What has changed since early 80’s?

[pauldw]

I do see that there hasn't been much mentioned about agency changes over time; there's a little bit about that in this thread:

PADI vs NAUI

 

[tursiops]

Since 1980 there have been a lot of equipment and training changes, mostly for the better, and today there seems to be a lot more old farts who can't stop babbling about how great it (and they) used to be, and how crappy everything is today.

 

[dead dog]

Since 1980 there have been a lot of equipment and training changes, mostly for the better, and today there seems to be a lot more old farts who can't stop babbling about how great it (and they) used to be, and how crappy everything is today.

In 20 or 30 years from now, your going to be babbling about how great it (and you) used to be, and how crappy everything is in the future.

 

[tursiops]

In 20 or 30 years from now, your going to be babbling about how great it (and you) used to be, and how crappy everything is in the future.

LOL. I'm 79. I doubt it.

 

[Akimbo]

We were doing safety stops in the 1970s

Interesting, I don't recall formal safety stops. A lot of us using analog SOS Decompression Meters (Bend-O-Matics) would choose to make 10' decompression stops when the needle was near the red; at least until air ran out or we got too cold.

 

[Bob DBF]

I was in a BSAC club doing sports diving courses 1986 1987.... in reality we are all solo divers when we get in the water. You were already doing dives in BSAC Sports that tec divers do now. All dives were planned deco dives unlike PADI NDL. You brought you watch and tables and had to calculate deco at depth if your dive plan changed. Tanks on the anchor line when doing wreck dives so when you had to do DECO you used the regs on the tanks on the anchor line. Learning how to tie knots and what knots were used on tag lines or other ropes for what uses was also taught in BSAC sports diving. Never in PADI. Maybe it was just my instructor or being in a BSAC Club you just were taught more things over a period of time.

BSAC is a different animal than the agencies in the US. The training I received in the '60's was similar, it was not a formal club but did training and mentoring with diving being a continuum from NDL to deco, rather than the NDL only diving taught by the agencies.

 

[TMHeimer]

LOL. I'm 79. I doubt it.

Can't resist my old story again:
Me: Sign my log so I may remember you 30 years from now.
Student: How old are you?
Me: 60 (at the time).
Student: Good luck with that.

 

[Angelo Farina]

BSAC is a different animal than the agencies in the US. The training I received in the '60's was similar, it was not a formal club but did training and mentoring with diving being a continuum from NDL to deco, rather than the NDL only diving taught by the agencies.

Same training I had here in Italy in the seventies, very similar to BSAC. Here it was FIPS, which is the Italian branch of CMAS.
I do not think that there has been such a lot of change within each agency. The big change was when PADI, soon followed by all the other US agencies, landed here in Europe around 1980. These for-profit agencies were already employing methods very different from what was taught in no-profit clubs affiliated to CMAS.
From what I see, apart some technological advance in equipment, which has been integrated everywhere, the basic philosophies of the two worlds did not change too much.
What changed is that the number of people being certified by for-profit US-based agencies, based on shops, eroded progressively the number of sport divers being trained in clubs.
The other more recent novelty was the appearance of "tech" training, occupying the space left vacant between the even-more-limited boundaries set for recreational divers and the real professional world of commercial divers.
In the seventies there was not such a space, as rec diving was including oxygen rebreathers down to 10m and air down to 50m with deco, and beyond that it was commercial diving schools teaching tri-mix or saturation diving.

 

[tursiops]

Interesting, I don't recall formal safety stops.

I don't either. They were first researched in the early 70s and reported on in 1976, so they may have been done informally (especially in S.Cal. where the research was done), but I think the first time they appeared in tables and under training agency auspices was in the RDP.

 

[Angelo Farina]

In the seventies we did not have safety stops.
We were using US Navy tables with two adjustments:
1) ascend speed of 10 m/s instead of 18 m/s
2) Dive time did end when reaching 9m (first deco stop) instead than at depth, when beginning to ascend.
Of course maximum depth was considered, even if reached just for 1 second.
All this resulted in long deco stops, often at multple depths, for diving profiles which now are considred within NDL.
We were also taught that planning dives with deco was safer than planning without deco.
So, albeit the concept of a safety stop had not yet been introduced, we were doing longer stops than today.