This morning I saw and replied to a post by an employee of a now-former Deep6 dealer. Part of his criticism was that Deep6 allows divers to learn to service their own regulators rather than requiring that work to be performed by a dive shop. His words were that allowing divers to service their own gear was “irresponsible and dangerous.” I replied only because I am the one that made service classes for consumers a thing in the industry. Otherwise, I would be quite content to let Deep6 management or my partner that actually works at Deep6 reply.. so Hi! it’s been a while since I wrote a blog post.
That particular disagreement is sorted out, but the statement deserves some more virtual ink because the underlying issue is important, far more important than a social-media argument or which company sells what through which channel.
It is about diver safety, education, competence, and who we believe should be allowed to understand the life-support equipment they own.
As I said in my reply this morning:
As the guy who introduced service classes for divers, I did it so they could be safer divers.
It is almost always technical divers who take the class. A comprehensive knowledge of their equipment, including its failure modes, makes their diving safer.
I choose diver safety and education over gatekeeping knowledge because someone believes only a dive shop or manufacturer should be allowed to possess it.
Read that part again if you need to.
I say that as a guy who has been teaching technical diving since 1995 (TDI #17). Diver safety is job one—ethically, morally, and at the very core of what we do.
And I mean every word of that.
Let's get something out of the way first: not every diver should service their own regulators.
Regulators are life-support equipment. Servicing one properly requires knowledge, appropriate tools, correct procedures, inspection criteria, adjustment, testing, and the judgment to recognize when something isn't right.
Watching three YouTube videos and buying an adjustable wrench does not make someone a regulator technician.
But neither does receiving a paycheck from a dive shop.
I've been on both sides of this industry for a very long time. I have taught manufacturer service programs for Mares, Oceanic, OMS, Dacor and Aeris. I have taken manufacturer technician courses from those companies and from Scubapro, Aqualung/US Divers/SeaQuest, Cressi, Atomic, Sherwood and others, many of them multiple times.
I've seen how regulator technicians are actually trained.
Some manufacturers use e-learning (Sherwood sent us a VHS tape in the 90’s) Some conduct relatively short clinics, including programs offered around industry events. Others provide considerably more extensive hands-on instruction.
There is no magical transformation that occurs because the person sitting in the classroom works behind the counter of a dive shop.
Competence comes from training, knowledge, practice, appropriate tools and demonstrated ability...not from the commercial status of the student.
That distinction matters.
When we decided to teach divers to service Deep6 regulators, we didn't respond to the responsibility involved by providing less education.
We went the other direction.
With four or fewer students, our class is nine hours of hands-on training in a single day. With more than four students, the class is 16 hours, spread across two days.
Why?
Because if we're going to teach someone to work on life-support equipment, we're going to teach them.
The student needs to understand more than which wrench fits which part. They need to understand what the components do, how the regulator functions as a system, what they're inspecting, what different failures look like, how the regulator is adjusted and tested, and why those specifications matter.
If someone wants to argue that training divers to service regulators is inherently dangerous, then let's have that discussion on technical grounds.
Show me what competency an employed dive-shop technician receives that cannot be taught to the owner of the equipment.
Show me what technical knowledge becomes safe when taught to a dealer employee but dangerous when taught to an experienced technical diver.
“He doesn't work for a dive shop” isn't a technical argument.
This is where I think the industry sometimes misses the point of what we're doing.
Yes, after the class a diver can service the Deep6 regulator they own.
But that isn't the only safety benefit, and in some ways it isn't even the most important one.
They understand their regulator.
I've read accident reports involving highly trained technical divers—including cave and trimix divers—where an equipment problem was followed by panic and a fatal outcome.
Those divers had been taught emergency procedures. They had practiced drills. On paper, their diver training provided skills that should have allowed them to deal with the problem.
But human beings don't experience emergencies on paper.
Imagine suddenly having a massive freeflow underwater.
One diver's mental picture may be:
“My regulator is fucked.”
That's a frighteningly large, undefined problem.
Another diver recognizes what they're experiencing:
“I have a first-stage problem driving intermediate pressure upward. The second stage is opening and relieving that pressure. I'm losing gas rapidly, but the regulator is still delivering gas.”
Same failure.
Very different understanding of the problem.
The second diver doesn't need to conduct an engineering analysis underwater. That's precisely the point. If the diver deeply understands the equipment beforehand, much of that processing has already taken place.
The failure is no longer completely unknown.
It has a mechanism.
It has consequences.
It has a likely progression.
