DaleC
Contributor
And I thought I was just devolving.
I agree with you about it being more than just equipment reduction. In fact, I would say that's the least part of it. I would say that relearning how divers in the past planned and executed dives with minimal gear (the actual strategies) is far more valuable and important and why most modern era divers struggle with the idea. They have not been taught skin diving, neutral weighting, intuitive gas planning or situational awareness to the same degree.
Telling someone without neutral buoyancy to go without a BC is a recipe for disaster. As is telling someone who only knows to return to the surface with 500psi to do without an SPG. Someone with no skin diving experience will be far less likely to be comfortable in the water without a device for maintaining positive buoyancy. Someone who just jumps off the boat and follows a DM around may struggle putting all the pieces together if what they are doing is different from the crowd.
Of course these sorts of things can be learned, I did so as a modern trained diver, but you have to seek out those ideas as they are largely ignored or even denigrated by today's dive culture.
I agree with you about it being more than just equipment reduction. In fact, I would say that's the least part of it. I would say that relearning how divers in the past planned and executed dives with minimal gear (the actual strategies) is far more valuable and important and why most modern era divers struggle with the idea. They have not been taught skin diving, neutral weighting, intuitive gas planning or situational awareness to the same degree.
Telling someone without neutral buoyancy to go without a BC is a recipe for disaster. As is telling someone who only knows to return to the surface with 500psi to do without an SPG. Someone with no skin diving experience will be far less likely to be comfortable in the water without a device for maintaining positive buoyancy. Someone who just jumps off the boat and follows a DM around may struggle putting all the pieces together if what they are doing is different from the crowd.
Of course these sorts of things can be learned, I did so as a modern trained diver, but you have to seek out those ideas as they are largely ignored or even denigrated by today's dive culture.