Going Bubbleless

Learning to cave is the beginning of a whole new adventure.

Where else can you take up a hobby which can lead to exploring parts of this planet where literally, nobody else has ever been? All the mountains have been mapped and most of the ocean floor has been documented.

But nobody knows what lies inside the Earth until somebody goes there.

Many cavers spend their spare time ‘digging’ to remove obstructions in caves such as sand or boulders to open up new cave passages, or even dig open new ones from the surface. I’m far too impatient for that! In order to discover places no human has ever been, I took up cave diving in 2004 and never looked back.

I had mostly used conventional SCUBA equipment, reconfigured for appropriate use in caves.

Following my 2017 exploration in a cave called Izvor Licanke in Croatia, the logistics of using this equipment became a limitation. The cave was deep and we only had enough gas and bottles for one dive on the expedition.

Chris learns her closed circuit rebreather in Egypt

So, I bought a machine called a Closed Circuit Rebreather. It meant learning to dive in a slightly different way and I figured the best way to learn was to get lots of time in the water.

My partner Richard and I headed out to Egypt last summer to take a little break and spend hours getting used to my new equipment. Hopefully, this new rebreather will open up many doors and allow me to explore Licanke even further to discover yet more places unknown to humans.

Image of a clown fish: Christine Grosart, 2017