boulderjohn.
Whilst i don't really want to start a ping pong of posts. I think Chrisch post was accurate, or at least the pieces in your reply.
Part of the issue is that Chrisch, was trained in the UK and Europe.
In the UK, if he learnt with SSA, or BSAC, we teach staged decompression as part of the
recreational diver training. As such, decompression diving is not really thought of as 'technical'. It is also true to say that the line between recreational and technical has blurred.
Probably, the easiest point in the UK to determine where you transition from recreational diving to technical diving, would be if you start to do accelerated decompression.
We are also taught, all dives are decompression dives, irrespective of no-stop or staged decompression.
Any change to a shallower depth, by definition, means you will start to decompress. Once on the surface after a dive, you
continue to decompress, until the inert gas in your system balances with the ambient pressure.
It might be that we are a bit more literal than you guys the other side of the pond
.
It might explain why I get so confused why charter boats in the USA seem to think its safer to get out of the water bang on the last minute of the allowable NDL time, rather than chuck an extra 5 minutes of stops onto the dive and get out 5 minutes late. For me, running to the edge of the NDL has a much higher perceived risk than moving up to the next column on the table and doing the required staged decompression stop.
Gareth