Quote: (Originally Posted by
sadave)
IBut what happened (ignoring the sponsorship issues) to just "going diving", or exploring for the sake of exploring.
Could you afford to ignore sponsorship issues if you wanted to do that dive? I wish people would stop writing (ignoring sponsorship issues, or sponsorship aside) many people/teams just cant afford to ignore them and they can be the thing that makes or breaks an expedition - you shouldn't dismiss them so lightly. Most everyone doing this kind of thing are heavily sponsored. How far would you prostitute yourself to get USD3K worth of new DUI drysuit? USD2K worth of Slavo lights, USD2K worth of F1 dive computers? etc etc.
I'm not saying these guys were sponsored but many are. Would you agree to a marketing record claim (even a marginal one) if it facilitated getting all that lovely gear?
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Anecdote number 1:
I was sitting in the talk at Oztek in Sydney earlier listening to a report about a recent cave expedition, and I overheard a comment from the person behind me who asked his mate "where they diving the cave, or just looking for depth records
I thought about this, and listened to the rest of the talk with that in mind. Every dive description they gave, went into a bit of detail, mentioning some things about the dive, but every dive description included the maximum depth obtained."...
Oztek is a tech conference not a Karst geology conference. The easiest differentiator to describe a progressive cave exploration is penetration distance or depth and that's the easiest thing to use. "On the 1st expedition we succeeded in exploring to this cute little dissolved stalactite next to a sand dollar" isn't really going to cut it is it
!
. But typical as soon as you mention a depth someone auto believes that's your only motivation.
That's not always true of all (at least its not for me depth makes me scared)
Curiously in horizontal caves if you only mention distance nobody accuses you of only being motivated to break distance records!!!
as if thats a bad thing
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Anecdote number 2:
I'm fairly involved in another scuba diving forum that is 100% Australian based and oriented. Foreigners are more than welcome, but when a diver has made 10 posts on the forum, with not one of them being anything other than "bragging" about their latest expedition, and how good they are, with a link to their personal website, which tells you more about how good they are, and then never come back to answer questions until they come back to brag about their next dive....... You have to wonder what their motivations are for doing the dives, let alone making the posts.
I think we could all benefit from less of the "I did this, how cool am I", and more of the "just going diving"... none of the press releases, none of the spamming every forum on the planet stating that "I've just done....." All your doing is making it appear that you have joined that forum purely to blow your own trumpet.
I suspect their motivation is 100% advertising in order to attract students and future sponsorship - I'm not sure there anything wrong with doing that and I'm not sure if that means they don't see that as a means to an end (to be able to do the dives in the 1st place) Their posts should be viewed in the same way as you view an advert from BMW. Its commercial advertsing - nothing wrong with that provided people recognise it as such and PROVIDED they dont let commercial marketting pressures make them claim untruths especially dangerous ones. Persoanlly I skip over such posts in the same way and same reason I use the remote to flick through TV adverts.
I fortunately can afford to avoid 95% of the sponsorship issues so I don't have to prostitute myself so much - but I appreciate those that nead to if they wish to be able to afford big expeditions. And believe me one way or another almost everyone doing this sort of thing is under some kind of sponsorship obligation. That's just the way it works mostly.
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Here, its a bit different, its a rebreather specific forum, that doesn't have any borders. Yes, we want to know about any "big" dives done on Rebreather's, but we want MORE than just "I just dived to 205m in cold water". I'm sorry, but the initial post should have, (IMHO) included, deco schedules, sorb used, mixes used, bailouts carried / staged, etc etc etc... not JUST "I did this, I'm so good, and here's a pretty picture to go with it!"
So, if your doing a big dive, good luck, and god speed, absolutely let us know all about it, but dispense with the bullshit... On this board, you ARE dealing with MOST of the best and most experienced Rebreather divers on the planet, as well as some complete RB numpties (like me!), we'll all respect you, as long as you don't come across as blowing your trumpet, and come here to help us learn, and maybe even learn a bit yourself. We've been burnt once before by someone who was claiming to have done a lot of things that have since been proven to be BS internet diving claims, so I think we're justified in asking for details and evidence now.
I agree - well said
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/end of rant, I think I need another beer!
I agree again
- but mines a G&T