How Long Before You Went Tech and Did You Break Taboos?

[LeadTurn_SD]

The term "Tech" did not exist when I started diving in the mid-70's. Tech training did not exist that I am aware of, at least it did not here on the Big Island.

I did staged decompression dives (air only) with one year of being certified, when I was 18 years old, using USN tables. I was mentored by more experienced divers, including my instructor, and ex-US Navy diver. I don't recall how many dives I had at the time. A ludicrously low number by today's "Tech" standards. I survived un-bent, and had a ball.

These days I'm happy leading my family of divers on shallow dives along the reefs in Hilo or Kona, and do not have the "urge" to dive deep any longer.

I have no "formal" training, other than what I received from experienced mentors. Does that constitute breaking taboos, since the taboos back then either did not exist, or were a bit blurry??

Best wishes.

 

[djtimmy77]

Just started ANDP last weekend. I have ~320 dives and around 5.5 years of diving. Of course my regular dive buddies have tech certifications, so I am merely catching up. My primary objective is to increase my safety and conservatism due to additional skills and knowledge. A secondary objective is to follow this up with trimix training so I can enjoy dives deeper than 100' or so with reduced narcosis effects. I don't have a desire to do excessively deep dives, or take deep dives excessively long. I would like to be able to safely visit a few local dive sites that are in the 140-150' range but the vast majority of my diving following this training will still be shallower than 90'. I really appreciate the redundancy and gas planning aspect to technical training.

As far as taboos, I have never exceeded 130' or run out of air. Never exceeded NDL limits. Generally speaking I dive conservatively. My broken taboo is occasional solo diving on shallow (<20') photography dives, when I can't arrange for a buddy with similar goals or just want to dive particularly slow looking for supermacro critters.

 

[Michael Guerrero]

Hey did you graduate from Berkeley and have a brother named David? And a little brother you nicknamed 'yolk' when he was a kid?

Nope. Had a brother named Adam that played for USC though. That was back in '99 or 2000.

 

[tomcatbubba]

Starting diving in 1984 with my dad, did the formal certification in 1990 when I was 16. Starting doing saturation diving when I was in the Navy and stashed waiting for flight school to start back in 1998, where I learned from a few EOD and SEALs who were running our water survival. I don't really consider it "trust me dives" since they were probably as qualified as most of the tech instructors I have used, although they certainly couldn't issue any c-cards. I only started formal technical training a few years ago and have not done any saturation dives, nor exceeded NDL whether unintentional or intentional outside of the diving I did in the Navy other than the technical courses I have taken and subsequent dives. Even now, unless there is a good reason to go into saturation, I tend to be overly conservative.

 

[fbk]

I'd been diving 4-5yrs with a few hundred dives before I did any tech courses. A year or so later I did my full cave in Mexico and I can honestly say that I would not really have been ready or comfortable in caves with less experience than that.

 

[LakeCountyDiver]

I started my cavern training a year after my OW. Had over 100 dives by then. 7 months later I took my Intro to cave. I have been Intro for a year and a half. I did it at the right time and was ready for the class.

 

[noelbp66]

I am actually starting my tech training now, and it is mainly because I've started to develop some bad habits. The biggest one being allowing myself to go into deco "a little bit". I'm at about 500 dives and feel comfortable with my dive ability...but I just decided if I'm going to do it, I should do it the right way.