Cave Diving

Now what would possess one to want to strap over 100 pounds of stuff onto their body and jump into water over their head? When you find the answer you have found a technical diver.
My answer was that I wanted to go to places that required that commitment. It all started when I first went to Bikini Atoll. Prior to our trip, I had heard about that Nitrox thing and since I knew we were going deep I decided to take a class. Well back in 1995 Nitrox was still a voodoo gas in many eyes. So after much searching I found someone to teach it. In addition to the Nitrox class we took a Deep Air class, sort of a introduction to decompression stop diving. Didn’t think we needed it, but what the heck. After completing the classes off to Bikini we went. We knew what we were doing now!
Well, all dives in Bikini are decompression stop dives. The average dive depth is 155 feet. After a week of this diving, had a great time, but we realized we did not have a clue and that clearly was not acceptable. So after our return, back to the dive shop we went and said we wanted to finish our training. Finish our training meant hypoxic trimix and cave.
At that point I had made the commitment to become a technical diver. After completion of the trimix and cave classes I was a certified cool tech diver, or was I? In the fullness of time I have realized that to truly be a technical diver you have to do technical dives. In order to do technical dives you have to want to do technical dives. So in the end the Why is because there is something down there you want to see and technical diving is how to see it safely.