I dive OC and nothing prevents me from talking to my buddies.
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If that puts them off doing it, that's good, they shouldn't be doing it if they don't want to learn how to do it safely. !
I hear you but i disagree. If you take this philosophy and apply it to developing (any ) sport it will kill it. You dont want to put them off - you want them to come along. The divers who are committed to mixed teams will embrace it and work through the safety issues regardless, so your article/notes arent necessarily aimed at them, so they must be aimed at the divers who are maybe anticipating mixed teams or are in mixed teams on occasion and by creating barriers either through complexity or making an entry point too hard might even be counterproductive.
Ive been involved in sports development in other arenas and ive learnt that unless you create easy entry points to development it slows growth.
DoctorMike,
I think that agencies and some individuals try to make things too easy these days. There as a time when we expected divers to try to understand some rather complex topics, to compute surface air consumption rates, to look at decompression problems and decide whether a second dive for the day was practical to the depth they wanted to go to, using tables and a dive plan to map things out. Now, with dive computers and algorithms for diving, this is not necessary and has resulted in instructors and agencies “dumbing down” the instruction to the point where a paper like yours comes under fire for being “too complex.” I think that is off base, and denigrates today’s divers to the point where people are afraid of complex concepts. I think your paper is fine the way it is.
SeaRat
DoctorMike,
The differences you and others mention here between OC divers and CCR divers reminds me a lot of the commentary I read from Harry Reasoner about the difference between a fixed wing pilot and a helicopter pilot. Having crewed both aircraft and helicopters in the USAF, I can attest to the truth here.
Enjoy,
SeaRat
DoctorMike,
That brings up one other difference between OC divers and CCR divers; exercise (or rather, lack of exercise). OC divers usually are not concerned about the work of diving, whereas CCR divers seem obsessed with not exerting. This is because CO2 buildup is very hazardous, and also decreases the “run time” of their absorbent. So when doing a mixed dive (CCR & OC divers), the pace is set by the slowest. This is something from hiking that needs, I think, special emphasis when CCR and OC divers dive as a buddy team.
SeaRat