Outside the US agencies large numbers of training organisations have no such artificial split.
The Tec - Rec Split: Who Did It?
- Thread starter Mike Boswell
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Outside the US agencies large numbers of training organisations have no such artificial split.
Dhboner
Contributor
I tend to view it this way....there are "technical dives" but not really "technical divers".
Some dives require specialized equipment/gas, training and more planning than a simple 40' dive on a warm reef. Those dives are "technical" dives by their nature. Other dives require nothing more than basic scuba, compressed air and good buddy discipline. Those dives can be called "recreational".
Divers are really all the same...it is the DIVE that precipitates the label. My oldest son is gravitating towards deeper dives, wreck penetration and caves. He will need training and appropriate gear to undertake those "technical" dives but he still dives for recreation. My other son and I prefer non-deco situations and are happy looking at fish and the outside of wrecks. We are still well-trained but our preferred dives do not require addtiional gear or training.
It's the "label" that creates the potential from friction in the community.
Bob (Toronto)
Some dives require specialized equipment/gas, training and more planning than a simple 40' dive on a warm reef. Those dives are "technical" dives by their nature. Other dives require nothing more than basic scuba, compressed air and good buddy discipline. Those dives can be called "recreational".
Divers are really all the same...it is the DIVE that precipitates the label. My oldest son is gravitating towards deeper dives, wreck penetration and caves. He will need training and appropriate gear to undertake those "technical" dives but he still dives for recreation. My other son and I prefer non-deco situations and are happy looking at fish and the outside of wrecks. We are still well-trained but our preferred dives do not require addtiional gear or training.
It's the "label" that creates the potential from friction in the community.
Bob (Toronto)
halocline
Contributor
There's certainly a convenient, useful distinction between the safety and techniques of diving in situations where you have immediate access to the surface and those in which you don't. That's a fairly useful definition of "technical" diving IMO. It's not that different from the distinction that exists between hiking and technical climbing; in one, if you fall, you can just get up and keep walking (usually) where in the other, if you fall, you're in big trouble, so you use extra equipment, teamwork, and techniques.
In both activities there are environments which push the limits of the non-technical side of things, so the exact point of differentiation might vary from person to person and site to site.
In both activities there are environments which push the limits of the non-technical side of things, so the exact point of differentiation might vary from person to person and site to site.
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Why can't people just go enjoy diving in whatever way pleases them without worrying about what other people do, wear, or call themselves?
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
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It seems to me this is much ado about nothing.
The idea that "recreational" can have a meaning as an adjective within a particular domain seems to offend some folks' sensibilities about how language should be used. That really is a personal issue that has nothing to do with diving and everything to do with their inability to segregate terms into various domains or to appreciate the development of language.
In a practical sense, diving instruction today is largely modular. This has created a number of large benefits, including increasing the number of divers substantially. It has also created a number of challenges, including putting a large number of divers in the water who need additional training in order to do challenging dives that older divers with monolithic courses might have been able to complete without more training. More likely the education would come in the form of mentoring by more experienced divers.
With the change in education there grew a need to describe the type of dives which particular students would be able to make that would be within their level of training and experience. One of the primary distinctions became dives that did not have direct access to the surface and/or which required equipment different from what open water students would typically be trained in and which is most commonly provided as rental gear from resorts.
Personally, I find the term to be rather easy to grasp. A recreational golfer can have a wide range of skills and there's no real expectation that they could do well on the toughest courses around. A recreational cyclist is not expected to have the endurance to compete in a 100k race, even if it is a fun race and not a serious competition.
Likewise, a recreational scuba diver is not expected to be able to dive in conditions demanding high levels of skill. That is not to say that no recreational scuba divers have high levels of skill anymore than saying someone is a recreational golfer means they can not have a 2 handicap or that a recreational cyclist might not be able to complete a multi-day 500k race.
Meanwhile, a golfer with an a highly refined approach and short game is often referred to as having a great technical game. A cyclist who has refined abilities is often said to have great technique. To say that a scuba diver who has taken additional courses, is using more complex gear, and doing dives of greater complexity than the typical recreational diver is doing technical dives, and by extension is thus a technical diver is not some aberration of language. Indeed, one of the definitions of "technique" is precisely the systematic procedure by which a complex or scientific task is accomplished or a particular command at handling such fundamentals. A dive requiring command of sound techniques, comprised of systematic procedures and/or scientific tasks is technical.
