UTD Essentials Of Technical Diving

The Essentials of Technical Diving course is designed to cultivate the fundamental techniques required by all sound technical, wreck, and cave diving practice. Essentials of Technical focuses on the divers’ critical bottom skills. The training is centered around precise buoyancy control, team awareness, and controlled ascent procedures including surface marker buoy use.

UTD’s Essentials of Technical Diving class continues the students’ path as a “Thinking Diver” and brings an increased awareness of the underwater environment. While preparing the diver for more advanced, technical dive training, the Intro to Tech student will also develop excellent diving skills for use in recreational diving situations.

Many divers find all the adventure they need in recreational dives shallower than 100' however, some feel that maybe they are missing some skills that technical divers have. Maybe you linger at the top of the wall, looking down into the inky abyss? Maybe the idea of penetrating a wreck, with only your lights and a guideline to lead you gives you those “good” goose bumps? Or maybe you think that you’ll never be happy unless you're flying past a pinnacle at 200' on a scooter? Technical diving is about having fun, just like any other pastime. But, like anything worth doing, it requires perseverance and hard work. This class is designed for the diver who is eager to learn some basic technical diving skills which will help improve their recreational diving ability or who wants to begin building a strong foundation to start pursuing the challenge of technical diving.

Why Take this Class?

Maybe you want to learn something new (like the UTD configuration) or you want to improve your safety by learning to do horizontal air sharing drills. Regardless of your motivation, in this class you will be introduced to the technical diver's toolbox. You will learn to hover motionless, move forward and backward, turn around without disturbing the bottom. You will learn to air share gas with your teammate in a reasonable and efficient manner. You will learn to ascend, making appropriate stops while deploying a surface marker to alert the boat and support team of our predicament and the basic use of a deco bottle. In the classroom, technical divers need to know which gas to choose and why, how to plan a dive (including Decompression techniques), from the back of the truck to a bench on the boat, and how to ensure that everyone has a great time and gets home safely. Intro to Tech isn't about showcasing the latest equipment, or rushing you into the next class. It's about working to develop skills that will improve your dive, and thus propel you into a world of exploration.

In the planning stages, the schedule can be flexible if you contact me as soon as possible if you are interested. I will do my best to work around schedules.

You can contact me at toddp@unifiedteamdiving or diveutdbc@gmail.com.