Ice Diving

[George Ivanov]

I believe that tech or rec ice diving is depends what your dive is.
Here's White Sea where ice diving is rec type.

And here is a quarry with abandoned mines in distal part - cave /tec ive diving

 

[Storker]

If done properly then yes it should be classified as a technical dive course due to the following reasons:

[...]

3. You need a drysuit. One loan dive can be done in a thick wetsuit but that is a "Blah" dive. If you want to be an ice diver diving under ice every season then you need a drysuit.

What has "you need a drysuit" to do with a dive being classified as technical?

Open water diving in green water country during wintertime can easily be almost as cold as ice diving, and virtually everyone up here dives dry. Does that mean that our diving should be classified as technical?

 

[CAPTAIN SINBAD]

I would (personally) still call that a single tank dive. As opposed to diving with doubles. To me, doubles mean back mount, with a manifold, independent back mount, or sidemount. In all 3 configurations, it is intended to breathe from both tanks in normal circumstances. Carrying a pony is for emergencies only and not intended to be used normally - only if there is a problem, which would also prompt termination of the dive. That is one of the primary discriminators between sport and tech diving - the training to deal with issues without going to the surface. A free flow in doubles would mean shutting down a post, switching regs, giving it a few seconds to a minute, then turn that post back on to see if the reg has thawed and is working again. If so, you can continue the dive. I.e. it's a "fixable" failure that does not require (per training) to abort the dive. With only sport diving training, a free flow means the diver is over (per training - unless ice diving training expands your limits in that area).

To me, carrying a pony is an option for any sport dive and is not a technical diving configuration.

So, diving a single tank with a pony still would leave ice diving firmly in the realm of things that seem reasonable for a sport diver (i.e. not a tech diver) to do. It seems logical to me that sport diving certification agencies, like PADI and SDI, would offer a training course for that, rather than force anyone who wants to ice dive to buy doubles and take a 4 (or more) day course. I.e. it seems logical for their to exist a path for people to do the same thing you did.

It also seems reasonable (to me) that a sport diving Ice Diver cert would require limitations like what Cavern does - i.e. tethered, and no more than 200 linear feet from an exit. An Advanced Ice Diver technical cert would require a technical diving configuration (e.g. doubles, redundant computer or bottom timer, redundant buoyancy, etc.) and would allow untethered diving and further distance from the exit (something like Rule of Thirds, with doubles)

Like I said before - so it seems to me, having done neither Cavern nor Ice Diver.

I feel that in order to gain anything from that course you have to have total proficiency in three different areas of diving before you choose to go under ice.

1. Drysuit and cold water
2. Backplate and wing
3. Redundant air source be it doubles or AL-40 bottle slung to the side.

If you have lack experience or proficiency with any of these then I would really not recommend an ice course the way it is presently taught. You will end up learning the above three skills under ice and ice is not the place to learn new things like additional bottle, double tanks, drysuit etc. Ice is the place where you do things that you have been doing all your life under a greater risk.

This is not the case with cavern diving or sport wreck diving. Without taking either, I am assuming that you can take a recreational diver who has been diving in wetsuit, BCD and AL-80 tank and they can do the cavern course or 2 dive Wreck specialty in that same very configuration. In Ice diving it would be a very very bad idea to go under ice with recreational gear and mindset but it is accepted simply because Ice is taught like a "specialty" just like Cavern and Wreck and navigation etc.

Presently the agencies do not want to acknowledge that ice-diving requires additional skills (outside the course) that most recreational divers may not bring. The approach is to have the students come in whatever shape and "we will fix them under ice" just like we fix them in the cavern or in a wreck.

How do we address this dilemma? First method is the Agency approach in which we open the course to students who are coming into the class in 8mm wetsuits that they are wearing for the first time (which they have purchased for that course), with recreational BCDs and AL 80 tanks. The tons of lead you will need to sink in that configuration is something we will figure out under ice so no worries! That way the course can be classified as a "specialty" just like cavern or wreck or navigation etc.

(Note:I am searching for a youtube video of an ice course which was a total circus.)

