, where the average temperature is too low for water to remain liquid in caves. There are few flooded caves in Africa which are known and accessible. There are several in South Africa, a few in Namibia and Zimbabwe, and some large caves recently discovered in Madagascar. There are a large number of flooded caves in the limestone regions and other regions of Asia, particularly in the karst regions of China and Southeast Asia. Some are accessible for recreational cave diving, but most have probably not yet been found or explored. Australia has many spectacular water filled caves and sinkholes, many of them in the Mount Gambier region of South Australia. Europe has a large number of flooded caves, particularly in the karst regions. North America has many cave diving venues, particularly in Florida, USA, and the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. South America has some cave diving venues in Brazil. (en)
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