The Tec - Rec Split: Who Did It?

[MXGratefulDiver]

IMHO, rebreather diving requires far more skills than recreational diving. It starts with the pre-dive preperations, the constant diligence during the dive and the fact that far more can go wrong on a rebreather dive. My initial training consisted of a small part on how to assemble and maintain the unit and hours under water with safety drills for all possible failures. Hyperkapnia, hypoxia and hyperoxia are constant threats, and manually flying the thing or bailing out is something that I think is beyond the realm of most recreational divers. I'm aware that some companies are marketing their units as recreational, and now that PADI is getting into the game it will become quite interesting. Maybe one day rebreather diving will move into the world of recreational diving, just as nitrox did, but with most of todays units, I would consider it technical diving at its finest.

I would say, rather, that it requires a different set of skills that do not apply to open circuit diving. But they're not rocket surgery, and a recreational diver could easily learn them and apply them with a moderate amount of diligence.

About the most difficult adaptation, I would think, would be relearning buoyancy control. And on the units I tried during the workshop even that didn't appear to be anything terribly difficult to adapt to.

But I would not consider a relatively shallow, no-deco dive in a lake to be "technical diving at its finest" ... in fact, it wouldn't appeal to me at all ... not even on the world's finest rebreather.

Now you take that 'breather up to north Vancouver Island and go gorgonian-hunting on a 200-foot wall dive and you're onto something ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[FritzCat66]

The Rubicon article has a good definition.

Definition I use technical diving to cover diving in excess of the usual range for recreational scuba divers, nodecompression, open circuit, air breathing scuba diving to 40m...

That's close as far as a definition of recreational diving, except nowadays of course nitrox (<40% anyway) is just as much rec as tech, and I would add "no/minimal overhead" to the description, meaning the rec diver can ascend directly to the surface with minimal impediment. I say "minimal" because I think simple swim-thrus through coral walls and the like are certainly rec.

Of course, I don't think the OP is really trying to define the terms, but rather wondering why we do and when we started doing so.

Sounds like some of the [-]old-timers[/-] more experienced divers have been able to provide a good bit of the history behind it all. I personally think that it's pragmatic to distinguish between the two as they are today, and I think it's good to do so, insofar as divers planning to exceed those rec guidelines need to be aware they are moving into an area that requires more training.

Sure there are grey areas, but that's no reason not to make distinctions. There are grey areas to nearly any distinction one can make. So, again, I would look at the pragmatic function of the distinction to see if it's worthwhile, and in this case, I think it's practical enough to use the terms.

 

[11x]

" Dick Rutkowski, the former dive supervisor for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) introduced the recreational diving community to the technology of EANx. This program was developed through NOAA during his tenure. In 1991 Tom Mount joined Dick and IANTD became the FIRST to offer training programs in all aspects of technical diving (Advanced Nitrox, Deep Air, Technical Diver, Cave and Wreck Penetration, Normoxic trimix, Trimix, Rebreathers,blending,dpv, etc.)"

it does apear the term tech diving started with the use of the technology of nitrox

 

[Doc]

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.

Oh~ I thought your original question was intended as a straightforward query to be taken at face value.

Whoopsie.

 

[GrandpaScuba]

I guess what I'm asking is this: did the advent of the term "Recreational diving" give birth to the term "technical diving"?

Many things acquire a name when a new version comes along. Until there were "split fins" no one had heard of "paddle fins". But when split fins came along, we needed a name other than "non-split-fins" so someone made up "paddle fins".

Though I think the term Recreational Diving predates Technical Diving because the terms Recreational Diving and Sport Diving, differentiated what we do from Commercial Diving. Because of the confusion over what Technical Diving is, some persons out there have started using the term Extended Range Diving in lieu of Technical Diving.

There are many terms to label the many activities that divers get into: Recreational Diving, Sport Diving, Scientific Diving, Commercial Diving, Technical Diving, Extended Range Diving, Military Diving... There is no one who owns the definitions of the various types of diving, though if someone teaches a course they usually have their definition of what they are teaching.

 

[Blackwood]

Though I think the term Recreational Diving predates Technical Diving because the terms Recreational Diving and Sport Diving, differentiated what we do from Commercial Diving. Because of the confusion over what Technical Diving is, some persons out there have started using the term Extended Range Diving in lieu of Technical Diving.

