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Technical Diving in Cornwall

Technical (Tec) Diving is a form of diving that goes beyond recreational diving limits in terms of depth, duration, time and access to the surface. The Michael Menduno the editor of the discontinued journal AquaCorps first used the term Technical Diving and the pioneers in this field were the early cave divers during the 1960’s. 

Training agencies vary slightly in their criteria for what constitutes recreational diving opposed to technical diving, but in broad general terms recreational diving is using open circuit scuba equipment for non decompression dives with visual access to the surface and beyond this is technical diving. The slight variations are typically attributed to the training agencies marketing strategies for their course structures. However what is simply agreed is that technical diving exposes a diver to significantly higher risks than recreational diving and therefore requires extensive experience, advanced training, and specialized equipment.

Changing trends

In recent times it can be regarded that scuba diving has really gone in a full circle. It started in the late nineteenth century with oxygen rebreathers but these closed circuit scuba units imposed tight depth diving limits. Mid twentieth century these depth limits were removed with the Aqualung, an open circuit scuba unit which is mainly limited by air supply. By the twenty first century the closed circuit rebreathers were reborn enabling a diver to go deeper for longer than conventional open circuit scuba. Initially these new ‘Type T’ units were purely for technical diving but in the last few years diving equipment manufacturers have produced simplified rebreathers for pure recreational use. PADI were the first training agency to introduce a recreational rebreather training program for these ‘Type R’ designated rebreathers.