Ah geez Louise Captain.
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Maybe when we adopt the metric system, we can also adopt that terminology...
By the way, I thought I was pretty much on top of the diving world when I had accumulated hundreds of dives beyond my instructor rating. I then started technical training. It was one of the most humiliating experiences of my life when I realized what a beginner I truly was.
Apparently you and I can't have a constructive conversation without you feeling like I'm insulting you. You making assumptions and putting words in my mouth makes it difficult to continue this conversation with you.
You're correct that I have no technical diving experience, although not long ago I believe Nitrox was considered "technical". With that said, I have done research, my LDS instructors and employees are technical instructors, cave instructors, rebreather instructors and my conversations with them about advancing my diving into "technical" diving in open water (no desire to dive caves) has always came back to gas planning and gas management. Naturally new skills will be taught with the virtual ceiling as well as equipment configurations, but in this thread we are talking about applying technical diving to recreational diving and I've asked what skills are taught in technical courses that could be applied to recreational dives. You even said I was correct that basic open water teaches you how to handle the majority of problems one could experience while diving basic open water dives.
Furthermore, my point about experience is backed again by the fact that many technical courses have a minimum required amount of dives prior to taking the course. Why? Well, I'm sure the theory is the more you dive the better you are to take on more challenges. We can also start making this conversation really complicated by determining what level of a tech diver is and how that compares to a very experienced diver. Let's go back to the era when Nitrox was considered technical. I'm a Nitrox diver with less than 50 dives, am I a better, safer diver than the guy who is not Nitrox certified but has dived a thousand dives. No way.
I'm not sure why you put so little value on experience and call it absurd. Nevertheless, if we can't have a good conversation without the sarcasm then let's keep the thread alive and ignore each other.
as such those doing rec dives can and should aspire to hone their diving skills towards technical grade skills and dive with them whether doing a rec or tech dive.
Should everyone teaching have tech training? I think that would be fantastic so long as it is the minimum tech level of training that is required. aow courses should IMO contain some skills that would be of the tech catagory.
Agreed, but I believe that in order to achieve this, training, as well as experience, is required.
Agreed. At the shop where I teach most of us, from the beginning instructor to the shop owner, are technically trained. I believe it makes a difference in how well we prepare our students as compared to shops that don't have that kind of experience in their staff.
R..
Where is this definition of a technical dive as one that makes getting PAID the criteria. I keep hearing this but never have i seen it. A 200 ft dive is a technical dive paid or not. If being paid is the test than all instructors are doing technical dives in water sessions.
I have not read all of the posts but yes he makes sense. I am starting to get into tech diving and I am learning things that make me wonder "why the hell was I not taught this before?" I am realizing that the yellow little octo that I carried is useless crap! If you have to go for it in an emergency it does not breath as easily as my primary second stage which I breath in non-emergencies. I am thinking of throwing it (not selling it because I believe it to be crap) and getting another primary second stage. I am also a believer in wearing it in a bungee around the neck than clipping it randomly somewhere! I also believe that in case my buddy goes is in an out of air situation he will not have the time to look for where I have clipped my "octo." He will most likely pull the one from my mouth so I keep it on a 7 foot hose.
After taking Essentials of Tec courses I am getting more and more convinced that this so called "rec diving" industry is full of nonsensical short cuts designed to speed up certification rather than to create a better diver. The split fins, snorkel and BCD jacket culture that I was introduced to in my OW class is something I have had to unlearn even within recreational limits to become a better diver. Why waste people's time with such tactics that save instructors time and do nothing more. I wish someone had strapped me in a BP-Wing from day 1 and that would have caused my weight belt to be so much lighter.
I think you keep moving the goal posts. It's hard to know *what* you want to say.
You've said a couple of things that ring a bell with me, however. One of them is that experience is golden.
I've known John for quite a while and he's one of my favorite people. He's one of the people on Scubaboard who you should really listen do. I believe he's calling you out because you're talking about technical diving and/or the training involved with a certain attitude of authority while you literally know nothing about it. I believe he's doing this because people who are not participating in the discussion will read this thread and he's trying to make it clear to the anonymous reader that the person on this thread who seems to be making the biggest claim of authority on the subject is literally fantasizing the whole thing.
That said, getting back to your "gut feeling" that "experience reigns supreme" (actually you said "reins", which are the straps that you attach to a horse's head, so if you take nothing from my post you can at least take that).
Nevertheless, I agree with you to a certain extent. Experience is definitely important. Accident statistics support that claim. However, what John is trying to explain to you is that RELEVANT experience is what matters when it comes to technical diving. Accident statistics support this as well. There are two main risk groups among divers. One are inexperienced divers and one is VERY experienced divers. The latter group would appear to be at risk because they are pushing boundaries, perhaps without the necessary training. One example of this can be understood by considering the number of experienced divers who have "accidents" related to blown deco stops but they are not adequately trained to be making dives beyond the NDLs. The number of technical divers who have accidents related to blown deco stops is very small even though they make the lion's share of such dives. It does happen, but it is rare. Accidents related to blown deco are almost exclusively a phenomenon related to divers not having the proper training for the dive they were trying to do.
Many of those are "experienced" divers, but not "well trained" divers. This is the distinction I believe John is trying to help you understand.
For example, in the Netherlands (where I live) the technical community is fairly large %-wise but of the 55 or so accidents per year related to blown deco, not a single one of them over the last 5 years, to the best of my knowledge, involved divers with proper training. All of them would have involved "experienced" divers but not "well trained" divers. What John is trying to make clear to you is this.
