What Is Technical Diving? A Good Introduction To The Discipline. Part 1 of 2

here we go this map is Monday we are tackling the one question I probably get asked the most now you've helped me used the phrase technical diving before and you've probably heard me drop in other videos that I am a technical diving instructor but what is technical diving [Music] ladies gentleman or what is going on welcome to divers ready my name is James it is so fantastic to see all your smiling faces out there in YouTube land if you are new to this channel welcome as always we make hints and tips videos for certified scuba divers with one simple goal in mind to help make you a better diver so if you haven't done so already consider to make your next dive on that subscribe button click the little bar icon so you don't miss any of our awesome content and you are not going to want to because we've got so much fantastic stuff lined up for this channel for example as a sneak peek we are going to Bimini in the Bahamas later this month we're going to be shooting a bunch of videos there so keep your eyes peeled for those also coming up we have the hashtag ask divers ready your chance to ask a professional dive instructor anything you wanted to know about the scuba diving industry about this channel so jump on social media tag this with hashtag ask divers ready and we'll be happy to answer your questions in addition to that we have the D Micheaux coming up next month if you're not familiar that is the largest scuba diving conference on the planet we will be there we will be making videos on the community tab of our YouTube channel page I put up a poll this week we've already got like over a hundred votes blew me away asking you what content do you want us to make it D more what are you interested in we very much want you to have your say in shaping this channel and the videos that we make okay so on to today's topic technical diving this is actually going to be part one of a two-part mouthpiece Monday the reason being when I was scripting out this video I got a little carried away and it Rams like 5 or 6 pages I know some of you are surprised that I do script my videos because it sounds like sometimes I'm rambling like a crazy man Oh time so instead of making one 35 minute video that no one's gonna watch I'm gonna snip that in half and do part 1 and part 2 so in this part 1 I'm going to be answering the question what is technical diving and later in this video I'm going to be dispelling three common myths about technical diving and putting some truths out there as I have it later in part two which I will link up there when it's complete we will talk about five signs that you are ready to start technical diver training yourself so what is technical diving what do we mean by a tech dive well the simplest way that I can explain technical diving is it is any dive that is planned and executed beyond the limits of recreational diving so in order to understand what a technical divers we need a little refresher on what the limits of recreational diving are so the first limits of recreational diving is your depth if you are an advanced certified diver with a deep diver specialty certification you are allowed to dive to a maximum depth of 130 feet or 40 meters so anything beyond that depth is considered a technical dive and it should be trained for planned and executed accordingly the second limit on recreational divers is your total distance from the surface now wait a minute James isn't that depth well no what we're talking about here is how far you can go into an overhead environment such as a cave or a wreck and that is limited by your total distance to the surface so for example if you want to explore the inside of a wreck as a recreational diver and that wreck is a 30 meters or 100 feet you allowed a total distance to the surface of 40 meters or 130 feet so that means you'd be able to go 10 meters in or 30 feet inside the wreck you're also limited or recreational dives by the sunlight and how far the traits into the cavern or wreck so in other words you can't go out of sight of natural light and the last limit on recreational divers is time how long you can die for and that is limited of course by your no decompression limit which is the amount of time that you can spend a given depth breathing the gas that your breathing be there or nitrox without incurring mandatory decompression stops so how then how do technical divers get away with going beyond these established no decompression limits death limits and penetration well let's go back and look at each one in turn and please remember as always I am NOT teaching anyone to scuba dive through the internet I am not giving anyone permission to turn a recreational dive into a technical dive that is not a thing this is purely for entertainment and your information only so first off how do technical divers go deeper than 40 meters well the key decision here in deciding how deep a technical dive can be conducted is the breathing medium ie the gas mix of choice now if you remember from our nitrox video that we posted a couple of weeks ago the deeper you go the leaner your gas mix has to be in other words the less po2 percentage okay that's great so that brings us down to air which is 21% but what if we want to go deeper than air will allow us to dive safely well that's where helium comes into play now helium is an inert gas and it is absorbed into our body so when it comes to off gassing on our ascent we need to release that nitrogen and helium that's absorbed safely we still have to factor helium into those calculations but helium has another very important advantage and that is it is non-narcotic therefore it reduces narcosis this is important because the deeper you go the greater the cost of any errors you could make and therefore a clear head when technical diving is essential in addition to that they need to come up with multiple decompression schedules which we'll talk about a little later on and they need to plan the volume of gas that they're gonna carry to make sure that they don't run out of gas during their dive my point there is it's not just about being able to sink better yeah we want to hit debts but we also want to come back from them safely so how the technical divers explore further into caves or deep inside the belly of some of these shipwrecks this is when you hear your technical divers start to talk about soft ceilings and hard ceilings a soft ceiling is your hypothetical decompression ceiling ie you cannot go to shallower than this depth without risking getting the bends a hard ceiling is a physical obstruction between you and the surface ie the roof of the cave or the interior of a sunken ship so to go beyond the light limit and to go deeper inside these overhead environments there's a number of fact that need to be considered first and foremost is teamwork this is always a team sport and roles need to be assigned second thing a technical diver needs is solid line handling skills because they're going to use a reel to mark their path into and out of the overhead environment and then as with the deeper they need to plan their gas consumption