New maneuver of last resort?

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I think you should read the article before making up your mind. In a YMCA diving study they taught ow students to breath into and out of the bladder and they were able to do so for 1 minute. The concept also relates to expansion of gas as one rises in the water.

Again, something to consider in a pinch.

As for infection from the BCD bladder, very unlikely. Your airway is a great filter for junk. And as said before, you can treat lung infections but not drowning.

Anyone know how maneuver was spelled different in the title of the thread? That is not the way I spelled it.
 
Learned about this technique back in 1976. Not breathing from tank via inflator, but actually exhaling into BC then inhaling the same air as you made your way to the surface (as it would theoretically still have enough O2 for maybe a couple more breath cycles, hopefully enough to keep you conscious long enough to get to the surface).

Never practiced it in class, but the instructor and later some Dive Masters described it and explained it was a "final resort" in an OOA situation that was too deep for a CESA; they strongly stressed that buddy breathing was always the best option if below CESA depth; now remember, this was 1976, and before backup regulators were widely used so everyone learned buddy-breathing in the pool and in the ocean as part of OW training... and in fact at that time even BC's were rare... lol, the floatation device we all wore was the "safety vest", similar to today's snorkeling vests.
 
I think you should read the article before making up your mind. In a YMCA diving study they taught ow students to breath into and out of the bladder and they were able to do so for 1 minute. The concept also relates to expansion of gas as one rises in the water.

Again, something to consider in a pinch.
Charlie,

Not to be negative, but think about this for a minute.

We have an entire article here filled with speculation, strokery and massive ad hockery, to address a situation that it is perfectly simple to avoid in the first place.

Don't you think that it might be more sensible to emphasize the importance of planning each dive so that you have a gas plan pre-identified to make the most effective use of the gas in your tank; and then to dive the plan?

And in the "meteor from beyond the Van Allen Belt wiping out all life on earth" scenario involving catastrophic cascading equipment failures, doesn't it make more sense to just signal "OOA" to your buddy and ascend normally on their secondary?

The way to look at this is not to conclude "Something to consider in a pinch".

The way to look at this is as an utterly ridiculous proposition to learn how to avoid ever needing at any cost.

Gas planning and proper dive planning simply isn't that difficult. Particularly for people who can actually identify the sorts of bacteria that might live inside a BCD.

Why ponder speculative ad hoc solutions to situations that are so simple to avoid in the first place?

Lets face it. Anyone who needs to consider sucking off their BCD has seriously screwed the pooch from the start.
 
I have to agree with Doc Intrepid... and ba hiker, regarding not having much in my bc to begin with.
 
I have to agree with DocIntrepid. We don't drive out car, or fly a plane this way, or make a plan for running out of gas. Monitoring our gas on every dive like we would in a car or plane is the best option for an inprobable situation. It is a fun "what if" senario but regs fail by providing gas, not witholding it, and they seldom fail at all. Plan the dive by the amount of gas you will turn on, or start back, and in the recreational world, you will have plenty for a stop. I usually breath all of my gas (to around 500 at 15') when I rec. dive. I am not gonna make another dive on the tank and a longer stop helps on multiple dives and multiple days..............but I turn on the conservative side. Real world is this: people run out of gas because of failure to monitor it, not because of the regulator failing. FWIW Mark
 
Like several others I was exposed to this in the 70s. In modern times should be no need as Doc and others have pointed out....
 
As others have said, it might work WITH PRACTISE, but it is nor a particularly safe skill to practise, so in the event that a diver needs such a skill he will be unlikely to be able to do it well.

Now, taking into account the extreme unlikelyness of a diver EVER getting into a situation where this would be the best response, and the range of options available to prevent getting into such a situation, would it be wrong to say that a diver who reaches the point where this is his only viable option DESERVES the Darwin Award he is about to nominate himself for?
 
Problem is that I usually don't have any air in my BCD when I am at depth. As far as infections from any air that might be inside I doubt that it would be a problem in my case. The inside of the bladder of my BCD is some sort of plyable plastic. I clean it out with a flush of water and bleach after each trip so I figure that it's pretty clean. I would use it if there was enough air in there to do the job. A pony tank would be the ticket if you think you need extra air.
 
Problem is that I usually don't have any air in my BCD when I am at depth. As far as infections from any air that might be inside I doubt that it would be a problem in my case. The inside of the bladder of my BCD is some sort of plyable plastic. I clean it out with a flush of water and bleach after each trip so I figure that it's pretty clean.

So instead of breathing bacteria, you're breathing bleach.

MMMMMMMMMM :P
 

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