It's not really a hard distinction to understand. Moreover, it serves a useful purpose in delineating training levels.
Certainly there is some arbitrariness in the distinction. But all language is arbitrary associations of concept and symbol. "Set" doesn't have 464 distinct definitions because of some objective association. It's just the sound and associated letters that came to be associated with a wide range of concepts.
The idea that "recreational" can have a meaning as an adjective within a particular domain seems to offend some folks' sensibilities about how language should be used. That really is a personal issue that has nothing to do with diving and everything to do with their inability to segregate terms into various domains or to appreciate the development of language.
In a practical sense, diving instruction today is largely modular. This has created a number of large benefits, including increasing the number of divers substantially. It has also created a number of challenges, including putting a large number of divers in the water who need additional training in order to do challenging dives that older divers with monolithic courses might have been able to complete without more training. More likely the education would come in the form of mentoring by more experienced divers.
With the change in education there grew a need to describe the type of dives which particular students would be able to make that would be within their level of training and experience. One of the primary distinctions became dives that did not have direct access to the surface and/or which required equipment different from what open water students would typically be trained in and which is most commonly provided as rental gear from resorts.
Personally, I find the term to be rather easy to grasp. A recreational golfer can have a wide range of skills and there's no real expectation that they could do well on the toughest courses around. A recreational cyclist is not expected to have the endurance to compete in a 100k race, even if it is a fun race and not a serious competition.
Likewise, a recreational scuba diver is not expected to be able to dive in conditions demanding high levels of skill. That is not to say that no recreational scuba divers have high levels of skill anymore than saying someone is a recreational golfer means they can not have a 2 handicap or that a recreational cyclist might not be able to complete a multi-day 500k race.
Meanwhile, a golfer with an a highly refined approach and short game is often referred to as having a great technical game. A cyclist who has refined abilities is often said to have great technique. To say that a scuba diver who has taken additional courses, is using more complex gear, and doing dives of greater complexity than the typical recreational diver is doing technical dives, and by extension is thus a technical diver is not some aberration of language. Indeed, one of the definitions of "technique" is precisely the systematic procedure by which a complex or scientific task is accomplished or a particular command at handling such fundamentals. A dive requiring command of sound techniques, comprised of systematic procedures and/or scientific tasks is technical.
It's not really a hard distinction to understand. Moreover, it serves a useful purpose in delineating training levels.
Certainly there is some arbitrariness in the distinction. But all language is arbitrary associations of concept and symbol. "Set" doesn't have 464 distinct definitions because of some objective association. It's just the sound and associated letters that came to be associated with a wide range of concepts.
Blackwood
Contributor
To be fair, I was playing devil's advocate (mostly - the political tangent really does bother me, not because I dislike the development of language, but rather because I believe it is done with the intent of confusing and misleading people).
In the context of diving, as far as I'm concerned - unless I'm told otherwise (i.e. "I'm teaching" or "I'm working", etc.) - all dives are recreational. If the "dive community" wants to establish some limits beyond which they consider dives to be dangerous on average, I have no problem with that. Calling them "recreational" limits is odd, but okay. Similarly, calling dives beyond those limits "technical" is odd, but okay.
Really, the point of my post was to question why people dislike using the term technical but have no issues using the term recreational when neither have sound universal definitions.
11x
Contributor
well all i can add is that when i wanted to get into diving i did some home work and this tech/rec thing kept coming up. from a outsider looking in it appeared to be that some people are happy swimming around looking at fish and others were interested in going deep into caves/wrecks where there was a much lower saftey margin. i am in the public saftey line of work so naturaly i was draw to the tech stuff. i got my ow.aow.night,rescue through iantd because that agency training model seemed to me to be the best for what i wanted to get out of diving. on most days i love to swim around at 20 ft looking at fish but if i get the call to go down to deep water to retrive a body from a sunken car than i have the skills and knowladge to do so with out puting my self into a situation that i feal i am not capable of. do i consider my self a tech diver? well not yet but i do see my self as a good diver that likes to push the limits of what i consider recreational diving and that has the abilaty to realise that i dont know it all and each of us should try to learn something on every dive. so i guess weither some one is a rec or a tech diver is more self proclaimed than anything else. it says to others what your intrests and personal limits are
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