Tech Diving - The context of the research

"Don't panic". Or why should we do a psychological investigation of Technical Diving ?

As clinicians of activity, our interventions answer to field requests : we help the professionals to investigate the questions or problems that come to light in their everyday activity. 

The main question related to Tech Diving is risk and risk management.

Last pages of the official diving book of each diver

"An old Tech diver is a good diver", they say, or "I do not know if I am good but I am still here". See for example this quote from the field : "Pour durer dans ce milieu, il faut prendre le temps de construire son expérience". Accidents happen (see for example the news, in French, of the death of Brigitte Lenoir, trying to dive to -230 meters : http://www.24heures.ch/deces-plongeuse-brigitte-lenoir-egypte-2010-05-15).

Therefore the field demand can be stated as follow :
1) As a diver : a good preparation is critical in Tech Diving. It is thought to be a triple preparation : material preparation, physical preparation and psychological preparation. The material preparation is very well documented and is the focus of much of the training programs. The physical preparation is not specific to this activity, which requires a good physical condition as in other sports. And they know almost nothing on the psychological preparation. Some teachers ask questions on this topic in their courses : are you aware of the risks you take ? And your family ? Do they accept them ? But how do Tech Divers really feel regarding these questions ? Stress and fear are two words from the field. Tech Divers say that if an incident happens when you are at the bottom of the sea, the difference between a dead diver and a diver alive is related to his psychological ability to deal with this unexpected situation. Can we explicit these psychological ways of staying in control of a difficult situation ?
2) As a trainer and teacher : can they help their trainees to better evaluate and manage the risks ? Can they tell them when they put themselves in danger and why ? Can they help them to better manage these psychological aspects to practice more safely ?

My bet is that risk management is strongly incorporated in all the small, repeted, common gestures of the experiences divers and that we can work on this everyday experience in order to get this psychological aspects visible, and put them under discussion.

Tech Diving - 2

Some more pictures from this first fieldwork with Tech Divers, taken after the dive, which was 110 minutes long : 5 minutes to go to -107 meters, 5 minutes at the bottom of the lake, including an exercise to check the backup material. There was a problem with the material (although it had been tested successfully just half an hour before before the dive) and the diver decided to go back to -80 meters, where he spent around 10 minutes before coming up slowly. The first levels were around -35 meters. The lake was clear and calm, no wind, crystalline waters.

Back !

The rebreather - inside

What was done, recorded by the diving computer : see in blue, the dive curve ; and in red, the decompression curve

A (Swiss) diver's car : full and very well organized.

Tech Diving - 1

Yesterday fieldwork journey with an experienced Tech Diver. We begin a research project on Risk Management, exploring the psychological aspects of this kind of very, very technical diving. These divers go deep, more than 60 meters deep and up to 100, 120, sometimes 140 meters. They breathe special mixes of Oxygen, Nitrogen and Helium - called Trimix. The day is sunny but the water is cold : 6 to 4 Celsius degrees (around 41 °F). Preparation work requires more than one hour, and you'll understand why below.

Beautiful spot : Thun lake, near Interlaken

Rebreather ready for use - 25 kg

Testing the back up air tanks. Redundancy is the word.

Testing if the diving suit is water-resistant

The compass

Putting the rebreather on

Backup air tanks and life line ready

Ready to go - bye bye