I have not read all of the posts but yes he makes sense. I am starting to get into tech diving and I am learning things that make me wonder "why the hell was I not taught this before?" ...
After taking Essentials of Tec courses I am getting more and more convinced that this so called "rec diving" industry is full of nonsensical short cuts designed to speed up certification rather than to create a better diver. The split fins, snorkel and BCD jacket culture that I was introduced to in my OW class is something I have had to unlearn even within recreational limits to become a better diver. Why waste people's time with such tactics that save instructors time and do nothing more. I wish someone had strapped me in a BP-Wing from day 1 and that would have caused my weight belt to be so much lighter.
The difference is not due to a decision by the recreational/sport (whatever) diving community. The different styles and the different equipment are due to the fact that the two evolved separately. The equipment and techniques used by each set of divers were developed over decades in accordance to their needs. If you go to most dive shops I know and talk to the people helping you about tech diving issues, there is a good chance that person will not have a real clue about it. I had never seen a technical diver until I started the training myself, and I was an experienced OW instructor then. Once when I was practicing in the pool, the shop's buyer came in and asked me to explain what I was wearing and why I was wearing it.
Ok, thanks for answering that. What are some of the skills that would be taught that would overlap across all technical courses, besides gas? What kind of skills would be taught in advanced nitrox or advanced trimix, again besides gas? Could any of those skills be useful to basic open water recreational diving? If they're potentially important life saving skills, should they be part of the basic open water course?
There is very little actual
skill associated gas choices, and as far as the academics are concerned, there is not much going on in an advanced nitrox course that is not contained in a basic nitrox course. PADI does not even teach an advanced nitrox course because they just include that information along with the other material in their tech program.
When I teach technical diving, the very hardest
skills for students to learn are the following, listed starting with the hardest skills first, according to how it seems to me.
1. Valve shutdown: Divers in doubles need to be able to shut down any malfunctioning valve on the manifold behind them, and they need to be able to do it quickly. Many beginners can't even touch those valves, let alone shut them down and then open them all again in the 45 seconds required by the courses I teach. They need to be able to do this while hovering in horizontal trim and holding a decompression stop. Man, that is hard!
2. Holding a decompression stop: You need to be able to hover in horizontal trim at a specific depth for an extended period of time, and you need to be able to do those in a series of stops at different depths. Let's say you are using a computer to manage your stops, and you switch to oxygen for the 20 foot stop. Let's say you are there for 10 minutes. During those 10 minutes, your computer will flash a warning for high oxygen partial pressure if you drop to 21 feet, and it will flash you a warning for missing the stop if you rise to 19 feet. You have to be able to deal with ANY emergency that might arise while you are holding your position.
3. Advanced kicking skills: Divers need to be proficient in the frog kick, the modified frog kick, the modified flutter kick, the back kick, and the helicopter turn. I can't begin to estimate how many hours it took me to master the back kick.
4. Handling decompression bottles effectively: The number of extra tanks you carry depends upon the nature of the dive you are doing. You need to be able to switch to the correct gas at the correct depth without changing that depth, which is a lot harder than it sounds. In the first dive of the trimix PADI trimix course, students need to be able to handle 4 decompression tanks effectively.
So how does this apply to recreational diving? To me, the skill you pick up in doing the above translates into improved buoyancy and trim that will revolutionize your diving. I was once on a recreational/sport trip to the island Ni'ihau in Hawai'i. The DM pointed to a very unusual lobster hiding off in a corner of a large swim through. I casually frog kicked over into that tightly confined area, stopped and hovered next to it while I gave it a good look, backed up to get into an area where the ceiling was not so low, did a helicopter turn, and swam away to let others get a look. No one else could get close, and back on the boat the talk was all "How did you do that?" Well, for a tech diver, what I did was pretty easy. When I went to Truk Lagoon and visited those old wrecks, my buddy and I did our best to avoid going into the rooms in the wrecks with most of the other people on the trip, because their flutter kicking stirred up so much rust and silt that it was tough to see anything. The primary reason technical divers learn those kicks is so they can go into such environments without ruining them.