The minimalist movement

[Rich Keller]

And I thought I was just devolving.

I agree with you about it being more than just equipment reduction. In fact, I would say that's the least part of it. I would say that relearning how divers in the past planned and executed dives with minimal gear (the actual strategies) is far more valuable and important and why most modern era divers struggle with the idea. They have not been taught skin diving, neutral weighting, intuitive gas planning or situational awareness to the same degree.

Telling someone without neutral buoyancy to go without a BC is a recipe for disaster. As is telling someone who only knows to return to the surface with 500psi to do without an SPG. Someone with no skin diving experience will be far less likely to be comfortable in the water without a device for maintaining positive buoyancy. Someone who just jumps off the boat and follows a DM around may struggle putting all the pieces together if what they are doing is different from the crowd.

Of course these sorts of things can be learned, I did so as a modern trained diver, but you have to seek out those ideas as they are largely ignored or even denigrated by today's dive culture.

I agree 100%. The only things I would add is that being able to dive this way makes you far less dependent on the equipment itself. If you know how to weight yourself properly for example then the BCD becomes just a connivence not a necessity that you can not dive without. It also made you more aware of what was going on if you were depending on a J valve rather then a SPG for example you got to know the feel of the reg as your air started to run low. It didn't take much time before you didn't have to depend on the J valve either you just knew by feel when it was time to go up before needing to go to your reserve. No computers, not even water proof tables, I would just write the NDL on the arm of my wetsuit starting with 70' in permanent ink. There was less gear and it was not as sophisticated so the diver had to be better to make up for that difference.

---------- Post added April 18th, 2015 at 07:59 AM ----------

"jettisonable" weights really are for beginners. Those who have some experience should be able to use fins to lift themselves up without a problem, unless they carry like 50 pounds in lead... Hopefully one wears proper fins. I never heard experienced divers really care about ditch-able weights. I guess, maybe, they don't overweight themselves... and they can manage what they got... In the end, you can always use your sausage to give you some bouyancy.

I guess that I do not meet your standards for an experienced diver, I dive with all my weights on a belt so that it is jettison-able but I have only been doing this for 44 years. Even a few pounds makes a difference so I use a pouch belt, if the situation is not life or death I can just drop some weight but the option to drop it all if needed is always there. You on the other hand depend on more equipment that takes more time to deploy then you may have and requires air that you may not have. When the sh!t hits the fan I just drop my weights and I am on the surface breathing an unlimited supply of air. Experienced divers like yourself stay on the bottom with all your weights and either play with a lift bag or try to swim up. I read about experienced divers like you in the accident & incident section. Just out of curiosity do you know what to do if one the straps on your proper fins breaks? You people are so dependent on the equipment it should scare you but you do not know any better because the people who train you also sell you the equipment. Their solution to being safer is always going to be buy more equipment.

---------- Post added April 18th, 2015 at 08:38 AM ----------

This is a quote from my instructor in 1974: "If you are found dead on the bottom still wearing your weights it is because you were a fracking moron and that cost you your life." PS: I had to substitute the word "fracking" for what he really said because you can not use that kind of language on SB.

 

[Bob DBF]

It also made you more aware of what was going on if you were depending on a J valve rather then a SPG for example you got to know the feel of the reg as your air started to run low. It didn't take much time before you didn't have to depend on the J valve either you just knew by feel when it was time to go up before needing to go to your reserve.

This is the part where you tell the kids don't try this at home. The regulators at the time were unbalanced, as the tank pressure dropped the IP would drop and it would become harder to breathe and this could be felt around 2 to 4 hundred pounds. This gave a lot of time to end the dive and surface as you had plenty of air but had to work harder for it. Regs now are balanced and the IP is maintained till the tank pressure is the IP pressure (theoretically). This does not give much warning or time to end the dive. For divers that have not gotten used to OOA situations, as we did back in the old days, it is a recipe for disaster. When I do the full on minimal/vintage, I use an old unbalanced reg as well, or a J-valve since they allow more wiggle room.

This is a quote from my instructor in 1974: "If you are found dead on the bottom still wearing your weights it is because you were a fracking moron and that cost you your life." PS: I had to substitute the word "fracking" for what he really said because you can not use that kind of language on SB.

I could not think of anything more embarrassing than my funeral than a mate saying "The dumb a** died with his weight belt on". And yes, I do have a vivid imagination.



Bob
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Trained when J-valves solved the OOA problem.

 

[Bryan@Vintage Double Hose]

In an unbalanced piston first stage IP decreases as cylinder pressue drops. The opposite happens in an unbalanced diaphragm first stage. So ease of breathing could become easier or more difficult as cylinder pressure drops.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Wow! It's great to see an old thread I started several years ago sprout new life.
Must be because of the other threads where minimalist principles were being discussed.
I would imagine that maybe only one one hundredth of one percent of people have any interest or aptitude for true minimalist diving, mostly old schoolers and very few new divers.
Like it has already explained Minimalism requires knowledge and training. To just remove a bunch of gear off a new diver and throw them into the ocean would be a disaster, for anybody interested in pursuing this school of diving there are protocols and a learning curve.
Minimalism is based on old principles but all the gear and some of the training is completely modern. The "new" school is a break out and leap forward out of what is currently considered "standard" by current convention.
The core belief is that training/comfort/practice/knowledge (which allows for use of less gear) is safer/cleaner/more economical (in many aspects) than an undertrained diver with a bunch of gear to cover for lack of skills and training.

 

[Rich Keller]

This is the part where you tell the kids don't try this at home.

I wouldn't worry about that too much, the kiddies would never even attempt this. There is probably only about 1% who could pull this off and none of them are new or sheep that just follow the crowd.

 

[Bob DBF]

Wow! It's great to see an old thread I started several years ago sprout new life.

Some zombies are good.

Still chuckling about the picture of a diver flying through the air about to find out his OW class didn't prepare him for this particular dive.


Bob
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I may be old, but I'm not dead yet.

 

[DaleC]

Eric, I just realized you are ZKY! I was wondering whatever happened to him when I first saw it revived

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Eric, I just realized you are ZKY! I was wondering whatever happened to him when I first saw it revived

Yes! It's me.
Who else would talk about no BC diving, one second stage, J-valves, etc?

One thing I wanted to add to Rich's post above is that as far as no SPG's go, the way I was taught by an old timer was to know your sac rate (roughly) and know how much gas you have at the start (tank checker). Then do the math with depth and time and that will give you a pretty good idea of when the reg should start breathing hard. By that time you should already be finishing the dive because we all plan our dives and pay attention to how long we've been down and our average depth, right?
So with a 72 filled to 2250 I know I can do a 45 minute dive at an average of 40 feet.
I went as far as taking a tech diving trick I learned during a TDI class (not protocol as far as I know) and covering my SPG with duct tape and doing the depth/time thing. If I really wanted to know how much air I had left I could always pull the tape as see, but the idea is to make it so you have to work at it, and thus it's becomes more automatic just to pay attention to depth and time and to make sure you brought enough gas on the trip to make the planned dive.


The best way to teach someone to use a BC the proper way is to take it away for a while then give it back, and the best way to teach someone never to run OOA is to take away their SPG for a while then give it back.