MFarrar
Guest
A Diver's Manifesto
(The good and the bad of what we have become)
It was 1976 and I was all of 14 when I finally convinced my parents to let me take scuba diving lessons. I grew up with the wonderful world of Jacques Cousteau and had been carrying a scubapro catalog with me in the 1st grade. Seriously, I had a bad diving bug for a kid who grew up in Ohio. Back then the big rivalry was between NASDS and PADI. The local NASDS shop, where I spent most of my free time, certainly had me convinced that they were the ones with all the right answers...the right training, equipment, techniques etc etc. The problem was that I was a 14 year old kid and my parents decided that I was going to the PADI store. Oh well...at least I would get a C-card. In the end, my diving education was thorough and rigorous in spite of my fears to the contrary.
Back then, there were only a few PADI certifications: Basic, Open Water, Advanced, Dive Master, and Instructor as I recall. This proceeded PADI's grand marketing scheme to dumb down diving for the masses and expand its training program into what seems to be a hundred specialty skills. Back then an open water diver would be expected to understand equipment maintainance, diver physiology, gas physics, decompression procedures, navigation, marine life hazards etc...the list goes on.
Roll the clock ahead about 10 years. There I am with my Open Water cert and years of experience, but dive shops wont take me seriously since I don't have the requisite additional certs. Trying to explain that I had been exposed to all those things in my single class just caused eyebrows to raise. To compound this, I was diving in what was considered a dangerous grey area...deep, deco etc. When PADI took a dominant lead in the certification industry they also attempted to reduce diving to something anybody could do...a family activity. They simply dumbed down the curriculum and imposed stricter rules on the students. Lots of just do this and that and never these other things (like deco). It was simple, you were military, commercial, or recreational...no exceptions. But I was an exception. I had become an engineer, had years of experience, and had a valid certification. Also, I was diving deep and using non-recreational equipment. Since I was neither military nor commercial and didn't fit the recreation mold, I was a diver without a home. Then I discovered the term technical diving.
Imagine, non-military, non-commercial divers talking about deep diving, mixed gas, decompression procedures, exotic equipment such a re breathers...Wow! I had found a community of technically and operationally knowledgeable people with whom to exchange ideas and share experiences. It was lawless but self policing. You had to seek out information and become part of a community that was ready to accept people who wanted to learn. No more would I be thought of as a dangerous radical for diving deeper than 60ft, having double tanks, going in the water without a dive master etc. Even though I continued to protest the industry's continued efforts to further dumb down diving for the masses such pandering to the general public by making dive gear in pink, teal, and mauve to sell it to people who otherwise would never have been interested, life had gotten better...even good.
Fast forward to today. Technical diving has become a lumbering monster. Now we have wana-be technical divers...recreational divers who want to look "tech" as a fashion statement and certification agencies that make PADI's attempts at marketing look small time. While I applaud training and certification, in some ways the same people who broke away from the mainstream to pioneer a more sophisticated type of diving have become the same thing they broke away from. Technical diver's were people who, because of education, experience, and skill, were able to depart from the dogma of bureaucratic certification and push the boundaries. Now, technical diving has its own incredible bureaucracy. Once again, if you show initiative or have an original idea you are summarily derided for now following a "system". I don't want to pick on DIR/GUE. In fact, I have studied their ideas and find most of it to be quite sensible. The problem I have is again the strict need to do everything and I mean everything a certain way or else it is "WRONG". Come on people...there are no absolutes. If everything was black and white there would be no innovation, no creativity, no breaking away and expansion of ideas.
What does it mean? I can only compare it to another of my passions...aviation. In the flying world people are friendly and open minded. Everyone wants to show off their airplane and learn a new technique from another pilot. It is an open enriching environment. In contrast, diving has become compartmentalized and judgmental. Now when I walk into a dive shop or step on a charter boat I am immediately grilled about my credentials, equipment, and technique. Every one feels the need to tell everyone else that they are doing something wrong. Some will say education doesn't matter...only experience. Other's say that you could be a Navy Seal, but if you don't have their agencies card you know nothing. It is the only industry where you have to pay people to give you verbal abuse the entire time you are doing business. Amazing! I think for me the last straw was the dive master on a simple Florida Keys dive who told me my Knife was in the "wrong" location. We had better get it together or else the entire community will suffer. Education, training, experience...all important, but lets not forget that it is also free thinking innovation that results in growth and evolution.
