An Insanely Dangerous Activity - Reading Test Answers

Location: Paragraph 1

In early 2011, she entered Tank Cave, near Mount Gambier, a seven-kilometre maze of narrow tunnels - yet ones she had explored many times before.

Location: Paragraph 2

When anything goes wrong, divers cannot swim vertically to the surface, but must instead navigate the entire way back. The dive is immediately abandoned, but even with the full team at hand, the return is complicated by narrow tunnels, often lined with sand, mud, or clay, all of which can be easily disturbed - the dreaded ‘silt-out’ - where, in a few seconds, the diver is in a panic-inducing soup of sediment, virtually blind.

Location: Paragraph 5

The next two protocols each concern a vital piece of equipment.

Location: Paragraph 4

This is done in carefully documented components, each dealing with increasingly complex facets of cave diving, and accompanied with relevant, dive time before progression onwards is allowed.

Location: Paragraph 4

This is all carefully calculated in a dive plan before entering the water, and every diver must strictly adhere to this.

Location: Paragraph 4

The next rule is the same as with all diving, whether open-sea or cave. It concerns the maximum depths and the decompression stops needed to allow the release of dissolved nitrogen from the blood.

Location: Paragraph 5

Firstly, a guide rope is an absolute necessity.

Location: Paragraph 5

Sufficient tension is always maintained, and often the rope is tied up at regular lengths within the cave interior to ensure this.

Location: Paragraph 5

These are checked under the water when entering the cave, and the protocol states that if even one of these fails, the dive is abandoned for all members of the team.

Location: Paragraph 6

Another variation is to ensure that these three separate systems are used equally, so that the remaining air is kept balanced.

Location: Paragraph 1

Deep inside, she parted company from her dive buddy to explore a tight passageway through which only one person could pass.

Location: Last Paragraph

By following all such protocols, the risk is minimised, so that cave diving, as far as can be proven with the limited statistics available, is said to be safer than driving a car.

Location: Last Paragraph

The answer is supplied by a cave-diving leader: ‘You get to see things that human beings have never seen before. Nothing on Earth can compare to that.’