Exactly how deep is "Deep Air?"

[DCBC]

I wish I had your amazing judgement.

I would be content if you would just let other people exercise their own judgement and refrain from dictating to them how they should elect to dive.

For someone with so much experience, you sure aren't good at putting two and two together. Give me a reason, just one, on why deep air is smart. I didn't say cheap, I said smart. What advantage does it have? Other than something to brag about cuz you're a tough guy.

Deep air (you may also insert cave diving, wreck diving, ice diving, decompression diving) is smart when the diver properly plans the dive and ascertains through his/her training & experience that they can complete the dive in a safe manner. What that depth is may be 30' or 200'; the depth isn't a concern if it falls within that individual's safe diving envelope.

You seem to be hung-up on "air." I've known Trimix divers who have gone deeper than their safety envelope. Wake-up and smell the coffee. It's not how deep you go; it's how deep are you properly prepared to go through training, experience and the application of good judgement.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Ya, there's an ebb and flow as the thoughts and feelings of the cave diving community changes, but more or less its 100-130 across the board.

The game just changes when you go deep, no matter if its OW or cave. Its that simple. I fully understand that correlation does not necessarily mean causation, but with out correlation, you can't have causation

Narcosis in and of its self doesn't kill divers, its always a combo. The killings will continue until agencies and old timers check the ego at the door and start acting in the interest of diver safety instead of chest beating, machoism, toughness, and other nonsense. If the agencies knew best, we'd still be doing old,antiquated practices. This is just another one of those things that needs to be phased out.

Thankfully, conversations like this provoke thought amongst those who dive deep and want to dive deep.

I think a huge source of the controversy is applying cave-diving standards to other diving environments.

I'm not sure that's appropriate ... although the rules of cave-diving CAN be applied to other environments, there's plenty of reason to believe that in many cases they would be more conservative than they need to be when so applied.

Trying to convince a cave-diver of that is often an exercise in futility ... especially when the cave diver has no experience in those other environments.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[PfcAJ]

I'm with you on one thing, that diving in caves, deep, wrecks, ice, etc, is more dangerous. I also agree that trained divers should be able to pick what they do.

My issue is the idea of training, advocating, and suggesting that diving on deep air is ok. Its not. Nor is cave diving without a line, diving to a 1.8ppo2, diving without an SPG, etc. If you want to, have at it, but I would never say that its ok to do so. There just isn't a good reason to do any of that, and there isn't a good reason to dive deep air (END greater than 100', w/e).

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I'm with you on one thing, that diving in caves, deep, wrecks, ice, etc, is more dangerous. I also agree that trained divers should be able to pick what they do.

My issue is the idea of training, advocating, and suggesting that diving on deep air is ok. Its not. Nor is cave diving without a line, diving to a 1.8ppo2, diving without an SPG, etc. If you want to, have at it, but I would never say that its ok to do so. There just isn't a good reason to do any of that, and there isn't a good reason to dive deep air (END greater than 100', w/e).

Actually, I'm pretty much on your page with respect to my own diving ... where I differ would be my attitude toward deciding what's "safe" for someone else.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Slamfire]

Because I wanted to know what people were arguing about. Everyone throws the term out there, but typically people refer to END>100' or people talk about dives to 200'. I thought it might be an interesting exercise to see what the term meant to different people.

Here's the way I read your question: I saw the thread title and then I saw the poll and answered the poll without looking at the clarifications. IMO, based on Caribbean and North American common practices, deep air starts at 100'. According to the "law" as seen by PADI and a lot of other agencies, you need the deep specialty to go beyond 100'. Add to that the GUE and UTD training standards on max END. So that means that Dale and I and a host of other divers around our area (yes, a lot of them UTD/GUE trained) will routinely dive deep air around here. It really is no big deal.

Then I read your clarifications of this being about our own personal limits. Well, that's a whole different story that's distantly related to what I originally understood. For me my current limits are at around 150'. I usually dive on a weekly basis. When I start gradually and weekly pushing my dives to 120' -> 130' -> 140' ->150' I find that narcosis is much more manageable.

The last dive I did was interesting because for one reason or another I'd been a month without diving. A UTD trained friend and I decided to do a 150' 28 mins at bottom staged deco dive on air and 50%. He felt ok doing this because in the past we'd gradually pushed the depth to close to 150' over a period of several weeks he's felt fine managing narcosis.

I'll do a little related sidebar here and hijack my own post.[HIJACK]This same UTD trained buddy and I found what looked like a really old weight belt at 138' while diving on air with no stage cylinders. The belt had about 40lbs of home made cylindrical weights. At that time I still hadn't done my P-Weight and the idea of bringing back some clean lead for melting was appealing.