(The good and the bad of what we have become)
It was 1976 and I was all of 14 when I finally convinced my parents to let me take scuba diving lessons. I grew up with the wonderful world of Jacques Cousteau and had been carrying a scubapro catalog with me in the 1st grade. Seriously, I had a bad diving bug for a kid who grew up in Ohio. Back then the big rivalry was between NASDS and PADI. The local NASDS shop, where I spent most of my free time, certainly had me convinced that they were the ones with all the right answers...the right training, equipment, techniques etc etc. The problem was that I was a 14 year old kid and my parents decided that I was going to the PADI store. Oh well...at least I would get a C-card. In the end, my diving education was thorough and rigorous in spite of my fears to the contrary.
Back then, there were only a few PADI certifications: Basic, Open Water, Advanced, Dive Master, and Instructor as I recall. This proceeded PADI's grand marketing scheme to dumb down diving for the masses and expand its training program into what seems to be a hundred specialty skills. Back then an open water diver would be expected to understand equipment maintainance, diver physiology, gas physics, decompression procedures, navigation, marine life hazards etc...the list goes on.
Roll the clock ahead about 10 years. There I am with my Open Water cert and years of experience, but dive shops wont take me seriously since I don't have the requisite additional certs. Trying to explain that I had been exposed to all those things in my single class just caused eyebrows to raise. To compound this, I was diving in what was considered a dangerous grey area...deep, deco etc. When PADI took a dominant lead in the certification industry they also attempted to reduce diving to something anybody could do...a family activity. They simply dumbed down the curriculum and imposed stricter rules on the students. Lots of just do this and that and never these other things (like deco). It was simple, you were military, commercial, or recreational...no exceptions. But I was an exception. I had become an engineer, had years of experience, and had a valid certification. Also, I was diving deep and using non-recreational equipment. Since I was neither military nor commercial and didn't fit the recreation mold, I was a diver without a home. Then I discovered the term technical diving.
Imagine, non-military, non-commercial divers talking about deep diving, mixed gas, decompression procedures, exotic equipment such a re breathers...Wow! I had found a community of technically and operationally knowledgeable people with whom to exchange ideas and share experiences. It was lawless but self policing. You had to seek out information and become part of a community that was ready to accept people who wanted to learn. No more would I be thought of as a dangerous radical for diving deeper than 60ft, having double tanks, going in the water without a dive master etc. Even though I continued to protest the industry's continued efforts to further dumb down diving for the masses such pandering to the general public by making dive gear in pink, teal, and mauve to sell it to people who otherwise would never have been interested, life had gotten better...even good.
Fast forward to today. Technical diving has become a lumbering monster. Now we have wana-be technical divers...recreational divers who want to look "tech" as a fashion statement and certification agencies that make PADI's attempts at marketing look small time. While I applaud training and certification, in some ways the same people who broke away from the mainstream to pioneer a more sophisticated type of diving have become the same thing they broke away from. Technical diver's were people who, because of education, experience, and skill, were able to depart from the dogma of bureaucratic certification and push the boundaries. Now, technical diving has its own incredible bureaucracy. Once again, if you show initiative or have an original idea you are summarily derided for now following a "system". I don't want to pick on DIR/GUE. In fact, I have studied their ideas and find most of it to be quite sensible. The problem I have is again the strict need to do everything and I mean everything a certain way or else it is "WRONG". Come on people...there are no absolutes. If everything was black and white there would be no innovation, no creativity, no breaking away and expansion of ideas.
What does it mean? I can only compare it to another of my passions...aviation. In the flying world people are friendly and open minded. Everyone wants to show off their airplane and learn a new technique from another pilot. It is an open enriching environment. In contrast, diving has become compartmentalized and judgmental. Now when I walk into a dive shop or step on a charter boat I am immediately grilled about my credentials, equipment, and technique. Every one feels the need to tell everyone else that they are doing something wrong. Some will say education doesn't matter...only experience. Other's say that you could be a Navy Seal, but if you don't have their agencies card you know nothing. It is the only industry where you have to pay people to give you verbal abuse the entire time you are doing business. Amazing! I think for me the last straw was the dive master on a simple Florida Keys dive who told me my Knife was in the "wrong" location. We had better get it together or else the entire community will suffer. Education, training, experience...all important, but lets not forget that it is also free thinking innovation that results in growth and evolution.
