My MX cave instructor (who is Italian) had a group of S Korean students this spring. She said TDI has a large presence in S Korea.
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Sure. If I understand correctly, BSAC have been teaching deco as an aspect of recreational diving for a long time. But to the point of the original question, when did the marketing of "technical diving" as a thing distinguishable from recreational diving begin in the UK?The term ‘technical’ is just a marketing phrase to extract more money out of divers.
Twinsets were going out of fashion when I started, single regs and new 207bar cylinders were coming in.
Technical is just diving.
It's kind of like the north east US, for example the Andrea Doria. People have dived it forever but only in the past ~20 years did those dives get labelled as "technical" and needed loads of plastic cards.Sure. If I understand correctly, BSAC have been teaching deco as an aspect of recreational diving for a long time. But to the point of the original question, when did the marketing of "technical diving" as a thing distinguishable from recreational diving begin in the UK?
Since the early 90s, yes. I think navy divers had better equipment and tech since the 60s but I really don't know. I have never served on the navy.My MX cave instructor (who is Italian) had a group of S Korean students this spring. She said TDI has a large presence in S Korea.
I dunno. I think the division of diving into recreational and technical, and the marketing of technical diving to people whose goal it is to do big dives has been a good thing. Back in the day, as I understand it, one had to cozy up to a mentor who was willing to show you how to do this stuff--or at least show you how they had been doing it. If you tired of being taught at someone else's convenience, you might just go out and wing it. Sounds risky to me. With the advent of formal courses, you could instead chart a path at the beginning that would get you to your goal of diving to X depth and/or for X time, or in a cave, etc.It's kind of like the north east US, for example the Andrea Doria. People have dived it forever but only in the past ~20 years did those dives get labelled as "technical" and needed loads of plastic cards.
Maybe it was the influence of DIR on diving... Must do it that way otherwise... oh, you've all ignored us and just gone diving.
I think navy divers had better equipment and tech since the 60s but I really don't know. I have never served on the navy.