What Makes A Technical Dive? What Do Tech Divers Do?

April 5, 2018 - Dive In

What Is Technical Diving?

To most divers, the words ‘technical divers’ conjure up images of a bunch of guys obsessed with diving deep.

Whilst this is true of quite a few technical divers, the art of technical diving doesn’t limit itself to just that.

Technical diving is, put simply, any diving that is set outside of recreational diving limits. It allows a diver the freedom to explore and dive beyond the traditional diving limits.

A good example of this is cave diving, which is some of the most difficult and dangerous diving around today.

However, quite a few of these extreme cave dives do not exceed 20 meters in depth, so it’s clearly not just about depth.

What’s The Difference Between Tech and Recreational Diving

So what makes tech diving different from recreational diving? Whilst hundreds of pages could be written about this, in can be summed up in a few brief points:

Tech Diving Skills

First on the list is skills; there really is no room in Tech for ‘good enough’ or ‘just about do it’. All skills and your level of comfort in the water should be above reproach.

Skills can mean the difference between life and death, so they have to be razor sharp.

Here's our Practice Makes Perfect: Tune Up Your Scuba Skills article. 

Tech Diving Rules

Next comes gas planning. Generally, when you recreational dive, you put your kit on and dive till you hit 100 bar or so, then turn around and head back.

Alas! Things are not so simple in Tech diving, since you can’t ascend directly to the surface because of your obligatory decompression stops.

You need to know how much gas you use and make sure you have enough gas to complete the whole dive with a healthy reserve for emergencies. The dive plan follows on from knowing how much gas you need.

Normally, when you dive recreational, you are always within the no decompression limits, so you can ascend to the surface at any time you wish.

Unfortunately, it’s not the same in Tech, where you must know how deep you are going and for how long. Every extra minute you spend down there adds a lot of time to your decompression obligation.

Over staying would make your dive schedule, and gas management redundant.

Tech Diving Equipment

The last big difference is redundancy and equipment.

When you Tech dive, you need to have a backup system for everything (buoyancy device, computer, mask, regulator, etc.).

Going in the water with only one item that your life depends on is a seriously bad idea.

Basically, you have to work on the principle that if you have a catastrophic loss of one system, it’s not a major problem since you carry a backup with you.

Finally though, when it’s all said and done, whether you dive recreational or technical, the bottom line is the same: you dive for the love of it.