This is my first installment of a long blog entry. First I want to talk about attitudes, and then I want to cover some of the why behind it all, and finally what it may mean to you.
Technical diving takes you places where few others go, and it also sharpens your skills for diving within recreational limits. People have many motivations for learning technical diving. Mine was to extend myself and my skills beyond what I had done before.
Learning diving is one of the most fun things that I have ever done. There really are no bounds to learning in diving. Just when you hit one area to feel completely comfortable in, there is always something else around the corner. Learning skills, understanding physics, physiology, environment, equipment and every combination of those means that there are endless things to learn and understand. And if you ever think you know everything, go diving and you will find a new combination.
Right off the bat, I came into Tec diving a little bit skeptical. My experiences with Tec divers hadn’t been great. If you are around the diving community you’ll see it at one point or another. The guys (being honest, most of them are males) that wear a technical setup in a recreational setting. If you ask them about the gear, you’ll get some flippant remark about they are “doing it the right way” always implying that you are one step away from certain demise based on your lame gear configuration. If you engage them in conversation, they will have no end of reasons of why their gear is set up in a superior manner to your gear and you should be embarrassed to present your c-card. Where the two groups meet, you will often see communications break down and everyone walks away saying “Did you see that? What a jerk!”
In the end – here is what I learned. Both communities (recreational and technical divers) can learn from one another and each can share lessons from their experiences that will improve the other community.
The strengths of the technical community include a passion for safety, a desire to be independent and a desire to evolve with small improvements.
The strengths of the recreational community include a passion for comfort and fun, to be part of a larger community and to be willing to suggest new ways of doing things.
Technical diving is very demanding. Going beyond (sometimes well beyond) the limits of recreational diving means that divers in the end don’t have immediate physical access to the surface. The “ceiling” can be inside a cave or a wreck, or is a required deco stop. Not to put too fine a point on it – getting to the surface means you have to risk injury or death. Combined with the other potential risks of technical diving the mental and physical requirements are substantially sharpened.
The basic principles of technical diving are (more about these later):
- Secondary Life Support
- Gas Reserve
- Self Sufficiency
- Staying Within Limits
- Simplicity
- Procedure and Discipline
Even within the technical diving community there are a number of “camps”. Having had passing contact with a number of them, I can only describe the deeply held beliefs that result in a passion that often borders on a religious war. I enjoy the passion that people bring to their arguments, and I especially like learning new points of view from people who have had more/different experiences from what I have had.
The fun, the community, and the ability to learn from one another is something that the technical community could bring back. And this is where attitude becomes so important. Looking at technical diving today, it has a lot of similarities to recreational diving 30+ years ago. Recreational diving was an us/them type of sport and then it became a community sport. The argument goes that the standards simply got lowered, but I would argue it was a transformation of diving – where teaching became more about showing people how to dive within their limits.
My goal is to keep a good attitude – some people may want to be recreational divers and I will help them learn to dive within their limits. Some people may want to go on to technical diving and as long as they won’t compromise on diving within their limits I will be happy to dive with them anytime.
A good technical diver is defined by six basic universal characteristics. And so are good recreational divers as it turns out. Those characteristics are:
- Self Sufficient
- Team Player
- Disciplined
- Wary
- Physically Fit
- Accepts Responsibility
All divers are bonded by the desire to explore underwater – and we are part of the community at large.