I picked up the belt and saw that each individual cylinder was secured with either a zap strap or a wire stitched through the belts webbing. I quickly assess that with my 4mm kevlar lined wet glove dexterity it'll take me too long at that depth for me to release some cylinders so I gave up on the idea of bringing one or two lead cylinders with me. But with the buckle being at one end, I can quickly cut the webbing and bring the buckle up with me. I take out my knife and with three or 4 vigorous sawing motions cut off the buckle.

My buddy was attentively watching all this and he was quick to catch my falling wrist mounted compass after it became unbuckled. I placed the weight belt buckle in my pocket, sheathed the knife, got my compass from him and correctly buckled it once again on my left wrist. All this happened at 138' and without overextending the initial dive plan. We were alert enough to keep trim, buoyancy, awareness, and be efficient. This happened on a very narrow ledge on the Kelvin Grove wall.[/HIJACK]Going back to the 150' staged deco dive: After a month without diving I did feel narced at 150'. I checked my spg at depth and I had trouble clipping it back on. I had to spend about 10 secs focusing and attempting to clip it before I got it clipped. This never happened before. It did raise a warning flag that I had put on my game face on and be well focused on this one. The dive proceeded without a problem or deviation from the plan. The actual profile ended up looking very nice on the computer screen.

I'm tending to be of the opinion that for me, with dives beyond 150', helium will come in handy. That's why I should have voted 150' on the poll instead of 100'

 

[UCFKnightDiver]

I would be content if you would just let other people exercise their own judgement and refrain from dictating to them how they should elect to dive.

I'm not sure where you're getting this convoluted notion that PfcAj's telling you how to dive. I don't remember seeing this in any of his posts, perhaps I missed something and you could show me? He has said many times that he doesn't think you should advocate nor teach it, but I don't see any post where he says you shouldn't be able to make the decision to dive deep air yourself...

 

[DCBC]

I'm not sure where you're getting this convoluted notion that PfcAj's telling you how to dive. I don't remember seeing this in any of his posts, perhaps I missed something and you could show me? He has said many times that he doesn't think you should advocate nor teach it, but I don't see any post where he says you shouldn't be able to make the decision to dive deep air yourself...

PfcAJ: "...there isn't a good reason to dive deep air (END greater than 100')."

This is but one example. All you have to do is read his historic posts saying the same thing.

The main difference between our views is that I support his right to not dive past an END of 100'. Hell he has the right to not dive at all. Where I have a problem is where a non-instructor with limited experience gets off by telling all instructors that teach Deep Air in accordance with their agency policies that they are irresponsible for doing so. That's bull****!

 

[Cave Diver]

Here's the way I read your question: I saw the thread title and then I saw the poll and answered the poll without looking at the clarifications. IMO, based on Caribbean and North American common practices, deep air starts at 100'. According to the "law" as seen by PADI and a lot of other agencies, you need the deep specialty to go beyond 100'. Add to that the GUE and UTD training standards on max END. So that means that Dale and I and a host of other divers around our area (yes, a lot of them UTD/GUE trained) will routinely dive deep air around here. It really is no big deal.

Then I read your clarifications of this being about our own personal limits. Well, that's a whole different story that's distantly related to what I originally understood. For me my current limits are at around 150'. I usually dive on a weekly basis. When I start gradually and weekly pushing my dives to 120' -> 130' -> 140' ->150' I find that narcosis is much more manageable.

Good answers and both correlate to the original question. It's all about seeing the rationale that different people have on their personal limits and I think your response helps illustrate that.

 

[UCFKnightDiver]

PfcAJ: "...there isn't a good reason to dive deep air (END greater than 100')."

This is but one example. All you have to do is read his historic posts saying the same thing.

I still fail to see where in that quote you posted that he's telling you specifically not to dive deep air, in fact in many posts he's made a point to clarify the opposite. *shrugs*

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I still fail to see where in that quote you posted that he's telling you specifically not to dive deep air, in fact in many posts he's made a point to clarify the opposite. *shrugs*

What I read ... consistently ... in AJ's comments is his belief that deep air should not be taught ... and that if it were not taught, then when the old divers all died off people wouldn't do it.

As someone who has always tried teaching to higher than normal standards, I can tell you that there are ... and probably will always be ... a certain percentage of people who will go off and do things whether they are taught or not ... often despite being shown a better way.

So the question becomes one of whether it's better to teach them something that may not be optimal, or "just say no" and live with the fact that some will go off and do it anyway ... only without any training.

Which do you believe would be less safe?

... Bob (Grateful Diver)