The second way could be a pool session or multiple ones prior to the ice dive in which we sort out stage bottle handling or failures in doubles, buoyancy and weighting issues plus other scenarios like tether line entanglement between two divers, something that will never happen in a cavern or wreck course etc. For the recreational diver who has only done tropical diving, the practice pool session I am describing will have a lot of overlap with "Intro to Tech" so why not move Ice diving into technical certification where students who show up have prior experience with doubles, stage bottles, backplate and wing?

 

[stuartv]

Doesn't Cavern also start with confined or open water sessions before actually moving into a cavern?

It seems that any diving course could have a student come in with exposure protection that they have no experience with and needs some "sorting out" before getting on to the meat of the course. A student could come into a Wreck course with a thick wetsuit that they've never worn before and need time to get weighting and weight placement (trim) worked out before moving on to actual wreck-related skills.

Working with new equipment (e.g. a wreck reel or a pony bottle) seems like part of the purpose of the course.

I don't see where having new or unfamiliar exposure protection or new equipment should automatically make a course "technical".

Sport wreck diving merits pool time to get gear and skills worked out before actually diving a wreck. Cavern diving (also a sport diving cert) is the same (pool or open water). Sport ice diving seems the same. And it seems like they all can be done safely (after being properly trained) in a sport diving equipment configuration and without the amount of dive planning that is required for technical dives.

 

[EFX]

When I took cavern several years ago I started in open water following a line laid down by the instructor. There were several skills that I had to demonstrate including following the line with a blacked out mask with and without air sharing. One of the key skills the instructor looks for is good buoyancy control and trim. My buoyancy and trim were good and I progressed to the cavern part of the course.

Technically, any overhead environment (OE) is a technical dive whether or not it involves advanced gas planning or additional equipment (ex. pony, stage bottles, etc.). IMO, starting any course involving an OE without familiarity with all your equipment is asking for trouble. Fighting buoyancy while trying to learn new skills is not fun and can be dangerous. In regards to cavern diving, buoyancy must be very good in order to lay line correctly.

 

[Erich S]

When I took the ID class in 1980 the dives consisted of one in wet suit and one in dry suit. Of course there was classroom work as well before the dives. My class instructor was a commercial diver and the class was pretty involved.

 

[FinnMom]

Do you all think that Ice diving certification should come under the classification of tech diving?
I think it has a lot of similarities such as being in an overhead environment for example.

Obviously it depends on what you would like to define as Tech Diving, and that is always going to be opinion. According to wiki, NAUI says "Technical diving is a form of scuba diving that exceeds the typical recreational limits imposed on depth and immersion time (bottom time). Tec diving involves accelerated decompression and/or the use of variable gas mixtures during a dive".
That sounds like a good definitition to me and according to that, ice diving it is not tech diving.

Ice diving does not always use tethers. If there is very good visibiity and permanent guide lines, the divers might have no tethers.

Simple scenario
Ice diving can be tethered where 2 divers are underwater at a time (so you have someone to help underwater) and each diver has a tether and someone communicating with that 1 tethered diver via the tether. The minder can pull his diver up and out immediately if given the signal, and the divers might only be in 6-8m of water. IMO this scenario is not worth calling it a technical dive. But it's entirely a matter of opinion.

 

[Akimbo]

Do you all think that Ice diving certification should come under the classification of tech diving?...

I don't understand why it matters. As near as I can determine, "technical" diving basically means decompression. Lots of diving can be very dangerous and requires special knowledge that I have never seen classified as technical. Diving under ice is certainly one of them.

 

[CAPTAIN SINBAD]

Doesn't Cavern also start with confined or open water sessions before actually moving into a cavern?

Very true. This open water session that would/should precede all overhead courses is not available in Ice certification because there is no open water around you. It is all frozen except for that little hole that we cut in the ice. This means that the need for a pool session is even greater than it would be for a cavern or wreck IMHO.

Imagine if we showed up for a cavern course and the instructor said that our training will begin straight from inside the overhead. All issues will be sorted out inside the cavern and we will skip the open water part. It would be one interesting course right Ice diving courses tend to be something like that but it is still fun.

 

[CAPTAIN SINBAD]

My understanding is that TDI Advanced Wreck and Cave courses are classified as technical dives even though they do not incur decompression obligation. So technical diving (the way I have come to define the term) is the form of diving in which direct access to the surface is not possible either due to a virtual ceiling dictated by decompression obligations or an actual ceiling dictated by solid overhead like wreck of cave.