Risks of Technical Diving
Similar to any adventure sport, there are risks associated with technical diving. In fact, there are risks associated with any diving, whether within or outside on no-stop limits.
Once divers venture beyond no-stop limits, they accept a higher level of risk as directly returning to the surface is no longer possible. This so-called ‘virtual ceiling’ is arguably the most obvious contributor to those risks of technical diving. The virtual ceiling becomes a hard ceiling when cave diving and penetration wreck diving.
A large part of technical diving training focuses on mitigating these risks. This goes hand in hand with preparing a response for any imaginable failure. This includes equipment failures, delays to the dive schedule, team separation and much more.
Divers also learn to control their response to task loading. At Dark Horizon Diving, we spend a lot of time analysing the causes of problems encountered underwater. More often than not, they can be traced back to so-called Human Factors: communications, team structure and hierarchies are just a few of those. This is why we recommend The Human Diver Essentials online class as pre-leaning for all of our courses.
Calculated risks
Articles:
- Technical Diving A to Z – seven Scuba Diver Life articles covering different aspects of tech diving, including some of the most common risks
- Decompression theory – a series of articles on the TDI blog by tech instructor Richard Devanney
Books:
- Deco for Divers by Mark Powell – decompression illness is one of the biggest risks in technical diving. This book explains in greater detail than most course manuals what happens in the diver’s body and how we can mitigate those risks
- Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson – inspiration, adventure, wreck diving as well as the advent of trimix and rebreather diving, all in one book.
- The Last Dive by Bernie Chowdhury – picking up where Shadow Divers leaves off, this book also contains a sobering look at how bad the bends can really get.
- Into the Planet by Jill Heinerth – a cave diver’s perspective to balance out the wreck-based accounts above. Jill Heinerth also talks about dealing with fear.
- Under Pressure by Gareth Lock – how human factors influence decision-making, teamwork and communications underwater