Diving without pay beyond the Sport Diving limits listed above constitutes Technical Diving. This course is probably somewhat different than anything you have done before. Deeper diving, with staged decompression, requires a level of training, preparation, and discipline well beyond ordinary sport diving standards in order to minimize risk and enhance safety. Bluntly this kind of diving is dangerous. Inadequate training, preparation, or discipline, or use of inappropriate or poor quality equipment will expose you to a significant risk of permanently disabling injury or fatality.
Technical diving is equipment intensive.
Your equipment is a life support system, which enables you to survive in a foreign and potentially hostile environment. Your equipment must be of top quality, well maintained, and appropriate to the exposure to be undertaken. Redundancy is the key element, which will allow you to survive the failure of a critical component. The following are lists of prerequisites and minimum appropriate equipment required for technical diving, and a tentative schedule of activities. Only eight people will be allowed in the program.