New Year, New Adventures
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| Bob Bennett enjoying life below 130' on a Dive Rite O2ptima Closed Circuit Rebreather (CCR) Photo: Tara McNaylor |
Close your eyes and remember the first time you breathed underwater. A brilliant, heart-pounding experience you wished would never end. Your recreational scuba certification enabled you to venture forth into a previously impenetrable world. The word recreation derives from the Latin word recreare meaning create again or renew. I certainly feel refreshed and renewed during every dive. Do you?
Lost that Loving Feeling?
Do you still feel the rush of anticipation before your dives and excitment when you descend? Perhaps you've been certified for a while and, although you still enjoy diving, you yearn for a new adventure.
Do any of the following apply to you?
- You've been wall diving to 130' and felt the lure of deeper dwelling flora and fauna.
- You are Cavern certified and contemplate the next step - cave diving.
- You aspire to dive deep WWII wrecks in Truk (Chuuk) Lagoon or Bikini Atoll but their depth is beyond your certification and experience.
- You aspire to dive deep WWII wrecks in Truk (Chuuk) Lagoon or Bikini Atoll but their depth is beyond your certification and experience.
- You are itching to dive on the 90% of the 911' aircraft carrier USS ORISKANY that are beyond your recreational credentials. (Her keel rests at 212'.)
- You wish you had more time than no-stop diving allows between 100' and 130'. After all, a 20-minute dive on the VANDENBERG is way too short!
If you've dreamed of these or other underwater adventures tech diving can take you there!
What Is Technical Diving?
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| Cavern in Peacock Springs State Park, Florida. Great adventure awaits you in the caves beyond the light zone. Photo: Bob Bennett |
Michael Menduro is credited with coining the phrase "technical" diving in the early 1990s. The definition varies, but generally includes dives involving:
- depths greater than 130'
- accelerated decompression
- detailed dive planning
- overhead environments
- variable gas mixtures
Diving Science & Technology (DSAT) adds that tech diving includes the "use of scuba technologies that require discipline, thought, training and attitude beyond that required by recreational divers."
Diving Science & Technology (DSAT) adds that tech diving includes the "use of scuba technologies that require discipline, thought, training and attitude beyond that required by recreational divers."
The use of gas other than air in scuba diving largely was the province of commercial and military divers until the 1980s when pioneers like Dick Rutkowski Billy Deans brought new thinking into sport diving. Mr. Rutkowski, founder of the International Association of Nitrox Divers (IAND), advocated the recreational use of Nitrox. Billy Deans began conducting clear-headed deep dives to 250' in the Florida Keys by using trimix which uses helium to displace nitrogen, reducing the latter's narcotic effects at depth.
Michael Menduro's aquaCorps Journal (now defunct) published articles such as Dr. Bill Hamilton's "Call it High-Tech Diving." Interest in technical diving spread and the recreational diving community began to respond. Training agencies developed courses and training materials, dive shops learned to blend Nitrox and certify divers in its use, and charter boats modified their operations to accomodate longer dives that Nitrox facilitated. Nitrox is now considered a mainstream option for all recreational dives. (We covered Nitrox in our October 2018 issue.)
Why Learn Technical Diving?
Engage Your Brain
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| Bob & Fred preparing to dive Orange Grove Sink in Wes Skiles Peacock Springs Park, FL Photo: Rose Bennett |
On recreational charter boat dives we slap on an aluminum 80 and are told by the crew how much time we can spend at each site. The dictated bottom time is driven by two things: the boat's schedule and recreational diving no-stop limits. But do you know how to calculate how much gas you need at a given depth, be it 50' or 165'? Technical diving deepens your knowledge and skills in dive physics and physiology, trim and buoyancy, dive planning, and equipment selection, configuration and mastery.
Are you content with doing things because your instructor said so or do you like understanding why? Good divers want to understand why.
Are you content with doing things because your instructor said so or do you like understanding why? Good divers want to understand why.
Dive More Confidently
We train recreational divers to be somewhat self-reliant (e.g. controlled emergency swimming ascent) while heavily emphasizing the buddy system. However, many divers are so focused on their own pleasure and skill development that they pay little mind to their buddy. Conversely, others focus so much on their buddy's safety that they forget to enjoy the dive. We see this with male-female teams where the male's noble protective instinct stunts his female buddy's skill development. This establishes a dependency that can endanger the lesser-skilled diver in an emergency. A true team is comprised of equally capable, confident divers.
Technical diving reinforces recreational skills such as buoyancy and trim, emergency response, safe ascents, safety stops, and basic dive planning and builds upon them.
