At 131 it's a technical dive. I just started tech my plan for the next several years is staying in the 130 maybe 140 range. Just doing deco dives for the 90 and below stuff so I get a decent bottom time.
What Defines a "Tech" Diver
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At 131 it's a technical dive. I just started tech my plan for the next several years is staying in the 130 maybe 140 range. Just doing deco dives for the 90 and below stuff so I get a decent bottom time.
And for the record when I started tech I set mine to 30/70 GF.
I honestly can't figure out why tech agencies don't really promote this.
Some friends and I did a dive in South Florida a few years ago to a wreck this is rarely on the schedule because almost all of the wreck is between 110-130 feet deep. It only has that range because it is fairly broken up, but it is long and has some interesting sections. The problem is, of course, you can't stay down long enough on an NDL dive to see much of it, which is why it was so rarely scheduled. My friends weren't tech divers, so NDL was our only option. I thought that if they were simply PADI Tec 40 certified (or a similar certification from another agency), we could have given that wreck a good examination. I think a lot of people would like that kind of a dive.
On the topic of recreational divers who think they are tech divers....
I referenced the Cozumel situation in which divers went to 300 feet. When that situation was new, I created a phrase to describe what I thought was evident in that incident. I called it "I'm the best I've ever seen syndrome." It occurs when you are doing the same kind of recreational dive over and over and over again, possibly accumulating thousands of dives, and are thus justified in believing you have never seen anyone dong those dives any better than you. As mentioned a few posts ago, when one of them finally admitted the truth of the dive, he revealed a surprising lack of knowledge about deep diving. He was a long time, well-known and respected DM, and I am sure he had completed many thousands of dives working in Cozumel.
If some of the world's top tech divers came to Cozumel and dived the reefs with him, he might have been justified in saying, "Meh! I don't see him doing anything I can't do. He's nothing special." It would not be much of a stretch to think, "If he can go to 300 feet, I can go to 300 feet."
When Doc Deep died on his world depth record attempt, he clearly thought he was one of the world's top divers, and the dive shop with which he was diving kept telling him it was true. They, too, displayed an astounding lack of knowledge about deep diving. Their tech instructor supposedly had dived to a maximum depth of 215 feet, which won't even get you full trimix diving certification for any agency I know, let alone an instructor rating. But he was the one telling Doc Deep he was one of the top tech divers in the world when he was really only a beginner.
I was an experienced instructor when I started technical dive training. I had no delusions that I was among the best in the world, but I thought I was pretty good. My first tech lessons nipped that notion in the bud. The greatest benefit to my tech training and experiences is that I have seen really good divers doing dives that require their skill level, and I have heard stories of dives that fill me with awe. I know I will never, ever be able to dive at those levels. That knowledge helps keep me grounded and stops me from doing really stupid things.
I referenced the Cozumel situation in which divers went to 300 feet. When that situation was new, I created a phrase to describe what I thought was evident in that incident. I called it "I'm the best I've ever seen syndrome." It occurs when you are doing the same kind of recreational dive over and over and over again, possibly accumulating thousands of dives, and are thus justified in believing you have never seen anyone dong those dives any better than you. As mentioned a few posts ago, when one of them finally admitted the truth of the dive, he revealed a surprising lack of knowledge about deep diving. He was a long time, well-known and respected DM, and I am sure he had completed many thousands of dives working in Cozumel.
If some of the world's top tech divers came to Cozumel and dived the reefs with him, he might have been justified in saying, "Meh! I don't see him doing anything I can't do. He's nothing special." It would not be much of a stretch to think, "If he can go to 300 feet, I can go to 300 feet."
When Doc Deep died on his world depth record attempt, he clearly thought he was one of the world's top divers, and the dive shop with which he was diving kept telling him it was true. They, too, displayed an astounding lack of knowledge about deep diving. Their tech instructor supposedly had dived to a maximum depth of 215 feet, which won't even get you full trimix diving certification for any agency I know, let alone an instructor rating. But he was the one telling Doc Deep he was one of the top tech divers in the world when he was really only a beginner.
I was an experienced instructor when I started technical dive training. I had no delusions that I was among the best in the world, but I thought I was pretty good. My first tech lessons nipped that notion in the bud. The greatest benefit to my tech training and experiences is that I have seen really good divers doing dives that require their skill level, and I have heard stories of dives that fill me with awe. I know I will never, ever be able to dive at those levels. That knowledge helps keep me grounded and stops me from doing really stupid things.
