Trends in the Evolution of Tech Diving

[boulderjohn]

I started doing technical dives in South Florida during my annual winter stays about 7 years ago. I can't help but notice that when I watch the other divers on the boats, things look a bit different from the way they looked then. I realize this is a very limited sampling that may not reflect trends elsewhere. I thought it might be interested to see what kinds of changes others have seen in their experiences in their areas.

1. Seven years ago, when doing drifting decompression, everyone shot a lift bag from depth. Today almost no one does--they all use really big DSMBs.
2. I had originally learned deco using only Ratio Deco, but when I started in Florida, almost everyone was planning dives on deco software, usually V-Planner, and putting the plan on a slate. They would either write it there by hand or print it on printer and cover it with packing tape. They would then follow that plan using a bottom timer or a computer in gauge mode. Today it is rare to see someone show up with anything like that. Almost everyone is diving a Shearwater, and although I obviously don't follow them all around to check, I believe most are using the computers to guide their ascents rather than follow a written plan.
3. As I said above, V-Planner was king then. Today when I hear people talking about their plans, I almost always hear them talking about the gradient factors they are using. I know a recent diver near me planned his dive with V-Planner, but that is the only time I can be sure someone was using that program.
4. I am seeing a lot more rebreathers than before--a lot more.
5. In my training, I was told never to use dual bladder wings. If using steel tanks, I was to use a dry suit for redundant buoyancy. I almost never saw anyone using a dual bladder wing. In contrast, on a recent dive, there were about a dozen divers on the boat, and I was the only one in a dry suit. A couple were using rebreathers, but the rest were using double tanks with dual bladder wings.

 

[tursiops]

Here is an interesting article from 15 years ago.
Progress continues.

 

[tbone1004]

7 years ago was when I just started getting into cave diving, so we must have started around the same time.

1. really interesting to see that. I never understood the massive DSMB's. I have a small one for ascent and notes to the deck, and a big ass safety sausage for a "come find me, I'm lost" beacon. Haven't seen many lift bags lately though, reason cited was too much of a pain to restow at the surface. Most of my diving in the ocean was off of NC though so maybe that's a regional thing

2/3. times change and technology improves. Science has basically disproven the bubble models which explains VPM going by the wayside, and the computers are a lot better and reasonably priced compared to what they were 7 years ago

4. cost has come down, designs have improved, and the industry doesn't have sidemount to tout as the next best thing in scuba diving to sell gear and classes, so CCR's it seems were the next step

5. interesting observation. Haven't seen that many dual bladders, but haven't been active in the salty stuff in a while. Was this group diverse divers or where they from the same shop/area?

 

[boulderjohn]

5. interesting observation. Haven't seen that many dual bladders, but haven't been active in the salty stuff in a while. Was this group diverse divers or where they from the same shop/area?

I think they were a diverse group. I just used that one dive as a single example--I saw a lot of dual bladder wings during my stay.

 

[Diver0001]

I started technical diving in around 2004, if I'm not mistaken. or maybe it was 2002.... no matter. Where I live, at the time there were basically 3 types of technical divers.

- North sea wreck divers who used a variety of equipment. Sometimes those dives looked like something straight out of an episode of "Scrapheap Challenge". There weren't a lot of accidents but procedurally the dives were sloppy as hell and relied for safety to a great extent on the divers' personal skills.

- Then we had DIR. Dutch people ABSOLUTELY LOVE rules. If you want to make a Dutch person do something then just make it a rule! (LOL; actually I'm only 1/2 kidding... ). So when DIR came along it caught on here like wild fire. Everyone who was diving technically here at the time was either DIR or a DIR wannabe.

- The DIR wannabe's. That would include me. These are people who borrowed heavily from DIR but who couldn't put up with the zealousness of the defacto ring-leaders who were active at the time. Most of us did either IANTD or TDI training (I personally did courses from both).

The important thing is that the two "blood-types" (DIR and wannabe DIR) didn't mix at ALL. There was a toxic mix of animosity, arrogance and pride that made insolence and aversion the norm on both sides of the table and as a result we failed entirely to build bridges even though the "other guys" were just as passionate about the sport as you were. That was really a loss for everyone, I think.

Now we're a bit more than 10 years later and what I notice is that the 2nd and 3rd groups WILL mix blood types in a spirit of tolerance to some extent. The IANTD and TDI divers in Holland are pretty much all using either rebreathers, which are rapidly becoming more common, or some kind of configuration that is fundamentally Hogarthian. The true DIR divers are still recognizable by the big H and certain quirks in their configuration (the secret handshake stuff, nothing overly important) This has a lot to do with JP Bresser who is a GUE/DIR leader here and a bridge builder, so his presence has deescalated tensions a LOT.

The biggest differences I notice now as compared to 2004 are this:

1) Almost everyone outside of the hard-core DIR people are using computers now. When I started this, almost everyone was cutting tables with VPM-B or RGBM and copying it to a slate. Most everyone I know is still using the PC for gas planning and working out rough scenarios but I don't see people following a slate very often anymore.

Recently I would say that a good 80% of computers and >90% of the new ones being bought are based in Buhlmann with gradient factors. I know there are still shops selling that Suunto thing but I don't know of anyone who has actually bought one, at least not for technical diving. I do know people who have bought Mares and Suunto computers recently but none of those are making frequent or significant incursions into deco.

