Television, magazines, stories from a friend – it doesn’t matter the source, exploring the underwater world and escaping the surface is enticing and exciting. So how do we keep exploring? What exactly is technical diving?
Additionally, sidemount diving has become wildly popular even for open water diving. Why? It is because sidemount diving can be very relaxing and simple to learn.
The next day, technical sidemount was underway. This meant adding our deco 50 percent oxygen and 100% oxygen tanks on either end. The tanks will make you appear more prominent underwater. Each side of your waist has a few clips. As your tanks become buoyant from the air you exhale, adjust your tank to the second clip. You want to make your life as simple as possible. In a matter of minutes, your breathing is switched between the tanks. You can breathe easily because the pressure in each tanks is equal. Like all new things, experience is crucial to comfort and enjoyment. The following days I spent deco diving with the sidemount rig. My buddy David Joyce, Evolution co-owner and Trimix instructor, was with me. We went to the Japanese Mogami Japanese Mogami shipwreck at 164 feet. There, I was charmed and enthralled by the remnants of gas masks, uniforms, bones, and other old items we saw.
The Sidemount diver's setup is slightly different than the backmount.
The entry-level tech diver will learn to optimize their gear to avoid drag and dangling objects. This allows for maximum propulsion efficiency and awareness.
I just arrived on Malapascua Island (Philippines) and will soon be working my path to becoming a Tec instructor. I've been working as a recreational instructor at Bali for the past two-years and would love to grow my professional experience. Sidemount PCB gave me my first taste in technical diving. Tom West was the PADI course director, and Tec instructor-trainer. He made me into a PADI Tec-50 diver.
All our Tec diving lessons (open circuit or closed circuit rebreather) and technical scuba diving classes are given at our Scotty's dive center headquarters facility, located in the Shangri-la hotel in Mactan, Cebu province. If you are not a guest of the Shangri-la hotel, you can always walk in, or we can pick you up at your hotel.
The very general definition of technical diving is to be exposed to a ceiling that does not allow a diver to ascend to the surface at any moment of the dive. This might be due to a real ceiling, in terms of a cave or a wreck, or a virtual ceiling created by a decompression obligation. In this case, by exceeding the NDL’s, mandatory decompression stops have to be performed on ascent in order to avoid any case of decompression sickness. In most cases this requires the use of special equipment, e.g. Twinsets or Sidemount, special gas mixes and of course additional training to be able to perform those stops accurately on ascent to optimize off-gassing of Nitrogen.
There is a wide variety of equipment that is used by technical divers the biggest impact on the decision is the environment a diver is exposed to. Many cave divers prefer to use Sidemount which means, independent single tanks are mount to the side of the divers’ body and attached by clips on a D-Ring on the waist band on the harness and on the shoulder. This allows the diver to detach and don tanks to fit thru tiny restrictions and have a lower overall profile to go to places unreachable for divers who chose backmount. During multiple trips, additional tanks can be placed in a cave or a wreck to allow the diver deeper penetration dives and to pick up tanks when leaving the cave or wreck.
International Training is the parent organization of Technical Diving International and Scuba Diving International. They offer both the SDI and TDI versions for their Sidemount Diver course. Both courses are similar. Both courses use the same learning materials (which we also wrote). What's the difference between them?
New gear means new techniques. If you are able to dive sidemount, it is easy to acquire new skills.
Divers using decompression oxygen mix all types can extend their time looking at wrecks or reefs on the oceanfloor. The sport diver may be limited to two short dives at 100ft. A decompression diver can cruise the seas for 60 minutes or longer, getting more bang for his buck.
Skills (generally speaking) - The introductory technical diver will practice their trimming and buoyancy using new equipment. This builds the foundation for efficient diving. Once the foundation is in place, students can start to practice locomotion and then move on with more advanced skills.
‘Diving into Darkness’ by Phillip Finch is telling the story about an Australian cave diver trying to recover a body in a South African cave called Bushman’s hole.
from 170 to 350 feet
While conventional scuba diving has a recommended maximum depth of 130 feet, technical divers may work at depths ranging from 170 feet to 350 feet, and sometimes even deeper.
To begin a technical diving course, you must have completed the following prerequisites: a PADI Advanced Open Water Diver certificate or equivalent, a PADI Enriched Air Diver certificate or equivalent, and a PADI Deep Diver certificate or proof of at least 10 dives to 30 metres/100 feet.
To register for the PADI Advanced Rebreather Diver course, you must first: You must be a PADI Open Water Diver, but you must also be a PADI Advanced Open Water Diver to become a PADI Advanced Rebreather Diver. Have at least 30 dives under your belt.