Journal #11
IMAGING
Publish Date: June 1995
You’ve Come A Long Way Baby:
Tom Mount Talks Tech
It wasn’t too long ago that technical diving was regarded as the lunatic fringe of sport diving, and the lack of a supporting infrastructure and a consistent set of standards were enough to send waves of consternation through the powers that were, “You’re going to do what?”
Enter Tom Mount.
In less that five years, the 56 year-old former U.S. Navy diver, NOAA aquanaut, YMCA training director, diving “super”, store owner, martial arts instructor, and one of the graybeards of National Association for Cave Diving (NACD)—often held out as one of the models of tech training— has build the world’s largest technical diving agency, pulling together the lion’s share of the “big names’ in more than a dozen countries under the “I-A-N-T-D” (International Association of Nitrox and Technical Divers) banner. Considering the egos involved – no small feat indeed.
Under Mount’s leadership, IANTD has created a structured series of technical diving courses and training standards, has nailed down an insurance program providing coverage at depth and spun off at least one other agency, all while certifying over 10,000 divers without incident. Infrastructure, here we come.
No “Do as I Say, Don’t Do as I do,” the meditative Mount still finds the time to set the example for his instructors by practicing one of the concepts he holds dear – spending time in the water. Here’s what one of the most active instructors in the business has to say.
How many technical divers are out there?
It’s hard to define how many technical divers there are because there are an awful lot of divers doing technical dives who have never been trained – people doing technical diving who really shouldn’t be. We get reports that a “technical diver” had a problem, and then we find out that the guy really wasn’t a technical diver at all – he was just exceeding his depth limits. There’s a big difference.
In terms of trained technical divers? It’s in the thousands. Not a huge number. Then you’ve got three to four thousand people who have been cave certified over the years through the NACD and NSS-CDS. If you include nitrox in technical diving, the numbers start getting way up there. We’ve got in excess of 10,000 nitrox divers certified right now in IANTD alone, and I would say ANDI (American Nitrox Divers Inc.) And TDI (Technical Diving Int’l) have in excess of 8,000, so we know there’s at least 18-20,000 divers who are certified in nitrox diving right now. Beyond that, we know there have been a lot of other people who have been doing technical diving in other countries for years.
Tech diving has become a force to be reckoned with.
The significant thing that no one ever points out is that the technical diver —the guy who takes the trouble to do this training—is not the weekend warrior diver who divers 12 times a years. These people are really in the water a lot. The average technical diver completes 50 to 200 dives a year.
Take an average recreational dive. It lasts what, twenty minutes? If you count decompression, an average technical dive is probably ninety minutes long. So you’re looking at a lot more time in the water. These are guys who travel half way around the world to do a dive. They go to great depths of trouble to do the things they want to do.
Photo courtesy of aquaCORPS archives
Photo courtesy of aquaCORPS archives
Photo courtesy of aquaCORPS archives
What about tech demographics?
According to our records, the average technical diver is about 35 years old. There are probably a couple of reasons for that. Number one, you probably have to be 35 years old before you can afford to guy all of the garbage – the equipment and the truck to haul it all in. They go together. You are looking at people who invest a lot in their hobby, because technical diving is still just recreation. These people are always spending money, and they’re also tuned in to staying current. Let me qualify that. It doesn’t mean that because a new gadget comes out, they run out and buy it. They don’t. But when something comes out that really can benefit their safety, they usually buy it and balance the checkbook later.
Technical diving has come a long, long way.
A few years ago, it was talked about in closets. Even cave diving, which was the first to be accepted—you were viewed as the lunatic fringe if you were doing it. We went to trade shows for years and people would walk to the other side of the room to avoid us, like ewww… it’s going to rub off, the disease will get me. And as you remember DEMA tried to ban us from getting booths at the 1992 show and circulated a warning about dealing with us and nitrox. That was three years ago.
This year, we were voted in as DEMA charter members. I think that was a pretty big step, attitude-wise. What’s more is that at least three manufacturers, including one of our biggest opponents back in ‘92, are talking to us about their upcoming nitrox regulators and deep diving equipment.
Technical diving is now beginning to become accepted, and broadening out. Like skiing or mountain climbing, we’re approaching a point where there is the casual technical diver, there is the serious technical diver, and there is the guy that explores and pushes limits. They all have a place in technical diving.
Are you still taking heat from Skin Diver magazine?
