Tehnical Divers doing their decompression stop in blue water

Technical diving is a kind of diving done that goes beyond the limits of main stream recreational diving. To move on to technical diving, divers need to have experience, extensive training, a greater degree of mental and physical fitness and it involved the use of specialized equipment.

Technical diving or tech diving for short, branches out to several varieties or categories. It includes Search and Recovery, Wreck Diving, Cave Diving, use of Rebreathers and so on. All types have their own prerequisites and training. And divers would need to complete prerequisite courses and log enough number of dives before progressing.

A couple of diving instructors coming from the Technical Diving International (TDI) agency are working to introduce technical diving into Maldives. The current diving regulation made by the Tourism Ministry doesn’t allow such diving so a set of technical diving guidelines need to be made before starting it. Maldives is famed as a diving destination ever since the birth of tourism but has been lagging behind rest of the dive destinations in the field of technical diving. But technical diving guidelines needs to implemented well here and the Tourism Ministry, who is in charge of monitoring the dive centres need to step up to do the job.

On the 9^th of November these 2 dive instructors who came with the backing of the larger and well established technical diving agencies, met with Tourism Ministry officials, local dive operators and members from the Divers Association of Maldives for an informative workshop on technical diving. More such forums will be held in the future. Current ongoing work for the process includes gathering information, gathering statistics and making a draft Technical Diving Guidelines.

Rest of the world has embarrassed technical diving. While there are some concerns it something which plays an important part in underwater exploration, conservation, research, increase of safety and dives, etc.  As one tech Instructor puts it “Technical diving doesn’t necessarily mean going deeper and staying longer but rather diving in such environments not reached by recreational divers and returning to the surface safely”.

What is your opinion on this?

All photos provided by Ben Reymenants

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