And the emergency procedures the diver learned during their diving courses now have technical context.
Knowledge doesn't replace emergency skills. It gives them context.
We absolutely aren't suggesting that regulator-service education replaces shutdown drills, gas-sharing skills, bailout planning, redundancy or any of the other emergency procedures appropriate to a diver's level of training.
It complements them.
Training someone to respond to an equipment failure necessarily simplifies the problem:
When X happens, do Y.
That's useful. Under stress, simple responses are essential.
But understanding why X is happening can help a diver recognize the problem, process what's happening and apply those trained responses appropriately.
There's an enormous psychological difference between “something incomprehensible is happening to my life-support equipment” and “I recognize this failure.”
I would never claim that technical knowledge makes somebody immune to panic. Nothing does.
I will say that giving a diver a better understanding of what is happening to them provides additional information with which to solve the problem.
Why would we deliberately withhold that?
There's another aspect of the “irresponsible and dangerous” argument that deserves examination.
People routinely work on their own cars.
They replace brake pads, rotors, calipers, brake hoses, wheel bearings, steering components and suspension parts.
Do any of those jobs incorrectly and the consequences may extend considerably beyond the person holding the wrench. A brake failure can kill the driver, passengers and somebody who had absolutely nothing to do with the repair.
Yet our normal response isn't to prohibit automobile owners from learning how brakes work.
We teach them how to do the work correctly.
Working on your own scuba regulator primarily puts you at risk if you perform the work incompetently. That certainly doesn't make incompetent work acceptable. It makes competent training important.
And the frequently invoked word “liability” doesn't magically settle this argument either.
A professional technician servicing another person's life-support equipment for compensation creates a professional relationship involving responsibilities that don't exist in precisely the same way when an owner maintains their own equipment. If professional service is performed incorrectly and someone is injured or killed, questions of responsibility and liability can involve the technician, shop, manufacturer and others depending upon the circumstances.
That is an excellent argument for professional technicians being well trained.
It isn't an argument for preventing owners from becoming well trained.
This is probably the most important distinction in this entire discussion.
A manufacturer saying:
“Before servicing this regulator, you should understand how it works, learn the correct procedures, use the appropriate tools, know our inspection criteria, follow our specifications, and demonstrate that you can do the work properly.”
is establishing a competency requirement.
Deep6 agrees.
But saying:
“You may only have that knowledge if you work for a business that sells our products.”
is establishing a commercial access requirement.
Those are not the same thing.
We don't believe everybody should service their own regulator.
We believe someone who is capable of learning to service their regulator properly should be allowed to learn.
And if they're going to do it, we'd much rather teach them properly than pretend withholding service information will prevent mechanically inclined divers from ever opening their equipment.
This false choice needs to disappear as well.
Deep6 supports good local dive shops. We have said so publicly for a decade.
Good shops provide training, fills, equipment, travel, repairs, advice, community and expertise. A good dive shop earns the loyalty of its customers and deserves to make money providing those services.
We also support technicians. We make Deep6 service parts available to qualified technicians even when their shop isn't a Deep6 dealer.
And we support an owner's right to understand, maintain and repair the equipment they own.
None of those positions contradicts another.
A dive shop's value cannot depend upon preventing its customers from acquiring knowledge.
If anything, I'd argue the opposite. A shop that educates technically sophisticated divers, gives them access to expertise and treats them as intelligent adults has an opportunity to build an extraordinarily strong relationship with exactly the type of diver who otherwise may see little reason to walk through its door.
Deep6 sells equipment internationally, into markets with differing consumer-protection and right-to-repair regimes. But our position isn't merely about complying with whichever law applies in a particular country.
It's philosophical.
If you buy something, we believe you own it.
We aren't interested in deliberately withholding technical knowledge simply to force you to purchase a service from somebody else.
That doesn't mean we're going to tell an untrained person to grab some tools and start disassembling life-support equipment.
It means we'll offer the education.
We'll teach the theory.
We'll teach the procedures.
We'll teach the failure modes.
We'll put the equipment on the bench.
We'll make you do the work.
And we'll spend the time necessary to teach it properly.
Because after more than three decades in this industry and more than three decades teaching technical divers, I simply cannot accept the proposition that a diver becomes safer because we deliberately prevent them from understanding their equipment.
Quite the opposite.
We support good dive shops.
We support qualified professional technicians.
We support proper training.
We support right to repair.
And most importantly:
We support educated divers.
Those aren't competing principles.
Because we don't make diving safer by gatekeeping knowledge.
We make diving safer by teaching it well.