Not too long ago Patty [Mount] and I had an hour and a half conversation with Bill Gleason [SDM editor], who is adamantly against against technical diving. That always used to confuse me because Bill is a pretty avid Jersey wreck diver. And I know he’s a deep diver, ‘cause I’ve dived deep with him.
Bill is concerned about the training. Now, I think they see that the training is being done responsibly and it is paying off. He pointed out another thing. There’s an awareness now among charter boat captains. Instead of just taking anybody who wants to go, they’re beginning to ask, “Well, are you really qualified?” That in itself is going to reduce the number of accidents, though it’s not going to stop ‘em.
We’ll never stop deaths. We haven’t stopped them in recreational diving; we sure aren’t going to stop it in technical diving. But we can certainly improve the probability of survival if people are educated as to what they’re doing, as opposed to just jumping in the water and doing it anyway.
Is that why technical diving is gaining acceptance?
I think a lot of why we’re becoming accepted is because we’re educating people about those risks. I think that aquaCORPS has had a lot to do with the acceptance of it—making people aware of the diving and what it takes to do it— getting people to talk. I think that’s driven home the fact that this is a form of diving that people have been doing for a long, long time – it’s not new. I started deep diving when I got out of the Navy in 1962, and I thought I was a real pioneer. I was shocked to find that people were getting into the Andrea Doria and working at 250, 260 feet in caves. People were doing it; they didn’t just talk about it. And there were risks.
Even as controversial as trimix was a few years ago, people have been diving deeper than 200 feet on air for a long time. The difference now is that they have a basis for controlling their narcosis and oxygen exposures, and increasing the safety of their decompression by using other gases. We have honed down the risks and gases, and I think that’s helped us gain acceptance.
PADI has made several statements about “not promoting technical diving to the masses.” What’s your take on that?
I think it’s a lot less irresponsible to promote the availability of technical diving because if you don’t promote it, don’t advertise it, no one’s going to get trained. And if they don’t get trained, they’re going to make the same mistakes that have killed people in the past. So to me, it’s totally irresponsible if you have the ability to train people and not make it available.
We teach people how to responsibly advertise technical diving in our instructor programs. We don’t say that everybody should be a technical diver. They shouldn’t. We’re advertising the availability of training. If somebody wants to train, they need the prerequisite of what it takes to get into those training programs – the program is self-limiting by the very fact of what it takes to get there. I don’t think that’s irresponsible.
To me, it’s much more irresponsible to claim “Anybody can dive. Diving is one hundred per cent safe.” There are a lot of people who are either psychologically or physiologically not adaptable. Particularly when you’re talking about technical diving.
Particularly with trimix diving.
We had a lot of concerns about trimix when we got started. In fact, Billy [Deans] and I, and bunch of other people talked about it for two years. “Do we really want to take the responsibility of certifying somebody as a trimix diver?” There was a lot of trimix teaching going on, but no one had actually said, “You are a certified trimix diver.”
Remember, there was no insurance for this stuff in those days; it didn’t exist. Eventually, we went ahead and developed training programs and standards.
What about IANTD’s safety record?
We’re very happy we’ve never had a technical diving training accident at IANTD yet. But if we train enough people, eventually it will happen. As the saying goes, “risk is risk”. Some day it will bite you.
[Note: A fatality occurred during an IANTD training course just prior to our press date (95 May). This represented the first fatality that has occurred during a technical diving training course. A detailed accident analysis was reported in aquaCORPS N11.]
In your experience, where do people get into trouble in technical diving?
I think there are two things that get people into trouble. The biggest thing is complacency. People get lazy. They become too familiar with what they’re doing and just don’t do that little extra. You find the same thing is true of commercial pilots in the airline industry.
The second, I think, is all of us— even if you are pretty humble and have a reasonable degree of humility— all of us still have a bit of ego. You probably wouldn’t do this kind of diving if you didn’t have a little bit of ego because you probably wouldn’t have the confidence to do it. I think there are a lot of times when we let our crocodile mouths outweigh our asses, as the red necks say. Even knowing that we may have overstepped our boundaries, we feel compelled to live up to the challenge that we put ourselves into. That gets a lot of people in trouble.
You announced at the tek.Conference that all of the technical training agencies were going to sit down and agree to a consistent minimum set of training standards – a technical counterpart to the Recreational Scuba Training Committee (RSTC). What happened?