in regards to a three-dimensional environment so how do technical divers exceed the no decompression limit safely again there's a few different factors to consider here number one being they need to consider gas physics and human physiology and have a really in-depth understanding of both of those topics they need to know what's happening as gas is being absorbed into the body on descent and at depth and then released from their body with every exhalation that they make on ascent and then secondly with that knowledge they need to apply it to create a decompression schedule this is a series of stops and times that they're gonna make on their ascent which is gonna allow you to release that gas in a safe manner there's a lot of maths involved thirdly we also make use of decompression gas these are typically rich Oh tube gases and therefore if they're rich in oxygen they are lean or light in nitrogen now by breathing these gases that encourages the nitrogen that's absorbed into our body to leave our body in a fast but safe manner now that all sounds cool and I just throw a heap of buzzwords at you and I can feel all of you alpha females and males out there starting to salivate but let me be as clear as I possibly can decompression is always a planned event if you're doing a recreational dive and you exceed your no decompression limit you are not a technical diver you are just a shitty recreational diver that is not how tech divers operate if you allow that to happen if you don't have that kind of control then you're not ready to go Tech at all now that all sounds like a lot of maths a lot of science and a lot of expense involved so what's the payoff why bother doing tech dives put simply I consider being a technical diver to be a privilege because we get to go and explore these dive sites these caves these wrecks that very few divers get to see just here in Florida we have hundreds of miles of caves and hundreds of shipwrecks that are simply out of reach of the recreational diver that they'll never get to experience unless they accept the challenge of becoming a tech neither so as is becoming my habit on this channel let's dispel some myths here are my top three myths that I hear about tank or diving all the time and my opinions they're off number one tech diving equals commercial diving maybe not so much with divers but when I tell people who aren't divers are on a technical diving company they presume that I'm an underwater engineer that's commercial diving that's completely different those guys are crazy what we're doing is technical divers is still for the purpose of having fun still recreational commercial divers are out there to make a living as an underwater engineer now that doesn't mean that commercial divers don't use some of the same techniques that technical divers use especially when they're hundreds of feet down at the bottom of an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico or the North Sea for example myth number two tech wreck wreck there's often confusion between all these terms so let's straighten that out right now you have technical diving which is also referred to as tech diving or tech diving or tech diving that's all what we're talking about today technical diving then you can have recreational diving which is sometimes shortened to wreck diving then of course you have wreck diving which is diving on a shipwreck or artificial reef so you can do a tech wreck dive or you can do a wreck wreck dive but you can't do a tech wreck dive confused you should be myth number three come with your just get along okay so here in South Florida we have a bunch of dive sites that are accessible to both the advanced open water recreational diver and make great training sites for technical diving one example will be the Spiegel Grove probably my favorite wreck in South Florida and quite often I'll be out there on a charter boat with my technical diving students and there will be advanced open water students doing recreational dives on the same wreck and will be killing up with all our tech gear dressed head to toe in black looking serious doing all our pre dive safety checks and I'll catch a glimpse of a creation divers face and I can see that they want to ask us questions like what are you guys doing that's different from what we're doing because I've got a single eighty and ejection style BCD and we're going to the same wreck and I totally get that but what frustrates me is they kind of give you that look and then they kind of just go okay you know and they don't come over and ask us questions and that's because the reputation of technical divers is one of being somewhat a prickly demeanor not approachable or not friendly or not welcoming and I absolutely hate that stereotype so hashtag asked divers ready if you've ever been on a boat for technical divers and they haven't answered any questions satisfactorily hit us up on social media and I don't think that it's because the personality of the technical diver is mean I think about all my friends who are techies and you know they're all fantastic people it's just that technical diving requires a certain focus when we're on the boat we've got hell of a lot of expensive equipment that we need to check and prepare and a whole series of pre dive checks that we want to get through and we found when we do them and we focus and we were you know singular and our goal and our minds are set and that can sometimes put out that kind of like oh don't go near them they're not approachable kind of water by all means if you see me on a charter boat come over and ask any questions you want to ask that happily talk you through my gear setup or or what we're doing for the day absolutely just maybe you know choose your opportunity wisely don't ask when I'm in the middle of my free dive safety checks or something like that they have it ladies and gentlemen that is my introductory guide to the topic of technical diving don't forget to make your next dive on that subscribe button click the little bell icon so you don't miss part 2 where I'm gonna be sharing with you my five signs that you yourself might be ready for the challenge of technical diver training right here I'm going to put a playlist with all of our other mouthpiece mondays and just below it I've created a playlist for newly certified divers things that I wished I'd known as I was becoming a diver until next time my name is James and this was your divers ready mouthpiece Monday for this week dive safe dive often [Music]

Channel: Divers Ready

Views: 39,758

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Keywords: padi, scuba diving, scuba diver, scuba certification, diving, dive gear, dive equipment, scuba, open water, deep diver, wreck diving, underwater, diver advice, scuba certified, james blackman, scuba cert, scuba gear, scuba review, technical diving, technical dive skills, technical diving equipment, technical diving international, padi open water, padi elearning, padi login, tec diving, tec diving course, scuba diving videos, deep scuba diving, divers ready

Id: urF3mZ2W6KQ

Length: 13min 33sec (813 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 07 2019