Rec Diving Then vs. Now

[fnfalman]

Why is it that people always make claims that old timer trainings/educations were better than current? Is it because as they get older, they try to hang onto their youth and poopoo the current generations to make themselves feel better?

Diving is diving. You can learn about it as much today as when Jacques Cousteau did it.

If you choose not you, then you have yourself to blame and nobody else.

Last I checked there's no laws that say you have to dive with a BC/computer/SPG either. Get some plastic tank holder, some harnesses, a J-valve and go for it.

 

[Walter]

Isn't the question about what has changed in the last 15 years? 2011 - 15 = 1996.

Not much. SMBs are more common now. Nitrox is more common now. Split fins were unheard of in 1996. Nothing else really comes to mind.

 

[danvolker]

This is all about recreational diving and none of what you have posted here applies. NONE.

If you are a rec diver like me, then apply opposites to the above poster for reality, I am thinking you prefer talking out your mouth than the opposite.

I am thinking your reading skills are some how compromised.....you did read what I said about fins, which is basically a recreational diver phenomenon....

In the 70's, no one would "be" a diver if they were not fit enough to kick real fins, and swim hundreds of yards easily--pretty much adventure tyupes became divers, these people typically being skiers, hikers, athletic outdoor types. Today, there is almost no such thing as " not being fit enough to dive". Manufacturers made a fortune creating fins that required almost no muscle strength to kick....and while these fins were also very poor at getting the diver to achieve higher speeds, the industry was pushing ideas about how divers should swim slowly, and dive sites for most divers were weeded down to ones where large current effects would not be problematic for weak divers in fins that could not propel them well.

Also, I have made mention of the horrible trim issue that is also recreational in nature....Basic Open Water divers CATEGORICALLY should NOT be turned out with a c card if they swim head up and feet down, kangarooing off the bottom. This is a development of the late nineties and this decade--something we did not see in the 70's or 80's. I believe it is from far too many under-skilled instructors, trying to push out too many certifications per month ( than they can teach with quality) and including far too many "Never - Evers" into the graduating diver ranks ( giving them c-cards).

 

[danvolker]

Hey look horse >>> water


you choose to drink, horse

The difference between a surface dive plan and computer running dive plan is the computer is right. And unfortunately no surface dive plan surives contact with the water, entirely. You are better served by solid state eletronics shown to work using Newtonian physics than sitting somewhere trying to grep dive tables.

Who ever taught you to dive, sold you a bill of goods. The computer is at best, a tool to estimate nitrogen offgassing , in a way that will allow a percentage of the population to have their actual offgassing taking place somewhere near the estimates of the computer....for some of the dives thay do--not all.

Ratio deco is MUCH better. It is not just for tech..it is for people who want to actually understand the ingassing and offgassing effects, and be able to plan for this without relying on a tool created for John Doe....

 

[rx7diver]

Isn't the question about what has changed in the last 15 years? 2011 - 15 = 1996.

Walter,

I really intended people to write personally about how they themselves approach rec diving now versus when they rec dove ~20 years ago. Though I expected the replies to include some discussion about gear changes, I am really interested in individual approaches--you know, whether a person's individual approach has changed. I was surprised to realize that my individual approach has not changed much, and I wondered if this is common among divers who have been rec diving the last 20 years.

Thanks,

Ronald

 

[Hemlon]

Walter,

I really intended people to speak personally about how they themselves approach rec diving now versus when they rec dove ~20 years ago. Though I expected the replies to include some discussion about gear changes, I was really interested in individual approaches--you know, whether a person's individual approach has changed.

Thanks,

Ronald

The biggest difference in my approach to diving during the past few years is the availability of funds. When I got certified, I had only been out of college for a couple of years so my dollars were considerably tighter than they are now. (Not that I am rolling in the dough now, mind you...LOL)

I started with Scubapro Sea Wings and now I dive with Atomic split fins. But I can't really determine a finning efficiency comparison based on these two fins. I seem to fin quite well now, just as I did in my Sea Wings. Maybe the Sea Wings were better and over time in my split fins, I learned to fin better. Or maybe divers can just adapt to whatever gear we wear.

