Posted by CalAbDiver on August 23, 2001 at 10:57:48:
In Reply to: 30 years ago... posted by roakey on August 23, 2001 at 10:37:57:
ok, SPGs are nice. but with a J valve you DONT absolutely need an SPG, but still they are nice. they enhance dive safety, especially when idiots are diving, especially 500,000 new idiots each year.
with good dive planning that is precisely executed, you dont need a J valve either, nor an SPG, but the SPG gives you more flexibility.
talk about the past, huh?!
octos were invented by the dive resorts. they figured out that a bunch of octos was easier than dealing with a bunch of pony bottles. octos are cheap and easy to install. ponies cost three times as much, and a pony is an octo plus a reg plus a bottle, several times more expensive than an octo alone.
octos have nothing to do with cave diving. cave divers have never never ever used octos. bad analogy, sorry. im not letting you get away with that.
B/Cs were invented by ScubaPro for East Coast warm water wuss diving where you didnt wear a wetsuit. Here on the West Coast, in the olden days before B/Cs, you just weighted yourself with Pb(lead) slightly positive like in freediving still, and then you kicked down. when you got to 35 or 40 fsw, then you were neutral. when you got deeper than 60 fsw, then you crawled along the bottom. it used to be an art, knowing how to crawl along the bottom. it was the textbook method to swim against a current. now it is a lost art.
the B/C is also a bad analogy. cave divers ditched B/Cs early on for their precious wings. i wont let you get away with that either.
so only your SPG analogy makes sense. but that is still a blurry example of anything invented by cave diving that became absolutely essential for open water diving. thats like trying to take credit for the demand regulator.
in the meantime my question stands: why invest in a ton of expensive crap applicable only to cave diving when there is absolutely no use for it in open water diving, other than the "ego trip" of being a "well dressed" DIR diver walking around the beach in your funny looking tanks without any tank boots on them???