Male
Tom, you wrote that "The very definition of recreational diving is that it is no decompression". And this definition is by whom? By PADI, NAUI and SSI, yes, by CMAS, no. Even CMAS 2* do deco dives FYI (down to 40m).
That definition is actually by most agencies, including both IANTD and GUE, both of which I have training with.
In essence, since we all dive for fun, everything we do is "recreational" in a sense, but when you look at the Rec vs Tech distinction, then deco - and to a lesser extent - overhead environments is what makes the difference.
This is my very point: different places, different concepts! And in Europe recreational diving is down to 60m with deco. It is different in the US and in many other places but maybe you can open up a little bit and understand that from a European point of view not making the housing of the E-M5 capable of 60m is a missed opportunity.
And if you want to talk about divers with PADI + TEC trainings to stay strictly in a US environment then it is the same anyway: there are more and more persons going for TEC courses if I can trust what I see (more and more training agencies and more and more dive shops proposing PADI + TEC) so it means that more and more divers are getting qualifications to go beyond 45m and therefore will regret that the Oly housing stops at 45m and will buy from someone else.
Even with more people doing that training, there's still at least 20 purely recreational divers to every tech diver. I should add that I'm from Sweden - where we have a lot of deep wrecks and where - should you happen to be part of the tech community - all you see are tech divers. Still, even here, most divers are recreational and don't have training to go beyond 40m.
Tom