- Neutral buoyancy becomes second nature
- Trim becomes beautifully horizontal
- Response to a low or out-of-air diver is calm and deliberate
- Accurate dive planning and execution becomes a source of pride
- Neutral buoyancy becomes second nature
- Trim becomes beautifully horizontal
- Response to a low or out-of-air diver is calm and deliberate
- Accurate dive planning and execution becomes a source of pride
Discover New Worlds
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| Bob concludes a two-hour cave dive. PPO2 0.5 to 1.2. Bailout EANx32. Photo: Rose Bennett |
It's easy to hehold the beauty of a cave carved by water over the millenia or the subtle changes that wrecks undergo; they they slowly decay as the ecosystems they host become vibrant.
What about risks? Extensive training prepares us to master the skills we use to anticipate and address underwater situations before they become emergencies. Pre-dive planning and in-water execution become a symphony of orchestrated movements. Top shelf, diligently maintained equipment becomes essential when diving at 200' (7 ATA).
Smart overhead divers also practice progressive penetration, a concept whereby one gets to know a cave or wreck a little at a time. One builds a library of images useful for extricating oneself in a silt out. Combined with mastery of lost line drills and coolheaded responses, an overhead diver solves the problem and safely exits. Next is a thorough debrief and logbook entry to capture the experience.
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| Billy Payne rigged up for a tech training dive at Dive Georgia Photo: Rose Bennett |
Discover New Life
Tech diving is more than wrecks and caves. Consider this. Many Pacific and Carribean islands have beautiful walls that plunge hundreds of feet deep. Technical diving enables you to explore sealife that lives below recreational depth such as black coral and the elusive clown triggerfish, then decompress on an anchor line by using your own reel and lift bag or delayed surface marker buoy (DSMB) to "hang" comfortably and accurately at each stop.
Challenge Yourself
Agreeing with your signficant other what to watch on Netflix on Friday night may be a dilema but it's not intellectually stimulating. Just as muscles require exertion to build, our minds require stimulation to remain lucid.
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| L-R Bill Belcher, Bob Bennett & Fred Stratton suiting up for a three-hour dive into Jackson Blue Spring in Marianna, FL Photo: Rose Bennett |
A year later I earned my trimix certification. I enjoyed everything about the physical challenge of mastering doubles and the mental discipline required to use trimix, EANx32 and 100% oxygen to make 200' drift dives off the O'ahu coast where we met barracuda, spinner dolphins, humpback whales, and hammerhead sharks. Technical diving took me there.
Break Your Routine
Routines are comforting to many people. Routines can also breeds complacency. We eat at the same restaurants, drive the same route to work, and plan similar dive profiles often without thinking. Not thinking and diving is like drinking and driving. Just don't do it! Safe divers live in the moment; anticipate pre-dive preparation, savor in-water experiences, and savor post-dive dinner.
Tech diving will stimulate your senses, break your dive routines, and stir your soul. Certifying to dive EANX is a logical prelude to technical diving courses. You learn how blending various mixes of breathing gas by adjusting O2 content facilitates longer no-stop dives. Technical diving builds on this knowedge, facilitating exploration beyond 130' or in overhead environments.
It All Started When...
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| Viewing the sun from an underwater cavern Photo: Pixabay |
We immediately sought an instructor to teach us cave diving. We found Walter Ross. (More on our adventures with Walter in a future article on the wonders of cave diving.)
I'm Interested! What's Next?
Discover Tec
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| Bob Bennett introduces Dan Alix to diving doubles: twin steel cylinders with an isolator manifold Photo: Rose Bennett |
The Discover Tec course offers the opportunity to try some technical gear and diving skills in a relaxed, safe confined water environment. Your instructor can set up your tech rig and give you a sense of what's involved in tech diving or you can complete several skills and and get credit for Dive One of the next course, which is the Tec 40 course.
Enrollment: 18 years old with 10 logged
Tec 40
The Tec 40 course is the entry-level open circuit technical diving course. You'll venture down to 130'/40m as you seek to learn gas switching while using enriched air to extend your bottom time. Preparing for, and responding to, foreseeable emergencies will be taught and practiced until you master them in preparation for longer, deeper dives employing staged decompression. Tec 40 skills include:
- Close a cylinder valve to a regulator experiencing a simulated free flow
- Respond to a buddy's simulated out-of-gas emergency providing the long hose 2nd stage and switching to the short hose 2nd stage, then swim for 100'/30m
- Don, remove and re-don a stage or deco cylinder on the bottom and at the surface
- Deploy a lift bag or delayed surface marker buoy\ (DSMB) from the bottom
- Determine surface air consumption (SAC) rate
- Maintain a simulated deco stop for eight minutes
Enrollment: 18 years of age, 30 logged dives, Advanced Open Water certified, Enriched Air certified with 10 nitrox dives deeper than 60', and Deep Diver certified or 10 logged dives to 100'.
Coming in February
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