Technically Diving

January and I began our technical dive training last week at Under the Jungle, a dive shop that specializes in cave training and exploration in the cenotes (freshwater caves) around the Riviera Maya. 

Dogs and diving, what more do you need?

After an initial day of set-up and gear sizing in the classroom, we headed out to Cenote Ponderosa to work on the skills and techniques that will form the foundation of our technical diving journey. We will be there 3-4 days a week for the next two'ish months (with a two week rest break to go to Cozumel). Technical dive training is the reason we came to Mexico in the first place and after all the planning and anticipation that's gone into this trip, it felt a little unreal to actually get started.

It's very important that your equipment fit perfectly. 

Everyone is familiar with recreational scuba diving. Mask, fins, air tank on your back, jump off the boat, see some cool fish and maybe a shark if you're lucky. Tens of thousands of people do it every year and it's a lot of fun. So what is this technical diving stuff anyway?  

As a lot of you probably know, I could talk about diving for hours on end. However, I respect that not everyone shares the same attention span and interest in the topic that do, so I'll keep this as brief as possible. 

The entire approach to safety and risk management in recreational diving is that at any point, should you experience a catastrophic problem while under water, you could make a direct ascent to the surface. The key phrase here is direct ascent. According to the recreational scuba training agencies, and more importantly their lawyers, as long as you stay within a recreational depth (i.e. not exceeding 130ft) and follow the time limits of your dive plan, you should be okay. (In reality there are a lot of other factors to take into consideration before blowing to the surface from 130ft, but like I said, I'm keeping it brief.)

The realm of technical diving (often shortened to just tech diving) begins when you cannot safely make a direct ascent to the surface, due to either a soft or hard overhead. A soft overhead would be when a diver has gone deep enough and/or stayed submerged long enough that they require additional time in the water during their ascent to release the nitrogen that has built up in their system. Ignoring that decompression time results in decompression sickness, also known as the bends.

A hard overhead is when a diver is inside or underneath something that blocks their access to the surface. If you swim inside a shipwreck, you are in a hard overhead environment. In addition to wrecks, the other common hard overhead is caves, and that is where January and I are training to dive.

The training for recreational diving can be completed in a couple of weekends and, unless you actually manage to drown yourself in the process, you absolutely will pass the course. Tech diving, on the other hand, is academically rigorous, mentally and physically taxing, and there is no guarantee of passing the course in any particular amount of time. There are dozens of new safety procedures to learn, special equipment configurations that emphasize redundancy, and specific methods of communicating complex information with your team while under water. All of this is done in the hopes of preparing you for an environment that can turn from exciting and beautiful to ruthless and unforgiving in a matter of seconds. From entanglement, to loss of visibility, to simply becoming disoriented and unable to find the exit, the potential dangers present in hard overhead environments have to be taken very seriously.

The cavern entrance at Ponderosa.

The first step for January and I is a course that's commonly called Intro to Tech. In addition to the standard technical training, we are also using a specialized configuration called sidemount where the gas cylinders are mounted on the sides of the diver's body instead of being carried on the back. This has meant relearning many of the basic aspects of buoyancy and trim to best utilize this configuration. 

The days are usually around ten hours, with periods in the water as long as three or four hours. I come home exhausted and sore, my mind feeling like mush from all of the check lists, formulas, and procedures I have to memorize, often only eating some carrots and humus before falling asleep to do it all again tomorrow.

Here I am practicing my buoyancy, trim, and propulsion.

But once I'm in the water, swimming into the cavern zone, and I shine my light into the blackness to illuminate the amazing limestone formations of this subterranean world, I forget all about the aches and tiredness. The serene grandeur of the cave is like nothing I've ever experienced before and I look forward to being able to discover for myself what lies down those passages