One of the things I love about scuba is its simplicity. But like every sport it has its drama queen's and its a fact drama and hype sells. There's a lovely simple dive I like to make every year, 6 miles east of Minehead in 62m. A well broken wreck no hazards and very easy to hook into. 20 minutes on the bottom and I've swam the length of it and enjoyed the little fish and creatures I've meet on the way. 4 minutes up the anchor rope at 15m I switch to 50% ( if someone can take a reg out of their mouth for a selfee and look at a watch and depth gauge they can switch to deco, it is that simple) 20 minutes and 4 stops later I'm in my boat. A 10 year old child has more complicated games on their phones than deco software. But along come the drama queen's. WOB you can't breath air at 62m its like soup, RUBBISH. Narcosis your off your head chasing mermaids and can't remember the dive. RUBBISH. Oxygen toxicity you start frothing from the mouth and pass out without any notice and never again be seen RUBBISH and that how rec and tech tec or anything else you'd like to call it got started. DRAMA.
Here is an addition to my last point about recreational divers thinking they are super tech divers.
- A few years ago a young man named Ben McDaniel started diving the cave at Vortex Springs, even though he had no cave certification at all. He had to figure out a way to get past the padlocked gate, and he did. A video later emerged with him in the cave, showing poor skills and terrible gear. When he went missing and his truck was found nearby, it was assumed he had died in the cave. Extensive searches of that very limited cave did not find a body. During the search, I followed discussion sites about it, and in one of the discussions, Ben's friends and family talked about how they heard that some of the people looking for Ben were very skilled--almost as good as Ben himself! Those people who were supposedly almost as good as Ben included Edd Sorenson, clearly one of the foremost cave recovery divers in the world. (Do you know anyone else who owns two harnesses for recovering bodies, one for headfirst recoveries and one for feet first?)
- On Christmas day not long ago, a father's gift to his 15-year old son was new cave diving gear. That father had only OW certification, and the son was not certified at all. They immediately took the gear to the nearby Eagles Nest cave system, which some people have called the Mt. Everest of cave diving. Their doubles were filled with air, and they each brought a single AL 80 with 32% for deco. They left the deco tanks on the debris cone (about 150 feet deep) and headed into one of the tunnels, where their computer showed they maxed at about 220 feet. They ran out of air before getting back to the two deco bottles. For years after that, their relatives led a campaign to have the cave closed to all diving. They argued that the father and son were at the top of the heap when it comes to cave diving, and if that cave was too much for them, it was too much for anyone.
I'm trying to arrive at a "definition" that clearly separates the person from the dive. The focus is also today, not what it might have been 20-30-40 years ago, or what it might be in the future.
The Dive (i.e., the activity...not the person doing it)
Certain dives definitely require solid technical training and equipment, others certainly do not. Exactly where that crosses over is clearly arguable...there is a gray area.
Based on observation and anecdote, the vast majority of divers have minimal training beyond OW, do not dive with redundancy (except for an alternate 2nd stage), do not plan their dives based on mission, gas usage, staying within NDL, or expectation of any equipment faults or other unanticipated issues, do not really stick with their buddies, ascend too quickly from their safety stops, and do not log their dives. This is the realm of the purely recreational diver, who may care little about trim or propulsion techniques, and is there to see the reef, swim around the wreck, or look for sharks.
The agencies view the recreational divers as those without any technical training, and tend to be vague about how much and which technical training turns the diver from a recreational diver into a technical diver.
At the very least, in the TDI sequence as an example, the Advanced Nitrox/Deco Procedures course is the clear entry point to technical diving. There is an introductory course, Intro to Tech Diving, but it is an introduction to the skills needed in tech diving without going into any details or giving much practice. The first real tech course is Advanced Nitrox, which teaches the use of O2 from 21% up to 100% and thus address the fourth bullet above; no deco is involved, and no depths greater than 40m. The second real tech course is Decompression Procedures, which teaches use of a decompression cylinder, trains to 45m. The third is Extended Range, which trains to 55m. The PADI sequence is similar, with Tec 40, 45, and 50. These examples move through the transition from recreational dives -- no extra gas or equipment needs, no deco, no Helium -- through light deco, into real deco on real dives with quite hard virtual ceilings. The key distinguishing feature in all the training is not that depth is the single discriminator for what makes a dive technical, but rather deco is the primary discriminator. Depth is simply what makes deco so very likely; depth is what makes Helium so very likely; and depth is what makes hypoxic mixes so very likely.
