Cave diving & karst
What an overhead environment actually is, how limestone country produces the caves we dive, and the vocabulary you will hear on any Texas or Florida dive.
Est. 2000 · Houston, Texas
Earth is a water planet.
Never forget that.
CAVEDIVER.COM has collected reference material for cave divers for more than two decades — equipment data, karst geology, Texas dive locations, and first-hand accounts from the people who explored them.
Cave diving requires training. There is no shortcut.
Nothing on this site is a substitute for certification from a recognised cave training agency. Overhead environments remove your direct ascent to the surface — the skills that keep you alive there are taught in the water, by an instructor, over time. If you are not cave-certified, treat everything here as background reading only.
What's here
Reference, not opinion
This site has always been a place to park useful information rather than argue about it. Material is dated, sourced where possible, and left for you to judge.
Safety & training
The accepted foundations every cave agency teaches, and where to get certified. The rules exist because people died establishing them.
Resources
Cylinder specifications, lights and batteries, scooters, exposure suits, sidemount, gas. Houston-area bias, openly acknowledged.
Texas locations
Amistad Reservoir and Goodenough Springs, the 0-9 Well in Crockett County, and San Felipe Springs at Del Rio.
The archive
Articles preserved from the original site, including the Texas Magazine profile of Tom Iliffe and George Irvine's account of an 18,000-foot penetration.
Send a correction
Much of what follows was accurate when it was posted and may not be now. Corrections and additions are welcome and always have been.
A note on age
Some of this is older than the divers reading it
CAVEDIVER.COM was built in 2000. A good deal of the reference material here was posted between 2000 and 2003, and it is kept because it remains useful — cylinder buoyancy figures and limestone hydrology do not go stale the way a phone number does.
Other parts absolutely have. Vendors have closed, links have rotted, and equipment practice has moved on considerably, particularly in sidemount and in lighting. Where an entry carries a date, weigh it accordingly.
The original site made this same point rather more bluntly: "I have NOT resolved any differences, nor have I even verified any of the data… so reader-beware." That still holds.
Standing disclaimer
No endorsements
CAVEDIVER.COM makes no warranties or guarantees, does not endorse any vendor listed, and has not independently corroborated the notes and warnings published here.
Caveat emptor.
Photographs, diagrams and written material on this site are © 2000–2026 Robert Laird unless otherwise credited.