Just when I thought that I already learned what I needed to know the very day I received my diving certification, I was wrong. This idea occurred to me last week when I met a technical diving instructor who encouraged me to learn his craft. For some time, I thought it was easy. But right after reading his manual, my attitude towards technical diving changed. Now, I regard it as the ultimate skill in the art of diving.
If in leisure diving, we are admonished not to dive deeper than a hundred feet, in technical diving, we are allowed to dive three times deeper than the former depth. This is made possible by the special gas, nitrox, that lets divers breathe underwater while battling the killer pressure. If you still find this quite confusing, just imagine that engineers need to employ technical divers to dig tunnels on the depths on the
Churchill Falls Station.
Technical divers wear specially engineered lightweight but durable helmets that allow them to maneuver underwater even in extreme situations. In rare cases when no technical diving equipment is available, a hose is attached to the helmet that connects it to the air tank mounted on a platform. This also allows freedom of movement with less difficulty in breathing.
