Posted by Wayne on December 06, 2001 at 12:00:38:
In Reply to: Excuses....Excuses posted by Tribes on December 06, 2001 at 10:25:10:
You said: "Diving is a team sport, even for hunters"
I think you hit the nail squarely on the head as to the difference in approach to diving. You and others take the team approach to diving. And that is fine. But people who take the team approach to diving think we who see it as an individual sport, oft times played with friends, are simply using bad technique because we do not do it the same way as you do.
Kinda reminds me of skiing. I always fancied myself as a racer seeking high speed carved turns. Freestylers do this weird ballet stuff and gymnastics that I think of as bad technique. Their technique is also refined, but totally different from mine and therefore it is not appreciated by me. The are probably similarly unimpressed with what I strived to perfect when I was young, fast, and slim. Each style has its own set of norms and proponents on each side think the others would be better, safer skiers if they skied more like them.
Claiming that an adherence to a different style is just excuses for poor technique, is silly and shortsighted. Is it dangerous to dive? Not very. Are there accidents and deaths? Sure but if we think diving should be a sport all about seeing how safe we can be, we are ignoring that most of us dive for the enjoyment of diving, not enjoyment of the safety precautions. Before getting on a high horse of safety and saying that all divers ought to dive with safety as the prime objective, you need to consider what we would have to do to make diving safe. We would eliminate all technical diving, cave and wreck diving, beach diving, diving in limited vis, night diving, and the list could go on. We do these "dangerous" dives because there is something there that we want to see or do. We adjust out diving technique to match the dives we normally do. That is the way of the world inside and outside of diving.
So when you see someone who dives it differently than you, it might be beneficial to discover how his/her diving technique has been optimized for the diving he/she does. Don't just dismiss it because it is different.
Wayne