My MX cave instructor (who is Italian) had a group of S Korean students this spring. She said TDI has a large presence in S Korea.
Since when did technical diving courses become a thing in your country?
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If you count decompression diving as technical diving, then in Germany ever since the end of WW2 and the first die clubs. Otherwise, mid to late 1990s; by the mid 2000s there were already SSI and PADI tech courses.
The term ‘technical’ is just a marketing phrase to extract more money out of divers.
Twinsets were going out of fashion when I started, single regs and new 207bar cylinders were coming in.
Technical is just diving.
Twinsets were going out of fashion when I started, single regs and new 207bar cylinders were coming in.
Technical is just diving.
It's kind of like the north east US, for example the Andrea Doria. People have dived it forever but only in the past ~20 years did those dives get labelled as "technical" and needed loads of plastic cards.
Maybe it was the influence of DIR on diving... Must do it that way otherwise... oh, you've all ignored us and just gone diving.
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dhkim030203
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I dunno. I think the division of diving into recreational and technical, and the marketing of technical diving to people whose goal it is to do big dives has been a good thing. Back in the day, as I understand it, one had to cozy up to a mentor who was willing to show you how to do this stuff--or at least show you how they had been doing it. If you tired of being taught at someone else's convenience, you might just go out and wing it. Sounds risky to me. With the advent of formal courses, you could instead chart a path at the beginning that would get you to your goal of diving to X depth and/or for X time, or in a cave, etc.
I first heard the term "technical diving" something as 5 years ago, around 2017 or 2018.
Here in Italy traditional diving schools were teaching deco procedures, double tanks plus deco bottles, and CC rebreathers back in the sixties, but this was considered (and is still considered by most) just "normal" scuba diving. Typically a first diving course was 6 months long... And getting a complete certification did require 3 years.
"American" style short courses arrived around 1980, but became ubiquitous only around 1985. We considered weird not teaching deco procedures and redundant gas supplies. We also considered strange to have those additional "specialty" courses, for teaching "normal" things such as boat diving, shore diving, night diving, wreck diving, orienteering, etc.
What we always had was a clear distinction between diving for leisure and diving for money (professional or commercial).
There was also a clear distinction, both for recreational and commercial, between low-depth (less than 50m, done usually in air) and high depth (more than 50m), the latter requiring helium, trimix or hypoxic mix.
Most recreational divers, as me, had certifications enabling to dive in air down to 50m with planned deco stops and multiple tanks, and, for people getting the OW certification before 1985, also including pure-oxygen CC rebreathers. Now these are considered "technical" features in some countries.
Personally I do not think that there is anything special in this, and "technical" for me means high depth with helium, or cave diving with deep penetration.
Here in Italy traditional diving schools were teaching deco procedures, double tanks plus deco bottles, and CC rebreathers back in the sixties, but this was considered (and is still considered by most) just "normal" scuba diving. Typically a first diving course was 6 months long... And getting a complete certification did require 3 years.
"American" style short courses arrived around 1980, but became ubiquitous only around 1985. We considered weird not teaching deco procedures and redundant gas supplies. We also considered strange to have those additional "specialty" courses, for teaching "normal" things such as boat diving, shore diving, night diving, wreck diving, orienteering, etc.
What we always had was a clear distinction between diving for leisure and diving for money (professional or commercial).
There was also a clear distinction, both for recreational and commercial, between low-depth (less than 50m, done usually in air) and high depth (more than 50m), the latter requiring helium, trimix or hypoxic mix.
Most recreational divers, as me, had certifications enabling to dive in air down to 50m with planned deco stops and multiple tanks, and, for people getting the OW certification before 1985, also including pure-oxygen CC rebreathers. Now these are considered "technical" features in some countries.
Personally I do not think that there is anything special in this, and "technical" for me means high depth with helium, or cave diving with deep penetration.
That might be true in Korea but the US Navy has always been behind recreational and commercial diving in terms of equipment, at least for fleet divers. The bureaucracy is enormous and signing off on change, which is always unpopular, is bad for careers if people die.
Another BIG factor is momentum. Navy diver don't just buy a piece of gear and go diving. It has to go through a long testing cycle to get approved and then get into the naval supply system AND divers have to be trained to use it. It is not unusual for that model to be off the market by the time all that is done.
Until recently, Aqua Lung manufactured equipment that was off the recreational market for decades in their military division just to keep the supply system happy.
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