TSandM:
Hope? I think so. Every diver that learns to move around real slick in the water gets seen by many. How could a diver help but want to be able to do it? Then there is the internet. Even divers who don't see it in person see pictures, video and hear about it.
I still remember the first time that I saw someone who could REALLY dive. I was already an instructor but hadn't been one long. I had to go to Florida on business and I managed to set it up so I could bring my wife and we brought dive gear. The weather was bad so we got blown out on the Gulf but we drove around diving some of the springs.
One of the springs we visited was 40 fathom grotto. You have to dive with a guide. If you are a DM or an instructor, you can become a guide yourself. I paid the $30 (or whatever it was) to do a check-out dive and become a guide. I remember the guy asking if we had any "deep diving training" LOL they ask because the place is 240 ft deep and they check you out and approve you as a guide to the deepest depth you are certified. I said...Oh, of course I have "deep diver" training. Mr. PADI deep diver, that was me. I don't know how the guy held down his breakfast.
All things considered, my wife and I weren't bad but on my best day, I wouldn't have held a candle to the guy we did our check-out dive with. To make matters worse, I had just baught one of those square can lights over at Blue grotto and strapped it to my tank...we're talking butt heavy and pretty much vertical here.
The first thing we were asked to do was to descend to the platform but stop and hover above it. So, nice PADI feet down descent and then hovering above the platform (which we could do). You would have thought we were Mr. and Mrs Lotus in our nice vertical hovers. In the mean time, our guide descends in a rock solid horizontal posture using a combination of forward and reverse kicks to hold his distance from us and stops above the platform just flat out ROCK solid. I knew enough to notice what he was doing but had never seen it before and had little clue as to how he was doing it. I did mention that I was already an instructor, right?
We got through the checkout without drowning and I was signed off as a a Forty Fathom guide but I couldn't help get the impression that our guide was NOT impressed. I was impressed though. I wish I had the conversation between my wife and I afterward on tape. One thing we knew for certain was that either he was going to die because he wasn't smart enough to do all that stuff vertically or we had really missed something
It wasn't until some time later and a couple of false starts in technical training that we started to figure it out. We were doing ok. We got the horizontal thing but the propulsion still sucked. During my IANTD instructor course the first thing we did was a checkout dive. My wife was retaking her "Technical Diver course" because it was a dangerous disaster with the previous instructor. I remember my IT commenting on how good our buoyancy control was but he said my wifes propulsion technique was better. LOL she used to keep her knees bent and almost did a frog kick. I, while horizontal, did a strange scissor kick kind of thing with my legs strainght. Everyone knows how important it is to have your legs straight. LOL but a flutter sucks so I invented something else. ok? We still didn't quite get it and I though my wife looked like a dork with her legs all bent the way they were. LOL.
Cave training is what helped finish it off. Unfortunately I switched from HP100's to LP 104's a few weeks prior to the course so the first day was a disaster and I spent the first evening working on gear and my skills in that gear. The second day was much better.
Since that time, I've turned out a fair number of OW students who pretty much had it down before we ever left the pool. Turning the class into something that worked was a lot of work and makes for a long story in itself. Not only had we NOT been taught to dive, we hadn't really been taught to teach either.
I'm pretty sure that we aren't the only divers to ever go through this. We didn't have the internet at the time and I think it was a MUCH slower process than it's likely to be for a lot of divers now. It was never a lack of ability that held us back but rather a lack of information and no good example of what it could be. My wife and I, both, can teach ourselves almost anything but you can't teach yourself something if you don't know that it exists. Like they say, you don't know what you don't know.
So yes, there is hope but almost the whole industry is working very hard against it so it will be slow going. they are just very attatched to being vertical and rototilling. They are not going to give it up easily.
