Rich Keller
Contributor
And I thought I was just devolving.
I agree with you about it being more than just equipment reduction. In fact, I would say that's the least part of it. I would say that relearning how divers in the past planned and executed dives with minimal gear (the actual strategies) is far more valuable and important and why most modern era divers struggle with the idea. They have not been taught skin diving, neutral weighting, intuitive gas planning or situational awareness to the same degree.
Telling someone without neutral buoyancy to go without a BC is a recipe for disaster. As is telling someone who only knows to return to the surface with 500psi to do without an SPG. Someone with no skin diving experience will be far less likely to be comfortable in the water without a device for maintaining positive buoyancy. Someone who just jumps off the boat and follows a DM around may struggle putting all the pieces together if what they are doing is different from the crowd.
Of course these sorts of things can be learned, I did so as a modern trained diver, but you have to seek out those ideas as they are largely ignored or even denigrated by today's dive culture.
I agree 100%. The only things I would add is that being able to dive this way makes you far less dependent on the equipment itself. If you know how to weight yourself properly for example then the BCD becomes just a connivence not a necessity that you can not dive without. It also made you more aware of what was going on if you were depending on a J valve rather then a SPG for example you got to know the feel of the reg as your air started to run low. It didn't take much time before you didn't have to depend on the J valve either you just knew by feel when it was time to go up before needing to go to your reserve. No computers, not even water proof tables, I would just write the NDL on the arm of my wetsuit starting with 70' in permanent ink. There was less gear and it was not as sophisticated so the diver had to be better to make up for that difference.
---------- Post added April 18th, 2015 at 07:59 AM ----------
"jettisonable" weights really are for beginners. Those who have some experience should be able to use fins to lift themselves up without a problem, unless they carry like 50 pounds in lead... Hopefully one wears proper fins. I never heard experienced divers really care about ditch-able weights. I guess, maybe, they don't overweight themselves... and they can manage what they got... In the end, you can always use your sausage to give you some bouyancy.
I guess that I do not meet your standards for an experienced diver, I dive with all my weights on a belt so that it is jettison-able but I have only been doing this for 44 years. Even a few pounds makes a difference so I use a pouch belt, if the situation is not life or death I can just drop some weight but the option to drop it all if needed is always there. You on the other hand depend on more equipment that takes more time to deploy then you may have and requires air that you may not have. When the sh!t hits the fan I just drop my weights and I am on the surface breathing an unlimited supply of air. Experienced divers like yourself stay on the bottom with all your weights and either play with a lift bag or try to swim up. I read about experienced divers like you in the accident & incident section. Just out of curiosity do you know what to do if one the straps on your proper fins breaks? You people are so dependent on the equipment it should scare you but you do not know any better because the people who train you also sell you the equipment. Their solution to being safer is always going to be buy more equipment.
---------- Post added April 18th, 2015 at 08:38 AM ----------
This is a quote from my instructor in 1974: "If you are found dead on the bottom still wearing your weights it is because you were a fracking moron and that cost you your life." PS: I had to substitute the word "fracking" for what he really said because you can not use that kind of language on SB.