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Crude oil will decay in a year or so if exposed to air and sunlight. It’s actually legal to land-spread it! If it’s hiding under a rock or something, or if there’s enough of it to make a thick layer, it lasts forever. Processed lubricants and stuff are a whole different thing. Not surprised the...

Don’t know about sharks but the sea lions around Victoria love nibbling on my big white Novas! They’re also nice for leading a buddy in low vis, probably a bigger safety advantage than maybe getting attacked by random fauna.

And what do you get for that princely $50/day? Some crappy LCD puck? For that sort of cash I’d be looking for a Perdix, and a backup Perdix on my other wrist!

I see this as a rental vs. owned issue. If I’m on a cattle boat with rented gear on a “diving while on vacation” situation it’s their stuff, they have a system that works for them, and I’ll let them perform the service they provide. Cleaning and rinsing is especially part of that service! If I’m...

Redundant air? Yes. Redundant instruments? No. But what about what NOT to take solo that you always take with a buddy? Octo reg could probably go, especially with a pony. ‘Buddy managment’ stuff like slate and quacker certainly. Anywhere else a solo diver can lighten the load?

If you’re bent after 15 min at 30 feet something is very wrong. The odds are zero. You can still get a lung over-expansion injury or other problems, diving is never really safe, but decompression is not even worth keeping track of here. If you had some sort of tingling sensation it was something...

The BFK serves both rolls well. It won’t actually anchor you, that will take some sort of grapple hook and harness arrangement to be really hands free, but you can totally jam it into the rock and run the camera with your other hand. Don’t be doing that on reefs or wrecks of course! Those knives...

I only use my pony for solo and take “option 2”. It’s bulky and heavy but I like having it all accessible and removable. Also allows a tidy button gauge screwed into the primary rather than another hose dangling.

Always thought a tank pod that transmitted O2 and CO content as well as pressure would be nice. Why carry three different gadgets looking at the same thing? No idea if it would be practical to sell though.

Pacific North West, but on an actual trip with a boat and everything! Just got back from Victoria, Henderson, Ogden, Ten-Mile, all the usual shore dives were fine. Just missed the Sea Dragon boat at Horseshoe Bay over the weekend. Wish I were on Hornby, the Nautalus Swell, or somewhere with a...

Is there anything to see in lake Powell? You can dive anywhere that’s wet if you want to grope around in the mud for beer cans or something but you don’t need to pack your gear across the country to do that. What’s driving this; are you recovering something that fell down there?

All this stuff is probabilistic. You can get bent after strictly following a conservative algorithm, you can exceed the limits a lot and be just fine. Your example exceeds the limits a lot though. He’s not going to explode and die instantly or anything, he’ll probably survive, but he’ll be lucky...

I’ll haul my gear except tanks and weights out to the west coast most years. I think hauling the heavy metal would take custom racks or a trailer or something, probably not worth it.

Hot dip galvanized is the gold standard here. Actual gold would be more inert but not by much! I never rinse my tanks or weights either, never had any particular problem. They’ll be at least as durable as your old Al80s. “Cold galvanizing” paint is not a substitute for real hot dip but better...

Anyone know why they built it out of carbon and titanium in the first place? That construction seems more like a space ship than a submarine! Composites make way more sense for pressure tanks where the fibres are in tension than vacuum tanks, and we scuba divers have decided they’re mostly a...

For rec diving I’m pretty happy trusting my compy for depth and pressure both. If the sensors are slightly off it will be covered by the fairly conservative safety margin. If it’s way off I’ll know. If it fails entirely I’ll just come up slow, that’s always an option with the diving I do. If I...

A decade ago there was “iGills”, an underwater housing for your then-modern iPhone 3G. It had its own pressure sensor and hard buttons powered through the 30-pin iPhone jack. Seemed to work fine but notably failed to take the diving world by storm. The case would need to closely fit the phone...

Your phone might claim to be “water resistant” to some depth but we all know that’s a lie. A dive computer has to be the real deal though, making even a very modest computer really reliable in high pressure salt water takes a bit of doing. I’ve had some bad luck with Plegatic products especially...

Always been a bit bothered by AI transmitters hanging out the side of the primary. They look cludgy and delicate. Might be nice to have the electronics tucked away safe in the solid brass housing itself, although permanently tying the reg to a particular brand or standard of computer would be a...

I love the articles confident sense of optimism here!