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It depends. You will have to fill out a medical form that asks you about conditions that may be problematic when diving. If you can honestly answer no to all questions, no physician sign-off is required. But if you have anything on that list, you'll need to have a physician certify that you're...

There are a couple of options. One is the aforementioned measuring tape. I personally like it, but it has a bit of a bad rap among cave surveyors for reasons that aren't quite clear to me. An alternative for measuring distances on an established line is to make a precisely measure a short piece...

When I first saw the poll whether PADI should revise it's standards of limiting recreational diving on air to 40m I though the question was whether it should be 30m instead, and relegating the 30-40m range to trimix, like GUE. So I was surprised when the actual post was talking about 60m dives...

For me the most obvious symptom is after the dive: I don't remember all the details. I still know that I swallow along the wreck, checked out the bowsprit, etc., but forgot exactly what I saw there. So I have pretty much concluded that I won't do dives where I will likely get so narced that I...

I would hope "bare hands" is an exaggeration and they had dry gloves... plus a heavy duty Viking suit and a Superlite dive helmet. Then it's just another crappy day at work for a commercial diver.

I prefer to dive with a buddy or a team, but I do dive solo if no one is available. I really like to talk about the dive afterwards. Compare what we have seen, how the dive felt, etc. on the drive home, or over a beer in the evening, and making plans for the next dive together. It's a nice way...

I avoid having my regs serviced unless they have a problem. I had more than occasionally trouble with freshly serviced regs and had to bring them back for a tweak right after service quite a few times. I dive mostly freshwater, so salt isn't an issue and I'm comfortable with exceeding the...

Perhaps that's the reason for the confusion? Gas planning is usually covered early in the classroom portion of any sidemount course with any instructor I know of.

The formal requirements for the number of dives to enroll in a course are indeed very low, and I'm not sure why that's the case. Perhaps the agencies want to leave it up to the instructor beyond that, and many instructors have indeed higher requirements before they take on a student for tech...

I have one symptom of narcosis that hasn't been mentioned, although it's not useful as a diagnostic during the dive: my short term memory is impaired. I don't remember much of the dive when I'm back on the boat. Yes, on a cold water dive to 130' on air I can recall that I swam along the wreck...

Is the issue really the cost of helium, or the cost of the Trimix training?

Reading this I notice that it's the sixth dive of a full cave course, and there is no prior lower cave cert listed for the victim. His highest level was Advanced Nitrox (but no DP). And he was doing this dive with four tanks, the two sidemount tanks plus stage and O2 deco tank. They were...

LOL - that didn't stop a captain from turning my air off right before splashing. I'm diving sidemount and have the vindicator hand wheels on my tanks. Both were open when I got to the platform, and then the captain on his final check turned one of them off! Fortunately I caught it and turned it...

That would be my guess as well. The OP is wearing multiple layers, and air can get in beteeen easily. I wonder if the problem is still there after thirty minutes of diving. With the tank somewhat lighter then, it should be worse, but if the air from the suit, BCD, etc is then gone, re-descending...

I would look at the diving you will be doing, and the buddies you'll be diving with, in the near to mid term. If almost everyone is diving sidemount, let's say in the Mexican caves, go there and find a good instructor in that environment and configuration. If it's almost all backmount, like much...

That was actually how I learned it in my horrible, no-good PADI sidemount course, just to unlearn it quickly when I took cavern. My chest area is already crowded enough that I don't need another thing, i.e., the tank valves, cluttering it up. And why would I want to reach across my body to...

Back to the original question: Two things I think other agencies could learn from GUE are attention to the QA process, and the insistence that their instructors are excellent divers. But of course having outstanding diving skills is only part of being a great instructor, teaching skills are just...

If I had to pick one cave to save when all others disappeared from the face of the earth, it would be Sac Actun. The system is so large and diverse that you can do hundreds of dives and still see new things. And it has everything from highly decorated shallow passages to deep sidemount tunnels...

At Nohoch, you can also do Alberto's line. It is to the right of the main line, and you can tie in with the primary reel easily. On sixths, you should be able to get near the end of that line, where it loops back to a jump to the main line just before Heaven's Gate. There are also two...

Agreed - don't worry about the hand signals. The most important ones can be done with one hand, and for the numbers there is an alternative one-handed system that is commonly used in technical diving, where you often don't have both hands free or don't want to move the hand that holds the light.