Thus, the recreational diver becomes a technical diver when they learn how to manage deco (whether cause by depth or just by long dives at moderate depths), and how to manage the other things that depth might require, namely gas changes, extra cylinders, redundant equipment, and dive planning.
Because all these new things the recreational diver must learn and get skilled at can be taught or self-learned in various sequences and with varying emphases, there is not a hard boundary one crosses to become a technical diver...there are "baby step" involving deco, gas mixtures, equipment, planning, etc., that are appropriate to "baby dives," yet each of these steps can become more involved and move critical to survival as depth and/or deco increases.
It might be argued that the agencies have tacitly decided that a "full-fledged technical diver" is one that is trained through trimix with hypoxic oxygen and multiple deco cylinders plus back gases and travel gases. so that "all" depths can be accessed. Of course, in these extremes, CCRs come into play as being more and more the tool fo choice, if only for the cost of helium and the number of bottles one can conveniently carry. NOTE: CCRs are just a very technical way to manage the bulleted aspects (listed above) that need to be managed on a dive.
Summary
The recreational dive is one that has no special demands regarding depth, deco or gasses. Above 40m, NDL, Nitrox at less than 40%. Good agreement.
(The coarse definition of a technical dive is one that is beyond recreational in terms of depth, deco, and gasses.)
The gray area is deeper than 40m-50m; deco of less than 5min at 3m is "light gray;" depths to 50m are gray; normoxic He is "dark gray."
The technical dive is one with special demands on depth, deco, or gases, thus special demands on equipment to address those those demands. It unequivocally involves depths below 50m; deco of more than 5mins at one depth or deco at two depths or more; oxygen over 40%; helium and hypoxic oxygen.
If one does a technical dive -- as just defined -- then one should mitigate the increased risks of that dive by having the appropriate training, experience, and equipment, and should plan the dive accordingly.
A recreational diver is one doing a recreational dive, whether that diver has done technical dives or not.
A technical diver is one who is doing a technical dive and is trained, equipped, and following established procedures for that dive, including pre-planning. A technical diver who is doing a recreational dive may plan the dive, but as there are no special needs in that dive for gasses, equipment, or deco, then it is not a technical dive...it is still a recreational dive.
The Dive (i.e., the activity...not the person doing it)
Certain dives definitely require solid technical training and equipment, others certainly do not. Exactly where that crosses over is clearly arguable...there is a gray area.
- Less than 40m, NDL, apparently no argument that this is recreational. So 40m to maybe 50m, NDL, is in the gray area between a recreational dive and a technical dive.
- What about deco? No deco (and not too much depth) is clearly recreational; lots of deco is clearly technical. For the sake of argument, let's say that 5 mins of deco at 3m, using backgas, is "light deco." Let's say that required deco at more than one depth, is "deco." Then we define the technical dive as requiring deco for more than 5 mins at one depth or at more than two depths.
- Helium: air is acceptable for all agencies up to 30m, but additional He is sometimes included for greater depths. Certainly deeper than 60m, He is mandatory for all agencies. The gray zone is 30-60m for He. If you are using He, it is a technical dive, by definition herein.
- Oxygen: Nitrox is extremely popular in recreational diving, for the increased bottom time; up to 40% is the usual training. Greater than 40% is the realm of advanced nitrox for deco, 50, 80, and 100% being popular. Hypoxic mixes (less than 21% O2) are reserved for deep dives, typically greater than 60m. So the clear recreational regime for oxygen is 21-40%: for technical the oxygen content is darn near anything, with low percentages for really deep and high percentages for deco.
- Nitrogen: N2 is 79% is air, and only varies from that in recreational diving if Nitrox is used, i.e. replacing some N2 with O2. If the N2 varies from 79% due to the addition of He, then it is a technical dive.
Based on observation and anecdote, the vast majority of divers have minimal training beyond OW, do not dive with redundancy (except for an alternate 2nd stage), do not plan their dives based on mission, gas usage, staying within NDL, or expectation of any equipment faults or other unanticipated issues, do not really stick with their buddies, ascend too quickly from their safety stops, and do not log their dives. This is the realm of the purely recreational diver, who may care little about trim or propulsion techniques, and is there to see the reef, swim around the wreck, or look for sharks.
