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Some years ago, as I first started going deeper, staying longer, hoarding regulators, etc. I noticed a cultural oddity around me that I found it hard to wrap my head around. The Tech vs. Rec divide.
FOR EXAMPLE:
Recreational Course Director who reads all the magazines, certifies hundreds of competent students a year, attends all the shows, is as just as pretty in the water as a hawksbill turtle, been diving all over the world for decades, and should bloody well know better:
"Those tech divers are just macho hooligans with a death wish. There's nothing to see where they go, the way they dive is dangerous, and their back-inflate BCs will float you face-down in the water."
Techie who could have Sheck Exley award but stopped logging ages ago, more hours on 1/2 dozen different CCRs than most dive clubs have combined dives, first deco stops usually far deeper than anyone else ever even goes, been a push diver on expedition teams in places you've never heard of, and should bloody well know better:
"80s divers can't even swim worth a damn, much less dive right. If they aren't going to do it properly why don't they just save the money for their travel BCs and take up knitting?"
I couldn't understand it because I was perfectly happy and having a roaring good time in either environment. 200 feet down and 1000 feet back in a cave? Awesome. 30 feet down on a reef watching a secretary blenny for 1/2 an hour? Awesome.
I figured the Rec person (from the example above) just didn't want their lack of understanding about the tech world to take away from their well-deserved feeling of expertise. And the Techie... well, perhaps they simply couldn't remember back to when they could only dive once or twice a year and clearing their mask was still a challenge. What was wrong with straddling both camps, I thought? It's one sport, right?
Now here's the trouble and why I bring this all up...
I've been diving for only about 12 year now. Instructing (recreationally) for 8. Tech diving for about 9, cave diving for 7. Been on a rebreather for about 6. I don't know when it happened, I don't think it was a single event or just the buildup of DMing boatload after boatload of certs...
Recreational divers annoy the hell out of me.
I'm still perfectly happy with a 30 foot reef bimble (at least, I think I probably would be... it's been a while since I've done one). I don't HAVE to go into deco to be happy on a dive. But listening to recreational prattle puts my teeth on edge.
I don't like this about myself. I was a newbie not that long ago. I still am a newbie in a million ways. And I've got to figure out a way past the prejudice.
I ask this of both sides of the fence: wondering if I'm alone here.
I have seen this division in some places....And I am thankful that I live in an area ( Palm Beach) that has so many awesome 60 to 125 foot reef and wrecks--with drift currents, that the recreational divers tend to be more advanced, even if not teked out....and the tech divers enjoy these dives WITH the recreational divers, and then they also have their own dives ( 160's to 280's) , separate from the rec crowd...And since they already dive together, there is little, if any pecking order. I don't see any.
What I see each weekend on a boat like Splashdown divers, is both sides of this equation talking about an awesome dive they just did on the Castor with 200 jewfish....the rec divers having just as much fun as the tech divers....and just as able to re-live the experience on the surface interval as the tech guys. On this boat, and many others, there are so many "regulars", that everyone becomes friends, and there is no posturing. The posturing that the OP refers to, the divide in the culture, is the "US versus Them" concept, and the more separated each group gets, the worse the problem....another reason why having lots of challenging recreational dives that the tech crowd likes also, helps to destroy the Us versus Them nonsense, especially with a core group of divers on a boat that speak to all divers on a boat as equals.
I think boats can have a certain ambience...they get it from crew, captain and regulars....and from the sites they visit most often...
So I think we can avoid the defective culture of "us versus them", by trying harder to find the right boats to dive on. When we get on the right boat, we also have to make sure that even the brand new novices don't get the idea that we think we are a "higher class of diver" than they are...."We", tech divers, are NOT a higher class of diver. The ultimate goal is to have fun...and a novice can often do this just as well as we can !