Old-school vs today's training always gets people riled up. I am sure this has always been the case independently of era or concentration of study. I am quite sure there were old cavemen bitching about the way that the young whipper-snapper cavemen were taught to start fires and grind stones into wheels.

Maybe it's part of our DNA to respect the method we were taught something...whether it be diving, driving a car, or cooking a homestyle meal. Maybe we need the ego integrity so much that we are forced to look down our noses at anything which is different than what we learned.

For me, the question of old vs new training comes down to statistics. Are divers safer now? Per capita of divers with regard to level of training, age, etc, have dive-related accidents increased or decreased?

If there are fewer dive-related accidents, I know there will be some out there who state that improvements in gear can account for this. Also, there might be some out there who state that since we live in an information age (with Scubaboard leading the pack!), this too can alter the incidence of accidents.

I agree that both of these factors impact the incidence of dive-related accidents.

But my bottom line remains the same...if there are fewer accidents, the scuba industry must be doing something right.

 

[rx7diver]

Ratio deco is MUCH better. It is not just for tech..it is for people who want to actually understand the ingassing and offgassing effects, and be able to plan for this without relying on a tool created for John Doe.... [emphasis added]

Thanks, DanV. I confess I don't know squat about ratio deco. Think I'll try to learn something about it. This could potentially affect my personal approach to rec diving, I think.

Ronald

 

[danvolker]

DanVolker,

I'm really interested to know if the way you, personally, rec dive has changed since the mid 1980's/early 1990's. If so, how and why? I think we could all learn a lot from this.

Thanks,

Ronald

Hi Ron,

To answer your question, in the mid-80's to mid-90's, I was primarily into spearfishing--this first on the 80 to 100 foot stuff, with occaisional dives to 145 or so on the Hole in the Wall of Jupiter. BY 1990, I had decided that going where the really big fish were, was alot more fun, so I went to deeper and deeper wrecks to find them. Gear through the 80's and early nineties was mostly stuff like scubapro jackets, and I was mostly using a steel 72. In the 80's particularly, yiou just used a single 2nd stage, and all my spearfishing buddies were very competent to buddy breathe like this. We were into buddy teams for this, because the places where the big fish were had bigger sharks, and a buddy watching your back was a good thing for a spearfisherman in this scenario...and the deeper depths made this a smart-redundant air source, that was not hard to lug around---spearfisherman wanted to go fast, and dragging stuff that slows you down does not sit well There were dives I would use double 72's with an atpack, like the hole in the wall, and spearfishing dives like the Palm beach inlet, I would often use just a harness and no bc at all ( with skin suit, I had no need of a bc).

So right off, the bigger differences I can see were that if i got on a charter boat in 1988 or earlier, there were lots of spearfisherman ( compared to now where they are almost "unusual" to see) and they were highly competent, extremely fit divers. Many did not desire to go deeper than the Hole in the wall, because the bottom time was so short. But the skill to to do this was commonplace......In contrast, today, FEW BOATS will take divers to the hole in the wall.... On any given charter boat, it would not be a "norm" for most of the people aboard to be comfortable and to do well on a dive like the hole in the wall....it would be over their head--whereas in the 80's, this was no big deal.

