Great read Haggart, thanks for sharing the link to it.
I've scuba dived and I have caved, but I have never scuba dived in a cave.
In the UK a lot of caves have a "Farr" extension, called after Martyn Farr one of Britain's top cave divers. For a long while I wanted to go and visit the Farr extension in Allt nan Umah Stream Cave and see Thunderghast Falls for my self but it meant diving and I was just not experienced enough to go do that.
I was a member of the Scottish Cave Rescue Organisation in the 1980s and 1990s and thankfully only ever been on practice rescues, it is a hostile environment under the ground and the cold and wet will chill you to the bone quite quickly, I used to wear a 8mm wet suit under my boilersuit and even with that on, if you stop moving you get cold within minutes.
We had one practice rescue in Umah an Claonaite which is Scotland's longest cave - with Farr extensions too
We started the rescue from sump 3 and to stretcher the "victim" to the surface, it was a race down from the surface to the end of the cave at sump 3 in about an hour or so then it took hours to get back up, in parts we were passing the stretcher from man to man and those at the back then had to climb high up in the passage and bridge along the roof to get in front of the stretcher again and then to pass it on over your bridged body to the next guy in the line, it was hard work for us and lots of standing around as we had to work out the best routes to take the stretcher, by the time we got about 2/3 of the way out it turned into a real rescue and the volunteer victim had to be rushed to the surface as he was starting to show signs of hypothermia. He was ok once he got warmed up again and we continued to "rescue" a new victim er volunteer. climbing up waterfalls and making sure the victim didn't get too wet or drown in the cascades, it was tough and quite exhausting and when we got to the entrance there was no way a stretchered casualty could be brought through that corkscrew squeeze, to get in the cave you had to have less than a 45" chest or you just would not fit, I was a 44" and I had to strip down to get in.
At sump two the water is up at the roof but if it is really dry weather a dog leg route through the sump means that there is an air space you can follow except for a bit that is about 4" where you have to duck your head under the water. The team we left up top diverted the stream to another cave in the same local and started bailing out sump two to lower the water level, it meant we could float the stretcher through the sump and use the dog-leg route to get the casualty out. The water is only just over knee deep in the sump but it still takes a lot of nerve to duck under and get past it.
I take my hat off to those guys and gals that are doing the rescue in Thailand just now, to manage to get those kids out of there is something special.
Edit: Interactive map of the cave I was talking about for the practice cave rescue.
http://www.darkanddeep.co.uk/caving_ani.asp 