I have proposed that to Bret and Ed [Bret Gilliam, TDI and Ed Betts, ANDI —ed.] and they said that they wanted to do it. We were ready to sit down at tek. We were ready to sit down at DEMA. We made open arms to do that and we had a lot of vocalization that everybody was going to do it, and no one showed up.
Photo courtesy of aquaCORPS archives
Is a consistent set of minimum standards needed?
I think it’s an essential; we need a minimum base of standards that are recognized. You know, good instructors are good instructors; bad instructors are bad instructors – that’s always going to be there. But at least if you have a standard that they have to adhere to, it forces them to be better than they may be otherwise. That’s what we’re hoping with an RSTC thing. We’re ready to sit down any time, and have mad that very known.
How do you see rebreather diving unfolding?
I think rebreathers are going to become a very viable part of the recreational industry. I don’t think it will ever replace open circuit, but I think it’s going to become a very large part of that market. I think they have a distinct place in diving, and I think they have a very, very great benefit for divers. They undoubtedly require a lot more discipline and supervision to use, and require a lot of very, very responsible training. The problem we’re faced with right now is getting really qualified instructors and it’s going to be difficult.
There are a few of us out there who have spent time on rebreathers, and quite a few ex-military divers who could teach it. Other than that, there are few people in the recreational diving industry who are qualified. I’m afraid there may be a trend to just go out and make people instructors. “Well, Joe is a good instructor. He trains 500 divers a year. Let’s make him a rebreathing instructor.” He may or may not be well versed on rebreathers and the risks on rebreathers. That’s the problem. If people are going to start diving rebreathers, there’s going to be an urgency in making people instructors and getting people trained. But you’ve got to have a very selective program.
How about the end-user training?
I think rebreathing has a lot of advantages, but it also has a lot more responsibility. The training has to be really, really top-notch. One of my major concerns is training a recreational diver who doesn’t look at his pressure gauge when he does a wall dive in Cayman, and runs out of air. How am I going to get him to monitor a rebreather? How am I going to get him to become aware of the subtlest little instinct that you need to develop for rebreather diving. “This doesn’t feel right. I’d better inject some gas.” How am I going to get him to go beyond just looking at the monitors? That’s part of my concern.
How do you know if your rebreather is working right?
I think the manufacturers are going to do all they can to try to create a common denominator of safety. Probably the biggest thing to keep manufacturers honest is something we in the industry don’t like, but in this particular application, may be good. It’s called liability. It’s kind of like nitrox diving. If we had a lot of bad accidents when we got started, we probably wouldn’t be in existence today. I think it’s the same with rebreathers. They don’t have a year or two to perfect operations. That’s another concern.
They’re going to have to perform perfectly out of the box?
Somebody’s going to get killed on a rebreather. What’s sad is that when it happens, most likely, it won’t be the fault of the rebreather. It could be, but most likely it won’t be. It will be human error, but the rebreather will get blamed. Regardless if the guy freaked out, bolted to the surface and embolized, it will be reported as a rebreathing accident. And maybe two years from now, when the flack clears, the rebreather will be found innocent, but meanwhile it may have killed the whole damn industry.
Interestingly enough, one of the things that’s going to have made it easier for rebreathers is that a lot of their problems have already been addressed by nitrox. Now that people are used to thinking mix, it’s easier to think rebreather.
What are your personal diving goals for the next year?
I’d like to do some more exploration at Eagle’s Nest with Larry Green. I would like to get down with Jim Bowden to look at his hole [the Zacaton Project – see aquaCORPS, N11]. I have great respect for someone who’s determined to bottom out that cave [Zacaton is over 1000 feet deep].
Jim and I talked an hour on the phone this morning about some of the problems he’s having to address: gas duration, the risk of HPNS, how much nitrogen you use as a buffer, how how to handle the possibility of hits at depths when you’re switching gases on decompression, as well as a couple of things most people don’t think about. There’s an extreme dehydration problem that’s very had to keep up with, and severe heat loss problems. He’s also talking about putting a decompression bell in with IV fluids at some of the shallower stops because there’s no way you drink enough fluids to replenish yourself even if you use a diving bell.
There’s a lot of complexity that people don’t think about and you’re gotta be willing to make an awful lot of sacrifices to do a dive like that. I always respect people who push the limits, even those I think are beyond reason, because if people didn’t push limits beyond reason, we wouldn’t have a wheel today, let alone automobiles. You have pushed the limits.
I used to be an explorer. I’m cycling back into it with limits. You come and you go. I think anybody can stay on that edge only so long and then you have to come off it before you can go back on.