2) Procedures during the dive have changed a lot (see #1) because the advent of the computer allows a great deal more flexibility during the dive. As a result planning dives has become less of a chore on the one hand and (I guess just speaking for myself and my buddies) more open to agreeing on boundary conditions than making a minute-by-minute plan. This could be a matter of having more experience but I think even newer divers are using the computer in this way as well.

3) A lot of serious tekkies here have bought scooters. I personally am still looking for a way to justify spending that much money on a piece of diving gear but I have to admit, that if money were no object, I would have one.

4) More (North Sea) divers seem to be dying than in 2004. I'm not sure why this is, if it's aging divers or if it's just an anomaly due to chance, but it's striking. Part of that might be due to changes in equipement. I mentioned the "scrapheap challenge" above and due to influences from DIR and Hogarthian ideas, the gear people are using on the North Sea dives has also changed a lot. Could it be that familiarity with "scrapheap" gear made it somehow simpler to handle in that environment? Could it be that with new(er) gear that the divers' skill sets need time to catch up? I don't know. We'll know in a couple of years if it's an anomaly or a trend, I guess, but it's worth watching.

R..

 

[devildog12210]

John I wonder if we have ever dived together. I drive over and dive with PDC and SFDH quite a bit. I have only gotten into the tech side of things within the last year or so but it is always interesting to see what people come on the boat with.

Just this past Sunday there was a rebreather class that left me scratching my head with their dive plan and methods. It was almost to the point I was uncomfortable. It is usually people that are squared away, or have no business diving. I don't really see a lot of what I would say falls in between.

 

[boulderjohn]

John I wonder if we have ever dived together. I drive over and dive with PDC and SFDH quite a bit.

We probably have dived together. I sometimes use SFDH but more often use PDC. I dived the Hydro Atlantic on Sunday with PDC,. Is that the dive?

 

[Scott]

1. My tech training started about 9 years ago and the discussion of a DSMB was nil for deco. If I recall, I was required to have a 75# or greater lift bag.
   
   
2. V-Planner wasn't widely known at that time locally as far as I know. We were doing the same procedures of cutting tables, putting them on a slate, using gauge mode from Gap. I remember one of the first dives in the course, my buddy got hammered by the instructor because he was flying the computer and not following the printed plan. Oh how times changed in that regard.
   
   
3. Most of my ocean tech dives are in SoCal and the OC to CCR ratio is about a quarter CCR. May be because I'm diving with the same group though.
   
   
4. I was told to use dual bladder wing if using a wet suit or to use a dry suit for redundant buoyancy. I still had that in my mind when I purchased a SM BC. I may have to break it back out if they're coming popular again.
   

 

[Wookie]

7 years ago I wanted to run one of the best tech diving liveaboards in the world. I went to south Florida for training.

I was taught to dive a dual bladder wing because drysuits were for cave divers doing hours long run times and for those diving in the Northern regions. I have rarely seen a drysuit on Florida tech dives. I personally have worn mine fewer than 10 times and never on a tech dive.

Liftbags are for lifting things, or for dual redundancy diving steel doubles with a single bladder wing. SMBs are so you can be seen by the boat in 6 foot seas. Green/Yellow SMBs are so you can indicate to the boat you are having a gas emergency. I have seen only a couple of green/yellow SMBs. The divers below them were having a gas emergency. Remember Rob Stewart? He may have had a gas emergency. I always had to convince a certain south florida tech diving shop to carry a green/yellow SMB to denote that someone on a team was having a gas emergency. Eventually we just required it, and if you didn't have one, you didn't dive. Gas emergencies are more common than you may think.

Everyone on a liveaboard brought their laptop and cut their tables using v-planner. A few used their VR3s back in the early days. I still don't really understand ratio deco. It's been explained to me a number of times. I can't figure out why someone wouldn't cut their +10 feet, + 10 minutes, and planned dive on v-planner and put them on your wrist slate.

I bought (at the time) a $13,000 dollar booster to keep up with OC fills. I was trying to sell it for $8,000. Now they are new for $7,500. I think I'll give it away. Now I use a mini booster and that's plenty. My first tech trip we had 37 Ts of helium, 25 t's of oxygen, and we didn't send any back to the gas house. My last one was 4 4500s of 10/50 and 10 t's of O2. And I still have some of the 10/50 and the O2 left.

I did a number of trips with Dr. Neal Pollack. I saw some folks diving the Shearwater as it came, I think with the GFs set at 15-85. I saw a LOT of microbubbles. I watched GFs get set to 35/70. I watched as deco stops went from 200 feet on a 400 foot dive to 100 feet and not for long. I watched as my cases of bends went from 1 or 2 a trip to none. I smiled and continued to support Dr. Pollack's work.

 

[kensuf]

I dove a single tank the first time I dipped on the hydro, that was back in '95. Sure, it was a steel 95 and had an H valve and I brought a 40 with 50%, but the mate on the boat thought I was messed up.

The cool thing was the skipper could tell you what fO2 your nitrox mix had by using his cigar. He was typically +/- within 2%, about as accurate as your typical miniox. Bonus points if any of you can name the guy I'm talking about.