Correct, but given that this is a comments thread, relating to my article, that is natural surely?
I've never attempted to imply that these were anything more than a personal view. I have, however, attempted to justify that view, on the basis of available training, 20 years of personal multi-agency experience and a common-sense argument that 'training should equate activity'.
I understand, so all these people worldwide, conducting and teaching Rec Deco are newbies without any experience, who don't know what they are doing?
What they consider safe and prudent is irrelevant. There's a dozen factors that could influence their 'considerations', many of which are not necessarily rooted in the best interests of the student divers.
Yes, I know from many threads here on SB - only your point of view is relevant, everything else is irrelevant.
I'd be interested in what a legal system would consider 'safe and prudent'.
In legal terms it might be called "state of the art". And just because you call Rec Deco being not state of the art, that doesn't mean that a judge or a jury may not decide completely different.
I'd also be interested to know why those agencies believed it was 'safe and prudent', when they also offer technical courses to accomplish the same goals.1. Not all agencies offering Rec Deco training, are offering Tec courses as well.
2. Ask them, I am not their spokesman.
I'd also be interested to know how something considered 'safe and prudent' based on the diving training system in the 1970's can now still be considered safe and prudent' 40 years later, when the scuba training community has evolved beyond anything that was available, or known, 4 decades ago.Things are not automatically bad, because they are done the same way for a long time. And not everything which is new is automatically good, just because it's new.
Can you supply any statistics to support that claim? Or are we just going to fly in a realm of assumption and fantastical hypothesis?I am not interessted in searching the web now just for you. But can you supply any statistics to support that there are more incidents on Rec Deco than on Tec dives?
I don't think the UK has a 'significantly low number of decompression incidents'. For a small diving population, diving infrequently, the statistics far outweigh those from much more high volume diving locations (where, incidentally, divers aren't permitted to do rec deco). The UK has more DCI incidents in a summer month that the whole of the Philippines has in a year. In the Philippines, deco is the preserve of technically trained divers. Same for Thailand, Malaysia etc. Very few dive operations would allow deco without appropriate technical training and equipment.I think diving in UK and in SEA is very difficult to compare and you have to go much into the details to get a valuable result. May be Edward3c may give you are more detailed response on that.
Then you can supply some precedent and/or explanation of how conducting deco dives, without deco training, is safe and prudent?I never said anything about conducting deco dives without deco training. All the agencies doing Rec Deco are training their students therefor and they do it much longer than the term "Rec Deco" does exist. Somewhere above you mentioned yourself a bit how BSAC for example is doing that. Your problem is only that you don't consider their training being sufficiant, but that is just your personal opinion - and yes I know, just your opinion is relevant. But your problem is that other people may see that different!!!