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It's everybody's personal choice if you trust your life to the shutdown/analysis process and to your buddy's competence and presence, but you may one day notice that for many people this is not OK at all. They want to be self-reliant even when diving with a buddy, and they do not trust the...

For sure one can think of a kind failure that renders the gas in one sidemount tank unusable, whereas a manifold closed in a short time will preserve more gas. Now instead of digressing into feathering and reg swapping under water, I think it's more important to understand the purpose of...

The most probable point of failure is the regulator or first stage; in that case, provided the correct post/isolator is shut down in a timely fashion, you survive. The problem here is that you survive if you notice the leak in time, if you identify, and close the correct post, and if you do so...

For boat diving I see pros and cons and couldn't decide on a clear winner; backmount divers who just recently started sidemounting need practice before they figure out what works best for them. Consider also the fatal accident of Lex Warner...

I have one buddy who dives a backmount doubles DIR setup although he can't reach his valves due to some shoulder problem. He thinks a pony tank or going sidemount are too much of a hassle or incompatible with his team, and that it's OK because he stays close to his buddy. I don't think many tec...

I don't think it's broadly disdained, there's just a small vocal religious group who don't get it. Open water sidemount is wonderful, feels very nice to have the weight off your back, good for people with lower back pain or knees / joints getting older, valves and first stages easy to inspect...

They write about cell phone batteries in this article. There are bigger Li-ion battery packs in scooters / DPV. On one of my liveaboard trips, there were many scooters on the boat. People brought their own, some had home-made battery packs. Some had trouble with the battery packs, had to fix...

Do you use steel or aluminum tanks? Steel tanks lets you dive with less lead weight.

Dive center description says "The Great cave of Lindos in the Rocky Hill Under the Tomb of Cleobulus (one of the 7 sages of ancient Greece). The Entrance to the first dome is at 17 m depth. Following a corridor about 2m wide we reach the second and greater dome. At this second dome a second exit...

At depth the wing has to provide buoyancy for the weight of gas plus the wetsuit buoyancy lost by compression. While you can easily calculate the weight of gas, the wetsuit buoyancy must be tested. You could throw the wetsuit into the water and see how much lead it can carry. Add that to the...

here's a recent study from 2017 (in German): Refubium - Auswirkungen von Sauerstoff-angereichertem Atemgas auf Sporttaucher They did dives for 25min at 25m, comparing air with EAN40 as bottom gas. Tests for memory and alertness showed that Nitrox makes a difference in narcosis. "Conclusion...

AFAIK, PADI OWD is not sufficient to start the Deep diver Specialty. You need at least PADI Adventure Diver, which is kind of half an AOWD (3 dives instead of 5). Many people take AOWD and Deep Specialty together. PADI Tec40 is the better deep specialty, but not a replacement for it. AOWD+Deep...

WWII munitions: Time bombs at the bottom of the Baltic Sea | DW | 07.02.2019 quote: "In German waters alone, the quantity of conventional munition and chemical warfare agents is estimated at 300,000 tons. For example, the Kolberger Heide munitions dumping area is located directly outside Kiel -...

PADI AOWD is 5 dives (the sample platter), they are the first dives from 5 specialties. The corresponding SSI card is the SSI Advanced Adventurer. Whereas the SSI AOWD is more than that, it contains 4 full specialties. So there's some confusion because SSI AOWD and PADI AOWD are something...

1) In the video the breathing rate is a bit high, looks stressed. Note that the breathing pattern should be inhale-exhale-rest-inhale-exhale-rest-... Breathe slowly, do not rest inhaled, do not hold your breath. Rest with empty lungs. This makes a big difference for trim; a full lung adds...

Watch your breathing pattern. Do not stay inhaled for longer time, instead rest exhaled. Some divers who stay inhaled for a longer time can compensate trim by moving weight higher up (not good but works), but in your case with little weight, no such workaround.

Note that the publication (Mitchell: Respiratory Physiology of Rebreather Diving) shows experimental results where between 6g/l and 7g/l half of test dives couldn't be finished. But these were working dives and I don't see the parameters (how much work, for how long), so we don't know how hard...

I think this is the general problem here: risk factors do not simply sum up, they influence each other, and one cannot draw a red line for single factors. 50m on air OC will be OK for me under benign conditions, but on a cold water night dive at an 80m deep wall with currents I wouldn't do 50m...

I bet one will see a lot more trouble and incidents when diving with buddies, particularly instant buddies, than diving solo. However we always must distinguish between minor incidents and fatalities, not only because the latter are obviously more important to avoid, but also because their...

If you're referring to Anthony and Mitchell: "Respiratory Physiology of Rebreather Diving", these recommendations were given for planned working dives on rebreathers. But they write they also ran tests on OC gear and the results were virtually the same, that some working dives with densities...