Also, back in those old days, if the boat wanted to drop us on a wreck at 110 feet deep, with a good sized current, pretty much everyone on a normal boat could do the hot drop and fight whatever cross currents easily--today, the swimming speeds and fitness issues are so poor, that the boat has to really consider each diver on the boat and assess how many could do or could not do a relatively easy descent like this. Now, in all fairness, even back in the early 80's their were boats that caterred almost exclusively to students and brand new divers. Their were the novice boats, there were the general boats ( much different than a general boat today, in that the "average here" was a stronger diver), and there were the Guerilla diver boats like that of Frank Hammett...there were several boats that were scaled down versions of Frank ( a little less hunter/killer oriented, but still quite advanced.).
More of the advanced types were solo spearfisherman on the other boats, but Franks tended to have more buddy oriented spearfisherman , probably because he took divers to much bigger challenges, and the common sense response was buddy diving.
We used computers back in the late 80's and early 90's, but considered them way to conservative. When we first began the really deep spearfishing--185 for the HydroAtlantic, and then much deeper, we had Pat Frain ( creator of Ultimate Spearguns and some of the first monster lighjts) create little deco chambers for our computers, so we could put the computers in the deco box at 20 or 30 feet down, if they were showing some ridiculous remaining deco time we would have no intention of following.....and as we were doing pure O2 at 20 feet, the computer was useless from this point on--without the little deco chambers, the computers would lock up and be unuseable for over 24 hours--and sometimes really screw up the battery life....


George Irvine changed a lot of our proceedures with his DIR ideas after 1996. Most of DIR was a logical progression---tighter ideas about how to buddy dive, smarter gear configurations, better methods to figure our planned bottom time, and better ways to create the ascent profile.


Today, my recreational diving is mostly 60 feet to 120 feet, mostly because that is where most of the boats drop people, and where I can shoot video that will appeal to most of the people coming to Palm Beach to dive ( it is where they will dive--not some place they would have no interest in diving).


Here is an example of what I enjoy shooting now..see the video on the page
http://sfdj.com/page6.aspx


I like the least gear on possible. If it was summer and we had 80 degree water, I would be in a skin suit, and would not really need a wing on my backplate....I would be inclined to desire the harness and steel 72 of the old days, but I would most likely use my steel backplate and 18 pound lift halcyon wing ( which feels almost like no wing/no drag at all). I can't get my hands on steel 72's any more, so I am fine with an al 80.
In winter time, especially this year, water temps have gotten below 70, so I am in a dry suit. This means I still don't need a big floppy high lift bc or wing, but I really can't swim as fast as I would like---dry suits really slow you down!!!! I use freediving fins today, even for drysuit diving... I have since around 1999. They are just so much more efficient than any fin I ever wore in the old days.... *( evolution from 1980:the big ankle braced Farrah fin by Fallaron; Jet Fins; Cressi Rondine Gara; Esclapez Green, then Black; Omer; Specialfins BW Classic as of 2009 ( so far most practical and almost best freedive fin); Mustang C4 Carbons ( got them in 2010, slightly faster than Specialfins but so fragile I have to be careful with them--they are still in perfect condition though). I now have a pair of riffe open heel freedive fins to use with the drysuit, but they are a plastic blade, and really lame compared to the special fins or the C4's---less effeicient, and they don't give back nearly as much as when pushed, as do the carbon fins.

 

[WetBoy101]

I know you're asking about changes in the last 20 years, but if you want to see some of the evolution since the late 50's and have a chuckle or two:

Sea Hunt - Full Episodes and Clips streaming online - Hulu

 

[scubadada]

Why is it that people always make claims that old timer trainings/educations were better than current? Is it because as they get older, they try to hang onto their youth and poopoo the current generations to make themselves feel better?

Diving is diving. You can learn about it as much today as when Jacques Cousteau did it.

If you choose not you, then you have yourself to blame and nobody else.

Last I checked there's no laws that say you have to dive with a BC/computer/SPG either. Get some plastic tank holder, some harnesses, a J-valve and go for it.

Some of us have had experience with both periods rather than making ignorant statements like yours. My initial training with the LA County Underwater Unit in 1970 was far superior to my PADI OW training in 1997. Both served their purpose but the former was much more intensive and rigorous than the latter. Either way, I'm confident that I would have become a skilled diver given the variety of experience I've been lucky enough to have.

Good diving, Craig