Heat Miser
Contributor
I have just spent a week open circuit diving in the Maldives on a local island.
My question is do the local rules regarding, no deco diving and 1 hour maximum run time, encourage local divers to adopt less safe dive profiles then they would elswhere in the world.?
Because they don't want their computer to go into deco, most of the local divers I dived with, run the least conservative settings, which on a Garmin is a GF 45/95. This is regardless of depth (which in the Maldives is limited to 30m) and regardless of surface interval, (which was typically 1 hour)
I found that after the second dive, particularly, after say two dives to 29 meters and 1 hour surface interval, that there were big differences in the guides dive profile, to what i wanted to do running GF 50/70. The water is warm and often there is a lot of fish life to see at 3-6m, even floating in the blue because vis can be 30 meters (100 feet). Generally I would just get my guide to do the stops, I wanted to do.
But I wonder if there are any stats on local's getting DCS. It seems to me that they are willing to really dive to the limits of the rules i.e, 30m, <1h total run time, no deco and perhaps they may be better served, getting rid of the no deco, < 1hour rules, to encourage more conservative gradient factor/model adoption.
thoughts?
My question is do the local rules regarding, no deco diving and 1 hour maximum run time, encourage local divers to adopt less safe dive profiles then they would elswhere in the world.?
Because they don't want their computer to go into deco, most of the local divers I dived with, run the least conservative settings, which on a Garmin is a GF 45/95. This is regardless of depth (which in the Maldives is limited to 30m) and regardless of surface interval, (which was typically 1 hour)
I found that after the second dive, particularly, after say two dives to 29 meters and 1 hour surface interval, that there were big differences in the guides dive profile, to what i wanted to do running GF 50/70. The water is warm and often there is a lot of fish life to see at 3-6m, even floating in the blue because vis can be 30 meters (100 feet). Generally I would just get my guide to do the stops, I wanted to do.
But I wonder if there are any stats on local's getting DCS. It seems to me that they are willing to really dive to the limits of the rules i.e, 30m, <1h total run time, no deco and perhaps they may be better served, getting rid of the no deco, < 1hour rules, to encourage more conservative gradient factor/model adoption.
thoughts?