Was Sport/Rec Diving understood and agreed to have a specific set of depth/time/distance from exit limits (i.e. 'range')?

Or were 'recreational limits' established around the same time as the term 'technical diving' entered the lexicon?

 

[scjoe]

My recollection is that the NAUI and PADI dive tables in the early 70&#8217;s tapped out at 130 feet so that was pretty much the limit of sport diving in those days for most. Obviously, people did exceed those depths as rec divers do today. I can&#8217;t recall whether 130 was a formal floor back then, but I don&#8217;t think it had anything to do with the advent of tech.

 

[Wookie]

I think you are missing the point. Diving is regulated by OSHA. Research diving and military diving have exemptions available to them. Getting paid for diving is subject to OSHA, so DM's and Instructors fall under OSHA rules unless they use the recreational diving exemption. Mixed gas falls under OSHA regulation. The split, if you will, came when people started to use mixed gas in a recreational diving situation. No, Billy Deans didn't have a nifty TDI instructor card to teach folks how to use trimix, he just did it. If you look back in the Early 90's when Billy, Mike Menduno and Thalassamania were all playing with helium in Key West, you will see where the term Technical Diving came from.

I don't like the term at all, but to me, it does denote the difference between mixed gas and air. Long before there was technical diving, recreational divers were doing long deep dives on air deco. It wasn't tech diving, it was sport diving, or recreational diving. I've never been paid to make a helium dive, therefore it must be recreational, right?

 

[Rhone Man]

Actually, Michael Menduno is credited with coining the term "Technical Diving" in 1991.

That is what I was told. He used the term in an article in AquaCorps, and it just caught on. This was about the same time as the DEMA/Nitrox controversy was just kicking off.

What happened before that? There are lots more grey hairs on the board who can talk about that, but I'll throw in my anecdotes anyhow.

• When I did my OW (in 1984) we still worked off tables which had decompression stops printed on them for long/deep dives (and reptitive groups for those dives), although nothing deeper than 140 feet.
  
• When my Dad started diving, there were no agencies. They did have a vague sense of decompression obligations, but they used to surface afte the main part of the dive, swim back to the boat, and then go down the anchor line again to do their deco. With J-valves. (Sorry I am just smiling imagining suggesting this to certain people today.)
  
• I remember reading some of Gary Gentile's books about deep wreck decompression diving in the 70s and 80s and he said before the advent of "technical diving" people just used to call them "gorilla divers", although I have also hear the term "guerilla diver" which seems less apt.

 

[Akimbo]

I guess what I'm asking is this: did the advent of the term "Recreational diving" give birth to the term "technical diving"?...

I don’t think so. From my small sphere of visibility, Recreational diving was called skin diving when it came to the US in the 1950s. It included SCUBA, was an acronym then so it was always capitalized. The articles in the popular press on Peter Gimbal's dive on the Andrea Doria shortly after the sinking in 1955 described them as Skin Divers. The leading publication well into the 1980s was Skin Diver Magazine. Local dive shops were listed under Skin Diving in the yellow pages, at least on the west coast. Commercial diving services were listed under diving or divers.

Skin Divers came to be thought of as snorkelers and freedivers as the term Scuba Divers become popular. This was around the late 1970 as I recall. SCUBA includes all forms of untherered diving; open circuit, pure oxygen closed circuit, mixed gas closed circuit, and mixed gas semi-open circuit.

A lot of specialty monikers started to arrive, as I recall, with the merit badge system. Instructors, Dive Masters, Rescue Divers, Open Water, and so on. The term recreational diver came into wide use about that same time to include all the different forms in the recreational industry — basically diving for fun. It strikes me that technical diver is a continuation of the evolving trend, but came much later.

Technically, a commercial diver is anyone paid to go underwater; which includes Scuba and freediving instructors, some photographers, and people who scrape the boat in the slip next to them for beer money. Most often, a professional diver to me is someone who earns their primary living from underwater work. I am starting to hear words like inland, harbor, oilfield, salvage, and industrial between the words "commercial" and "diver" more often. As the lines in all sectors get more blurred, the names get more involved to differentiate.