Diving beyond cert?

[gmerick]

What is "Beyond Cert"?

PADI OW, AOW, and recreational specialties train to 40m and no planned decompression.
PADI TEC 45/50/55 add diving beyond NDL to physiological limits. TEC trimix and TEC deep are essentially "specialty" courses for the TEC 45/50/55 series.

What more "limits" are there?

 

[admikar]

What is "Beyond Cert"?

PADI OW, AOW, and recreational specialties train to 40m and no planned decompression.
PADI TEC 45/50/55 add diving beyond NDL to physiological limits. TEC trimix and TEC deep are essentially "specialty" courses for the TEC 45/50/55 series.

What more "limits" are there?

It's "self imposed" limits.
Personal responsibility has gone to such a low level that we are afraid of anything out of "ordinary".

 

[Pedroo]

By this line of thinking, you can start reb diving just like that without training. Or wreck. Or cave. Or even better! Why not extrapolate this thinking to other areas of life? You can start flying an airplane without training because they mean nothing. You have to admit that wasn't the best advice you can give a stranger on the internet...

 

[admikar]

Did you even read OP?
OP is a certified diver, asking to go deeper with a highly experienced buddy. He's not asking for 120 m CCR dive straight from the street.

 

[grantmac]

By this line of thinking, you can start reb diving just like that without training. Or wreck. Or cave. Or even better! Why not extrapolate this thinking to other areas of life? You can start flying an airplane without training because they mean nothing. You have to admit that wasn't the best advice you can give a stranger on the internet...

In the USA certain classes of aircraft don't require anything beyond a driver's license.
Is it smart to fly one without training? Probably not.
But the risk to others (much like scuba) is low so the responsibility rests with the person involved in the activity.

 

[tursiops]

But the risk to others (much like scuba) is low so the responsibility rests with the person involved in the activity.

I'm sure that many of those lost, drowned, searched for scuba divers who died were really pleased that no one looked for them or found them, since they were loners with only personal responsibility and no one else was involved, not the other passengers on the boat, or other divers at the site, or even family. That is the nice thing about scuba...no on else is involved in your private, egotistical behavior. /s

 

[Cthippo]

The "certification limits" are nothing more than recommendations from a training agency. In the US anyway, they have no force of law behind them.

Really, the only limitations on how you dive are defined by your own risk profile. "How likely am I to die on this dive and am I OK with that level of risk" is the only meaningful question. If you don't have an answrr to the first part of that (How likely?), then more research is in order.

Nothing we do is safe. Every single thing we do has the potential to kill us and eventually something will. The question for each of those activities is "Is this worth the risk?". Scuba diving is no different.

 

[happy-diver]

Yes to our rights are attached the responsibility of appreciating how our actions may well affect others

Which were exactly my thoughts, as I was building this rebreather from scratch, in my parents laundry

From this plan

By this line of thinking, you can start reb diving just like that without training.

 

[Pedroo]

But the risk to others (much like scuba) is low so the responsibility rests with the person involved in the activity.

Allow me to disagree with you.

According to a 2015 report: 86% of fatalities occurred while alone ( diving solo or separated from a partner). So I can assume that in the case of separation with a partner it was due to poor training - however I realize that sometimes things have a very unfortunate course despite perfect training. But at the same time, according to DAN: 57% of people who started diving with a partner were separated at the time of death.

And while I don't know the meanderings of U.S. law and what is allowed and not allowed without a license, the evidence shows that you are wrong here as well. A quick search shows that there have been a lot of accidents involving small aircraft, where the victims were not only the pilot or passengers, but also people on the ground.

For example:

3 killed after small plane crashes into Florida mobile home park, FAA says

Multiple mobile homes caught fire after the single-engine plane, whose pilot had reported engine failure, crashed in Clearwater, officials said.

www.nbcnews.com

That's why I can't agree with you that diving without good training is solely a matter of who is doing it.

 

[boulderjohn]

According to a 2015 report: 86% of fatalities occurred while alone ( diving solo or separated from a partner). So I can assume that in the case of separation with a partner it was due to poor training - however I realize that sometimes things have a very unfortunate course despite perfect training.

I knew 4 people I considered to be friends who died while scuba diving. In all 4 cases the divers were alone when they died. In all 4 cases, the divers were very highly trained. Three were certified and experienced cave divers, and the fourth was an instructor who owned a thriving dive operation. In all 4 cases, the divers became separated from their buddies, and in all 4 cases, the circumstances were beyond their control.

The divers just seemed to disappear. One was in a zero visibility cave incident that has been thoroughly analyzed both in this site and elsewhere, but the others were in open water and were consistent with what I have seen in other reports. Divers who are supposedly with a team are just suddenly gone, with no good explanation. In one of the cases, a thorough examination of the gear found no problems, and an autopsy did not find a cause of death. In the other cases, the disappeared divers were never found.

Here is an anecdote that may explain this. I was diving with my daughter-in-law and her young son in calm and clear water on a reef in South Florida. Since they were newer divers, I was watching over them carefully. They were swimming side by side, with me in front leading. When it was time to end the dive, I faced them and signaled the ascent, and they both responded. My grandson and I started a slow ascent, but his mother paused briefly to look at her gauges. When she looked up from her gauges, we were about 6-7 feet above her, and we had both stopped when she had not started the ascent immediately. She began to look around frantically. Where had everyone gone? Where was her beloved son? He was within 10 feet of her, but she couldn't see him.

If someone is within a buddy team and has a medical event, that person may suddenly either rise or fall, and if no one is looking at him or her at that precise moment, there is a good chance no one will see it happen. No one will know where that person went. If that medical event leads to death, then the statistics will show that the diver died alone.