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Richard, I know you must realize this but I will say it anyway. What is the cutting edge for sport divers, yourself included, has been done by various military divers and commercial divers for years. Why try to reinvent the wheel? For sport divers to consider one of their own as the "father of tech diving" is a joke. The only thing that anyone in sport diving could be considered the "father of" is in utilizing technology that has been around and used for years by professional divers. What makes it "new and cutting edge" for sport divers is that sport divers are now venturing out of the recreational diving venue and into less mainstream (for sport divers) diving technologies. The problem I have found with military divers and commercial divers is that they are so friggin conservative in their outlook about diving. The same with AAUS, NOAA and all the other diving agencies. They are so conservative that they don't actually do any diving that I would be interested in doing. I'll give you an example. Disclaimer: I am not bashing NOAA. But, NOAA mounted a 300,000 dollar plus expedition to survey the Monitor (240fsw) in 1993 and hired a civilian, me, to photograph and dive with the "NOAA divers". Trimix, twin 120's, Dive Rite wings, gas panel, chamber on board, Aga with comm, diving bell because of OSHA regs, 4-point mooring, 174 foot oceanographic vessel, divers tethered to the surface, breathe on bibs going down and switch to 120's on the bottom. The NOAA diving office was in charge.In water diving was a total failure. You cannot dive the wreck under OSHA and NOAA guidelines. There is a good chance you will die. Think what happens when tethered to the surface (OSHA requirement for dives deeper than 200 feet) in a current with 300 feet of scope. You cannot get out of the bell and go to the bottom if your life depended on it. You go to the surface. For a diving bell(another OSHA rule) that hangs from a cable, there has to be an anti-spin cable next to the bell to which the bell is attached to keep the bell from spinning. In no current, the bell cable and anti-spin cable will precess around each other until each is firmly entwined with the other. Then they begin to saw on each other. And if the bell cable is cut in half divers get a fast ride to the bottom in a half ton bell. So with or without a current on the site their procedures will not work. NOAA rules and OSHA guidelines prohibit attaching a line to the bottom and using that line with free swimming divers to access the wreck. In other words the rules prohibit diving the site in a manner that would allow you to dive it. As for the NOAA divers, they had neither the experience at those depths, no trimix training other than that which was given for the dives and they had no business making those dives. Luckily most of them did not. Recently NOAA has relented and put a mooring down for private groups to use. This year NOAA permitted a few of their guys to become IANDT certified for mix at Bill Dean's place so now they are qualified. Right. On another project, I worked in France photographing a wreck in the English Channel at 200 fsw, 49 degrees F one hour window at slack high tide to do the dive in reasonable current. You cannot use mixed gas because the French have a rule that mix must be surface supplied not put in scuba tanks. So for three years I dived air. O2 deco at 3m. I got the job because I would dive it on air. If you were being paid as much as I was you would too. My point for this long post is that deep sport diving should be done with a combination of established practices and ad hoc procedures that work in the particular situation. If you are forced to do dives under AAUS, NOAA, OSHA, PADI, NAUI, etc. guidelines you ain't gonna get to dive anywhere deep, the English Channel, MONITOR, or anyother deep site. You have to use your own rules. And, european divers across the board are better divers than anything the American sytem can produce. Sure I know American divers that are as good or better than europeans, but they are few and far between. European divers that I have worked with are taught to dive under the conditions where they are going to dive. If they live where the water is 200 fsw deep, they are taught to dive to 200 feet. There is no depth limit per se. Andy Cohen don't show this post to Newell or the NOAA diving office. I got enough problems. > > The flip-side of this argument (which I side with), is that the guys doing > the cutting-edge dives cannot afford to serve as "good examples" to their > students by following such standards -- there is just too little margin > for error. Cutting-edge dives require precise optimization of equipment > and proceedures. Standards for training must account for the "lowest > common denominator". These two things (precise optimization and > standards) are, for the most part, mutually incompatible. By definition, > a diver-in-training is not anywhere near ready to be a "cutting-edge" > diver, and should therefore adhere to a different set of rules. > > The point of this message is to start a thread on the value of customizing > and optimizing versus the value of equipment and procedural > standardization. Is there one answer? Are there many answers? If > instructors are to maintain the "do as I say, not as I do" position, then > what is the best way to prevent over-confident students from taking the > "well if he can do it, so can I" approach? > > Any thoughts? > > Aloha, > Rich > > P.S. Not wanting to lose my status as someone who posts more information > than flamage, I hereby resign as the list humor-judge. > -- > Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@terra.net'. > Send subscription/archive requests to `techdiver-request@terra.net'. >
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