So this weekend I was going through some old dive pictures for a newspaper interview, and found something very interesting... at least to me.
It seems that through all our discussions of hose length, wing configurations, lighter manifolds and so forth, we forget that the gear does not make the diver.
Back in the day, we dove what we had, and we were taught to dive correctly from the getgo. The "rototilling" of the bottom just was not acceptable. Buddy breathing was the norm, and swapping out your gear underwater with another diver was part of the curriculum.
There was no GUE, or DIR, or tech other than the US Navy. You had a few agencies like PADI YMCA and NAUI, and they knew how to turn out good divers. I think alot of those skills have been lost to current marketing and gear sales.
Anyway, Here are 2 pictures that were taken of me in 1985, when I was just 16 years old. The gear configuration is as minimalist as you can get. A mask, fins, belt, regulator, T-shirt, shorts and gloves. That's it. I even managed to have correct trim without $3000 in specialized gear, or a GUE Fundies class .
The pictures were taken while I was working in an underwater habitat laboratory with Florida Atlantic University on a Mariculture project. I was even certified as an "Aquanaut" before I had my first car. We had our regs attached to old "army" belts and the hoses were wrapped in a figure 8 on the side of the lab. We would go in the water through a "hole" in the deck that was level due to the air pressure in the lab. Think of the old "voyage to the bottom of the sea" TV show. We also had a plexiglass bubble, in which we could observe marinelife (Although I kinda felt like WE were the ones in the aquarium). It was all about the diving. We didn't have 20 organizations telling us that we were going to die if we didn't take their course. You were either a diver, or you weren't.
I guess my point is, don't worry so much about the gear, the hose, the color of your wing and fins etc... It doesn't make the diver. Diving makes the diver. Alot of us got certified back then, and most of us are still around. I guess we learned to do it right after all.
Cheers
It seems that through all our discussions of hose length, wing configurations, lighter manifolds and so forth, we forget that the gear does not make the diver.
Back in the day, we dove what we had, and we were taught to dive correctly from the getgo. The "rototilling" of the bottom just was not acceptable. Buddy breathing was the norm, and swapping out your gear underwater with another diver was part of the curriculum.
There was no GUE, or DIR, or tech other than the US Navy. You had a few agencies like PADI YMCA and NAUI, and they knew how to turn out good divers. I think alot of those skills have been lost to current marketing and gear sales.
Anyway, Here are 2 pictures that were taken of me in 1985, when I was just 16 years old. The gear configuration is as minimalist as you can get. A mask, fins, belt, regulator, T-shirt, shorts and gloves. That's it. I even managed to have correct trim without $3000 in specialized gear, or a GUE Fundies class .
The pictures were taken while I was working in an underwater habitat laboratory with Florida Atlantic University on a Mariculture project. I was even certified as an "Aquanaut" before I had my first car. We had our regs attached to old "army" belts and the hoses were wrapped in a figure 8 on the side of the lab. We would go in the water through a "hole" in the deck that was level due to the air pressure in the lab. Think of the old "voyage to the bottom of the sea" TV show. We also had a plexiglass bubble, in which we could observe marinelife (Although I kinda felt like WE were the ones in the aquarium). It was all about the diving. We didn't have 20 organizations telling us that we were going to die if we didn't take their course. You were either a diver, or you weren't.
I guess my point is, don't worry so much about the gear, the hose, the color of your wing and fins etc... It doesn't make the diver. Diving makes the diver. Alot of us got certified back then, and most of us are still around. I guess we learned to do it right after all.
Cheers
