Interest in Technical Diving in the UAE is rising fast. Once the domain of a few pioneers, the improvement and availability of equipment, and the presence of skilled instructors in the UAE now means that UAE divers are diving deeper than ever.
At DSDC the technical wing of the club used to consist of four or five friends who had been doing technical diving quietly on their own out of the limelight for many years. In 2011 that all changed and the DSDC group is a strong 20 number divers and rising quickly. A further estimate beyond DSDC would be that there are 30 or so other UAE divers carrying out technical diving in their own clubs and diving establishments. So what is this technical diving, what does it entail, who can do it, is there a down side and perhaps above all – why here in the UAE.
Firstly and importantly it is not deep commercial diving where you go and live on the seabed or in pressurized vessels for months at a time – those divers, typically working in the oil industry are doing something completely different altogether. The answers to my questions come from all angles and some times it is hard to get a narrow definition to shorten the reply. To try to do that as simply as possible divers can look at the PADI TECH courses as a starting point (they train about a million divers a year so cant be ignored!). PADI define that anything below 40 metres depth is now being classed as ‘technical diving’. On this narrow definition many current scuba divers will then reply “that’s me then!” And the reply would have to be “Umm, yes, but not quite!” The thing about technical diving is that 40 metres is just the starting point and a very low one at that, in quick steps to 60, 90, 120, 200 and now close to 300 metres depth your realise that technical diving has rather a broad width of depth definition.
Perhaps then an easier definition would be that technical diving involves both deeper diving and on top an increasingly complex arrangement of gases that the diver breathes, depending on the depth they are diving to. The technical element occurs both in the equipment being used and how to handle it underwater to prevent problems, along with what does that gas do to your body and what do you do to make sure it does not have a
dangerous affect.
“That’s it then”, I hear you say, I’ve know all that and again the answer would be “Umm, yes but not quite!” The difficulty then becomes rather like the mountaineer who falls off during their ascent, there are issues that the technical diver has to face that have the ability, like the mountaineer, to cause them to fall of their own diving mountain. Careful and steady progressive experience becomes a vital component of this branch of scuba
diving. So can you do technical diving, the answer is yes of course (unless you have a PFO which is a different matter for another day) all you need to do is have a suitable amount of regular scuba diving experience plus an aptitude and get on with the extra training required. Possibly it would be a good idea to have saved a few dollars for all that extra equipment you are going to have to buy.
What’s more you can now do both Open Circuit and Rebreather Technical Training right here in the UAE courtesy of both Coastal Technical Divers and DSDC. Carryingout your training and diving in the warm waters of the Arabian and Oman Gulfs. No more of that travelling to far away places to freeze in cold dark waters to get the next bit of training needed.
The training available in the UAE, as anywhere else in the World is to a maximum depth limit of 120 metres (the current deepest wreck in the UAE we know about is at about 115m), At 120m the training agencies disappear, possibly quite sensibly, and to go deeper you enter a world of exploration and advancement with other across the Worlds
diving network.
Technical diving in the UAE up to now has been very much lead by DSDC’s Bill Leeman who has a 2 decade history of open circuit deep air, deep trimix and rebreather diving behind him. Bill is a very active diver who plumbs the depths of the UAE most weekends. Bill is now joined by Glenn Campbell of Coastal Technical Divers who many years ago had a diving job in the Canadian Navy, moved to deep and long cave
diving in Africa and the Americas before coming to teach under the IANTD banner in the UAE. These two are, however, not alone as Emirati diver Ali Fikree offers the GUE path in open circuit technical diving, this being an alternative to the IANTD training route. The recent fundamental difference for all of us in 2011 is that Glenn is a full time instructor and has trained no less than 12 Technical Rebreather divers in the first half
of 2011.
You need friends – carrying just over 100kg of diving equipment a diver receives assistance to get off the boat and into the water.another technical dive.
Final Checks – 115metres is a long way down and a long way back for technical divers –
everything needs to be just right. All of these sounds rather grand, exciting and for many – it is also very enticing. Is it for you? The people who are typically turning up to do technical diver training are reasonably experienced recreational scuba divers who are perhaps getting a little bored with their current activities. They hear about technical diving, see a few videos, maybe try it out (Rebreather try outs are very popular) and
relish the new challenges and demands that are presented in front of them.
There are some draw backs – here is mine. Divers put the kit on and try to stand up to get in the water. It’s a bit of a surprise to many when they strap on a twinset and a couple or more stage tanks and find what an 80kg+ load is like (let’s say that friends are very useful at this point).
More alarming for them is that that they are about to jump in the water and wondering if they are going sink straight to the bottom, faster that the Titanic (thankfully you don’t). The shear weight of the equipment at the surface presents interesting challenges yet once underwater we are back to the aptitude issues of coping with the risks involved should they manifest themselves on any particular dive – and mark my word – they
do – frequently.
In technical scuba diving terms the UAE is blessed with a number of things that the rest of the world sort of struggles with, particularly if you have the additional advantage of living in the UAE. I have commented in my EDA magazine articles on the convenience of UAE diving, bed to dive in under a hour – unless you are on holiday it is very difficult to find that elsewhere.
The warm water, the low cost of fuel for the boats transporting you and all your equipment, and (in most places) the small tidal range making deep diving possible at any state of the tide are other UAE advantages. 
Yet what really makes the UAE are the dive locations. In the Arabian Gulf we have an abundance of wrecks in the 20-30 metre range for training plus, in the northern gulf, the Energy Determination in the 30 to 85 metre range and on the east coast so far (as Bill is looking for more) the Inchcape Wrecks (up to 30m), the Ines (72m), the Anita (94m) and U533 (at a considerable 115m).
What’s the next step? I suggest that the best method to find out more is to come and talk to the current bunch of UAE technical divers. You can turn up at DSDC on a Monday or Wednesday evening to have a natter with them (map on the web site), or you can call Glenn at CTD on 0508966707 – don’t forget he cant answer if he is underwater.
