As said, this is always an interesting discussion.  I know one avid technical diver who always answers this question with the statement, "My deepest sport dive was 130 feet."  Unfortunately, ones maximum depth has become a sort of badge to be attained.  Personally, I would rather talk about the wrecks I've been to and the dives I have done.  After having been certified as a new diver in the early 70's I learned to dive by diving every lake and quarry I could find in the midwest.  Gradually, I gained more experience diving the Great Lakes wrecks and began diving the deeper ones.  The deerper wrecks are almost always the ones that are in the best shape.  When technical training in accelerated decompression, technical dive planning, and then, later, the use of helium to ameliorate narcosis became available, I found instructors who helped me on the right path.  I resisted becomming a technical instructor until people who kept asking me to teach them finally wore me down. 

Doing deep diving is not an activity to be appraoched lightly.  There is significantly more potential risk.  The risk is only managed through good training, experience, practice and a willingness to rigorously plan your dives and stay within your plan.  Those divers who have not done this will become statistics.  The deeper you go, the less is the margin for error.  A small error that would go unnoticed on a shallow dive can quickly escalate to a life-threathening situation on a very deep dive.

A typical, rather shallow, technical dive of 185 feet (such as the wreck, Rosinco) requires the use of five tanks and regulators.  The plan will probably take you more time than the execution of the dive.  I would probably use a bottom mix consisting of 18% Oxygen, 45% Helium and the rest Nitrogen.  A 20 minute bottom time will require about 30 minutes of decompression, using 50% Nitrox starting at 70 feet and 100% Oxygen at 20 feet. 

Hi Captain Dale,

I'm getting my Rescue Certification this Spring with Darrick and then onto Master Diver. Once I get through that, I want to move onto the Technical Diver Courses. Is there a logical sequence of courses? Or is it kind of like the speciality courses where you can pick and choose what you want to learn (underwater photography, nitrox, etc.)?

Also, where do you teach your in water technical diving? Do you first go to a pool with multiple tanks and regulators and practice switching between them? Then move it onto Lake Michigan or some place with decent depths? Just curious.

Brian Pautsch
brian@midwestscubadiving.com

The sequence of courses depends somewhat on your objectives.  If what you want to do is dive caves in Florida (or elsewhere) you would probably want to start by taking a Cavern course, then go on to Cave1 and Cave 2.  If what you want to do is dive Lake Michigan wrecks, you would want to take an entry-level wreck course, then move on to Advanced Wreck.  For deeper diving, we usually start with Advanced Nitrox and Decompression Procedures.  Most instructors, myself included, teach these in a combined class.  Advanced EAN and Deco give you the tools to begin using doubles to do technical, planned dives using doubles and stage bottles.  After some practice with these, you can proceed to either Extended Range (Deep Air) or Intermediate Trimix (Normoxic).  These days Deep Air is discouraged and Normoxic Trimix is the usual path.  Using normoxic mixes you can do dives in the range of 200 feet.  The next step is Advanced Trimix (of "Full Trimix" or "Hypoxic Trimix").  Advanced Trimix teaches the use of trimix with less than 18% Oxygen which can be used to do dives to the 300+ foot level.

I teach classes at my home in Des Plaines.  I have a family room that makes a decent class room and an in-ground pool that we can use to practice basic skills.  I like to do the training dives off of my boat, Enterprise in Lake Michigan.  We are, after all, training Great Lakes divers.

Brian Pautsch
brian@midwestscubadiving.com