What Defines a "Tech" Diver
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Someone had to be first. Dive instruction has evolved and people had to figure stuff out.
While not advised, people can self teach. If such a person has their own compressor and can make trimix, acquired all the appropriate gear, nothing stops them from doing tech dives. I would still consider such a person a technical diver.
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We used to debate deep air dives periodically. Somewhere between 5 and 6 minutes, an air dive to 187 feet is no stop. What could possibly go wrong on this recreational dive? The gas density is a bit on the high side.
A far flung analogy....
While in a rural restaurant in Ecuador, I needed to use the restroom, and walked through the door with the big M on it. The room was empty, and I went into a stall. I heard people come in, and as they talked, I thought, "You idiot! The M is for mujeres. You're in the women's room!"
A number of years ago, 3 divers in Cozumel jumped into the water with their AL 80s (one AL 100) and took a planned dive to 300 feet. One of them either blacked out or was so narced at 300 feet that she continued down, only turning back up when another one of the group turned her at 400 feet. The 3 of them barely got to the surface by buddy breathing, with no deco stops. She died, and the one who turned her will never walk again.
The lessons:
While in a rural restaurant in Ecuador, I needed to use the restroom, and walked through the door with the big M on it. The room was empty, and I went into a stall. I heard people come in, and as they talked, I thought, "You idiot! The M is for mujeres. You're in the women's room!"
A number of years ago, 3 divers in Cozumel jumped into the water with their AL 80s (one AL 100) and took a planned dive to 300 feet. One of them either blacked out or was so narced at 300 feet that she continued down, only turning back up when another one of the group turned her at 400 feet. The 3 of them barely got to the surface by buddy breathing, with no deco stops. She died, and the one who turned her will never walk again.
The lessons:
- The women's bathroom I entered was a women's bathroom. Nothing in my entering changed that.
- By entering the women's room, I did not become a woman. I was still a man, and I should not have been there.
- A dive to 300 feet is a technical dive, and going there safely requires proper training/experience and equipment. It is a technical dive because it exceeds standard recreational limits and imposes a ceiling preventing divers from going safely to the surface without decompression stops.
- The 3 divers who did the dive with no technical training and no appropriate gear were recreational divers. Going on a technical dive did not make them technical divers.
I often tell people on SB that saying something over and over doesn't make it true. I guess I need to add that saying something over and over, even if true, doesn't make it understood.
L13
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BUT at the same time, a dive to 135 feet exceeds (most) standard recreational limits. If that is the only notable thing about the dive (it was completed within NDL, clear warm calm water, hard bottom at 135 feet, etc), it would be in the the border and may or may not be a "technical dive" depending on which pendant you were talking to. I would certainly argue that an appropriately experienced recreational diver could do such a dive safely without any "technical" training, and with no more planing or equipment than they would use for a 130 foot dive. EDIT: notice I did not say this dive was or wasn't a technical dive, I don't think anyone picking either answer is really "wrong."
It is easy to agree when you are far from the border. At the border, it might make more sense to talk about the details of that case, and not arguing about the region it is in.
It is not so much whether the dive to 135 (or 150 or 165) "is" a technical dive, but rather "should be" a technical dive. Sure, you can do it with no gas redundancy, no planning, maybe even with no or tiny amounts of deco. The problem is that when things go sideways, can you deal with it? It doesn't matter if you've done it before without issues; what matters is what happens when it happens? At some point (100, 130 131, ..., 165, 200) you simply cannot recover from the unexpected problem... thus the need for planning, redundancy, appropriate gas and quantity, all those things that make it a technical dive. All the increasing depth does is make those things more and more important as you go deeper and deeper.
Exactly.
On a technical dive, the existence of that hard or soft ceiling means you do not have direct access to the surface in case of emergency. Any problems that arise must be handled under water. the bulk of technical diving training is teaching you to anticipate possible problems and have the skills and equipment to take care of them as they arise. Hopefully, they will not arise, but if they do, you are ready for them.
The 3 Cozumel divers mentioned above planned to dive on air to 300 feet and head right back to the surface. It is possible they have done that before. They were not ready when one had the problem, and they did not have the resources to handle that problem. They also did not have the knowledge. They lied about what happened at first, but when the one who was crippled finally came clean, he indicated they had had no real idea of the potential effects of both excess oxygen and nitrogen when diving air at that depth.
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