When you have ever felt the temptation to remain slightly longer or go deeper, then technical diving might be for you. Technical diving is about pushing the bounds; should you see one thing slightly deeper than your deliberate depth, you’ll be able to come again and do a technical dive to totally discover what you’ve gotten seen.
Finally, technical diving is about exploration and pushing our limits underwater. It permits us to go to new locations and expertise issues now we have not seen earlier than.
What’s Technical Diving?
Technical diving is outlined as diving past leisure diving limits. Solid your thoughts again to your open water course and utilizing a dive desk. Sometimes, a dive to 18m/60ft had a no-decompression restrict of round 56 minutes—there are some minute variances relying on the mannequin used to make the desk. So what occurs if you wish to spend 70 minutes at 18m/60ft? It’s doable, however you at the moment are exterior the realm of technical diving.
On the different finish of the desk, you’ll be able to solely discover data for divers as much as a depth of round 40m/130ft. What occurs if you wish to dive to 55m/180ft. Can it’s performed? In fact, it may well and is finished each day worldwide; nonetheless, you at the moment are within the realm of technical diving since you’re diving past the vary of leisure diving.
Usually talking, whenever you do a technical dive, you enter an overhead atmosphere, whether or not actual or digital. Upon getting exceeded your decompression limits by means of time or depth, you’ve gotten misplaced protected, direct entry to the floor because of your decompression obligations. Even in case you are in an actual overhead atmosphere, you’ve gotten additionally misplaced direct entry to the floor since it’s essential to return to an appropriate entry level to soundly attain the floor.
Technical Diving Gear and Configuration
Technical diving tools and configurations primarily take care of redundancy and learn how to full a dive safely. At any time when doable, divers could have two of an merchandise in case there’s a failure with a chunk of kit underwater. Most manifestly, divers use a twinset or a set of doubles to hold their backside gasoline. During the last many years, extra divers have began utilizing two unbiased facet mount cylinders.
Having two cylinders makes coping with regulator and tank failures a lot simpler whereas sustaining an enough gasoline provide. As well as, divers will typically carry a number of masks, reels, and different vital objects.
Concerning configuration, technical diving typically makes use of what’s known as a Hogarthian rig. Named after technical diving pioneer Charles William Hogarth. The rig makes use of an extended regulator hose, a brief regulator hose bunged across the diver’s neck, and one tank SPG on the diver’s left. The configuration reduces failure factors whereas offering the diver with vital security data.
It additionally goals to make sure that the out-of-air diver receives a regulator second stage that works and provides a mixture of gasoline acceptable for the depth in an emergency. That’s the reason technical divers are educated to donate the regulator they’re respiratory from and never let the out-of-air divers select from a bunch of regulators hanging of their chest space.
Technical Diving Expertise and Coaching
The principle challenge with technical diving is that it’s essential to full your dive plan to floor safely. Most technical coaching and abilities tackle this, whether or not finishing your plan means reaching a particular level in an overhead atmosphere or finishing your decompression. As such, technical coaching offers with three broad areas.
Gear failure
What occurs when a chunk of kit fails? Take into account that if you end up technical diving, there is no such thing as a non-safety vital gear; each piece of package is security vital. Coaching covers redundancy – why tec divers use doubles as a substitute of single cylinders. In addition to what to do in an emergency. For example, how do you take care of a regulator’s first-stage failure in your doubles? Or a wing failure, and even what to do within the extremely unlikely occasion you lose your masks.
Every of those instances has a set of procedures to implement, which means you’ll be able to abort the dive, nonetheless full your accrued decompression, and safely attain your exit.
Fuel administration & planning
One other vital facet of technical coaching is gasoline administration & planning, not by way of which gases to breathe – extra about that within the subsequent part. However within the volumes concerned. You be taught to work out how a lot of each kind of gasoline you will have for each dive.
The coaching additionally contains contingency planning, overlaying misplaced gasoline eventualities, and making certain you’ve gotten adequate various gasoline volumes to finish your adjusted decompression obligations or attain the exit of your dive.
Decompression Planning
Lastly, technical diving includes studying learn how to plan decompression dives. Divers discover ways to use air and nitrox to decompress. Additionally they find out how the totally different gases have an effect on their decompression schedule and learn how to use Nitrox to speed up their decompression.
Extra superior programs aimed toward taking divers even deeper introduce Helium into the combo. Right here, divers discover ways to use Trimix (Helium, Oxygen, and Nitrogen) to dive to better depths and what concerns they have to make when utilizing helium. As soon as Helium is launched, you study planning, Isobaric counter diffusion, HPNS, and plenty of extra different and thrilling area of interest features of decompression diving.
Prime Technical Dive Websites
The record of prime technical diving websites is just about limitless; virtually each dive web site worldwide might be dived as a technical dive. Nonetheless, some dive websites are well-known or notorious and identified worldwide as technical diving websites. These are primarily because of their depth.
With its famend arch, the Blue Gap in Dahab, Egypt, might be one of many world’s most notorious technical dive websites. It’s also a mecca for freedivers as a result of unimaginable depth that may be achieved from shore. Whether or not diving the arch at 55m/180ft or heading to the underside at 100m/330ft – this slopes out, and you’ll dive to an extra of 200m/660ft there.
One other blue gap, this time Dean’s blue gap, is situated off Lengthy Island within the Bahamas. It’s one other world-renowned technical diving web site. Though it’s deeper than the blue gap in Egypt, with a depth of 202 m/667 ft, it isn’t as notorious since there have been nowhere close to the identical variety of fatalities.
Among the finest technical diving websites are wreck dives that lie past leisure limits; many date from WWII. These embrace among the deeper wrecks at Truk and Chuuk Lagoon in Micronesia and among the wrecks in Scapa Movement. Technical diving U-boat followers may expertise the graveyard of the Atlantic off the coast of the Carolinas, to not point out Operation Deadlight off the west coast of Eire, the place many U-boats have been sunk on the struggle’s finish.
The record of fantastic technical diving websites is just about limitless. Nonetheless, all of the websites have one factor in frequent. Divers select to dive to see one thing and discover, to not pursue depth for the sake of depth.
Technical Diving Security and Planning
Technical dive planning is nearly fully safety-focused. Many issues can go incorrect, and the doable outcomes are catastrophic. Many features of technical diving planning revolve round danger administration and mitigation to enhance security.
One facet is gasoline planning. For example, it turns into virtually unimaginable for a diver to hold adequate redundant decompression gasoline to handle a catastrophic gasoline loss scenario on deeper dives. Relying on the placement and gasoline volumes concerned, the group might choose to have a shared redundant gasoline state of affairs, the place the group as a complete carries sufficient reserves for one or two gasoline loss conditions.
Alternatively, the group might use security/assist divers if logistics enable. Who can reply to an emergency sign and descend with extra wanted gasoline provides?
The larger (deeper/longer) the dive and the larger the group, the extra complicated the image turns into. You have got conditions the place the assist divers require assist divers since they’re enterprise huge dives in assist of the primary dive. The required variety of cylinders with varied mixes can typically run into a whole lot.
Clearly, there are numerous different elements to contemplate when planning technical dives, together with the emergency evacuation protocols, the place the closest chamber is, and whether or not it’s on standby, adequate floor Oxygen for coping with a couple of diver, and the complete group being onboard with the plan and completely satisfied to go forward. Most greater technical diving initiatives are like main expeditions, requiring substantial logistics and planning to work seamlessly.