The agencies view the recreational divers as those without any technical training, and tend to be vague about how much and which technical training turns the diver from a recreational diver into a technical diver.
At the very least, in the TDI sequence as an example, the Advanced Nitrox/Deco Procedures course is the clear entry point to technical diving. There is an introductory course, Intro to Tech Diving, but it is an introduction to the skills needed in tech diving without going into any details or giving much practice. The first real tech course is Advanced Nitrox, which teaches the use of O2 from 21% up to 100% and thus address the fourth bullet above; no deco is involved, and no depths greater than 40m. The second real tech course is Decompression Procedures, which teaches use of a decompression cylinder, trains to 45m. The third is Extended Range, which trains to 55m. The PADI sequence is similar, with Tec 40, 45, and 50. These examples move through the transition from recreational dives -- no extra gas or equipment needs, no deco, no Helium -- through light deco, into real deco on real dives with quite hard virtual ceilings. The key distinguishing feature in all the training is not that depth is the single discriminator for what makes a dive technical, but rather deco is the primary discriminator. Depth is simply what makes deco so very likely; depth is what makes Helium so very likely; and depth is what makes hypoxic mixes so very likely.
Thus, the recreational diver becomes a technical diver when they learn how to manage deco (whether cause by depth or just by long dives at moderate depths), and how to manage the other things that depth might require, namely gas changes, extra cylinders, redundant equipment, and dive planning.
Because all these new things the recreational diver must learn and get skilled at can be taught or self-learned in various sequences and with varying emphases, there is not a hard boundary one crosses to become a technical diver...there are "baby step" involving deco, gas mixtures, equipment, planning, etc., that are appropriate to "baby dives," yet each of these steps can become more involved and move critical to survival as depth and/or deco increases.
It might be argued that the agencies have tacitly decided that a "full-fledged technical diver" is one that is trained through trimix with hypoxic oxygen and multiple deco cylinders plus back gases and travel gases. so that "all" depths can be accessed. Of course, in these extremes, CCRs come into play as being more and more the tool fo choice, if only for the cost of helium and the number of bottles one can conveniently carry. NOTE: CCRs are just a very technical way to manage the bulleted aspects (listed above) that need to be managed on a dive.
Summary
The recreational dive is one that has no special demands regarding depth, deco or gasses. Above 40m, NDL, Nitrox at less than 40%. Good agreement.
(The coarse definition of a technical dive is one that is beyond recreational in terms of depth, deco, and gasses.)
The gray area is deeper than 40m-50m; deco of less than 5min at 3m is "light gray;" depths to 50m are gray; normoxic He is "dark gray."
The technical dive is one with special demands on depth, deco, or gases, thus special demands on equipment to address those those demands. It unequivocally involves depths below 50m; deco of more than 5mins at one depth or deco at two depths or more; oxygen over 40%; helium and hypoxic oxygen.
If one does a technical dive -- as just defined -- then one should mitigate the increased risks of that dive by having the appropriate training, experience, and equipment, and should plan the dive accordingly.
A recreational diver is one doing a recreational dive, whether that diver has done technical dives or not.
A technical diver is one who is doing a technical dive and is trained, equipped, and following established procedures for that dive, including pre-planning. A technical diver who is doing a recreational dive may plan the dive, but as there are no special needs in that dive for gasses, equipment, or deco, then it is not a technical dive...it is still a recreational dive.
lermontov
Contributor
Not trying to teach you how to suck eggs but Im wondering if youve ever done a deep dive on a helium mix? Theres great wreck dive the USS Aaron Ward in the solomon's around 70m USS Aaron Ward (DD-483) - Wikipedia Ive done it 9 times. 7 times on air and twice on trimix. One of the air dives I thought I was lucid and everything was fine until we got a stiff current and then my brain turned to mush and i could barely think straight, called the dive. The last two times on trimix are like chalk and cheese and I can recall more details on one trimix dive than I can on the 6 dives on air.
Never is the short answer, not been smart. But I'll bet your going to be told you should start using helium at 100 feet and then you're told you need a rebreather and helium bailout or another rebreather. Its about selling gear. Like I said I love the simplicity of scuba. And i can make the dive i described for 50 euro.I'm not going to jump up on a pedestal and preach about the scarcity of helium to sell you the rebreather.
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