R..
I have not read all of the posts but yes he makes sense. I am starting to get into tech diving and I am learning things that make me wonder "why the hell was I not taught this before?" I am realizing that the yellow little octo that I carried is useless crap! If you have to go for it in an emergency it does not breath as easily as my primary second stage which I breath in non-emergencies. I am thinking of throwing it (not selling it because I believe it to be crap) and getting another primary second stage. I am also a believer in wearing it in a bungee around the neck than clipping it randomly somewhere! I also believe that in case my buddy goes is in an out of air situation he will not have the time to look for where I have clipped my "octo." He will most likely pull the one from my mouth so I keep it on a 7 foot hose.
After taking Essentials of Tec courses I am getting more and more convinced that this so called "rec diving" industry is full of nonsensical short cuts designed to speed up certification rather than to create a better diver. The split fins, snorkel and BCD jacket culture that I was introduced to in my OW class is something I have had to unlearn even within recreational limits to become a better diver. Why waste people's time with such tactics that save instructors time and do nothing more. I wish someone had strapped me in a BP-Wing from day 1 and that would have caused my weight belt to be so much lighter.
My technical instructors were all friends and dive buddies of mine before I started training with them. In fact, I've been diving and involved in training divers for so long that one of them was even a former student!
R..
Please don't take this the wrong way, but was your instructor/salesman aware of what your goals were when it came to diving?
When I made the decision to lay down the deposit for my OW the next thing I did was start researching. I signed up on this board a month before I became certified. I was reading articles, watching videos and learning about diving. I borrowed my neighbors gear and familiarized myself with what it felt like to breath from a reg underwater and control buoyancy with a bc while in my pool. I even did a few drills like mask clearing/removal and air sharing all before I even met my instructor. My approach may not have been the norm and not everyone would have access to a friends gear or a pool, but my point is I wanted to learn how to scuba dive and the research I did also led me to realize I needed to determine the type of diving I wanted to do. At the end of the day it's my responsibility to know this, not anyone else. So when I did my certification it was a breeze, I already did most of the things they teach you and when I went to buy my gear I already knew what I wanted, with some exceptions that were worked out during talks with my instructor. If I told my instructor all I want to do in the future is open water tropical dives or didn't tell my instructor anything why would he sell me a long hose and two equal primaries when we all know a yellow octo is perfectly fine for benign tropical diving?
Perhaps one could say "moving the goal post", there are many levels and types of technical diving, right? Some that are pretty basic, relatively speaking, like open water single stage decompression diving to full on cave diving, right? The OP's blanket question of apply tec to rec for the rec diver for me is hard to make sense of. That's why I made the point about Nitrox once being considered technical and comparing that to experience level. You could have two technical divers with vastly different goals and levels of training. Also, for the sake of this discussion let's assume no one is doing dives outside their training.
Take me for example. In talks with my instructor about progressing my diving he asked me why do I want to do technical diving? One of my answers was to shoot a trophy fish. Like a Warsaw grouper which would likely require deep diving and decompression. Well setting gas training aside, I assume my training for that is going to be much different than if I said I want to penetrate caves at Weeki Wachee. So again bring this back to applying tec to rec. How would that type of training benefit an open water dive at 60 ft? I'm not trying to be argumentative. If the next week I want to do a 60 fsw dive is the tech training I received going to make me a safer diver? I wouldn't be diving doubles or bring a stage bottle at 60 fsw. So the gas switching and valve drills I learned wouldn't really apply.
Now, for example, if you tell me that at any level of tech training you're going to be hit with rigorous drills like unexpectedly having your mask ripped off your face, your reg pulled from your mouth all while in a current. Well hell yes, that could be beneficial in a rec dive. Is that kind of training to be expected at any level of tech diving? And then how could a rec diver apply that technical training to a rec dive when they never learned it? Should that type of training be applied to the basic open water curriculum? I don't know. Dumpsterdiver makes a great point. We're diving for fun, right? That kind of drill would probably keep a lot of people from ever diving again and also calls into question would it be safe. Student divers die without that kind of training, so I think it's probably a bad idea. But an experienced rec diver with a lot of dives under his belt may be able to handle it because he's had one or more of those things happen in a real life situation. I read the stories in the "near misses" forum and I have to assume those experience make them a better diver. A final question, how can a diver apply technical training to recreational diving when their level of training stops at open water?
I don't think the question apply tec to rec for the rec diver can be answered with a simple yes or no answer. And that would also make for a boring thread. So why not "move the goal post around"? I've asked a lot of questions in this post in the hopes to further the discussion.
As far as John, I'm sure he's a great dude and obviously has much more experience than me, but compare Bob's response to my post and John's. I understand tech diving isn't only about gas planning, but I believe it's a big part of it. Am I wrong? I admitted I could have used different language. I also stated twice I'm not a technical diver. And my intention was not to act like an authority, so I apologize if that's how it came across. I'm also not holding any grudges, maybe he was having a bad day, maybe I interpreted his response the wrong way. Maybe I'm an idiot and don't know what the hell I'm talking about, but im learning.
As far as my grammar, please forgive my smart "I" device. I do make an effort to proof read and go back and change mistakes if I see them. I don't see the need for saying "if nothing else, maybe you'll take this grammar lesson away from my post." I also don't see the need to make fun of the OP's profile picture. But I realize it's easier to attack the person rather than the content. Human nature I suppose.