1st deep dive (Nitrogen Narcosis?)

[robint]

LOL.... I have never heard voices, but I have a friend who has seen mermaids, angels, and Tom Sellick. LOL
:demented: I have even heard of people taking their reg out of mouth and offering it to the fish.

People either get "happy" narced or "dark" narced, from my experience.
I am part of the dark narcosis group - I get really paranoid, looking at my gauges constantly and thinking to myself "dang, I am too deep, I don't like this, I need to go up some!"

 

[Crush]

I have never heard voices - during a deep dive I am too busy thinking:

1. Locate buddy. Does he look OK?
2. Check depth;
3. Check remaining air;
4. How am I doing? How is my breathing? Do I feel OK?
5. What am I doing here, again?
6. Start over at #1

A deep dive as the last dive of the day doesn't sound like a good idea. Your profile indicates you have 0 - 24 logged dives - there is a good chance you are still diving a wetsuit. You are in Long Beach, Ca. If you were diving locally, the water (and consequently you) would be quite cold. DCI is more likely to occur if you start your dive (reasonably) warm and end the dive feeling cold. Going deep as the last dive of the day is one more nail in the coffin.

 

[Bubbletrubble]

OK. I'm curious. The OP described fairly clear voices. What were the voices saying? Did you speak back to the voices?

What really concerns me though is that this was your third dive of the day. Accepted practice is to do the deep dive as the first dive of the day to minimize the chance of decompression problems. What were the profiles of the preceding dives and the beginning and ending group for them? What was his reason for doing a reverse profile? While it may indeed have been enough time it sets a bad example. And I do know that his statement that PADI says you cannot do the deep dive as the first dive is complete BS. You should have remembered from your OW course the advice not to do reverse profiles and questioned his choice. It sets a bad precedence in my mind with newer divers. Howw much time in class did you discuss the hazards associated with deep diving and the effects of narcosis?

@Jim Lapenta: You may want to reconsider how you are teaching reverse dive profiles to your students. Reverse profiles are probably OK, although we do have a more robust record of "forward" profiles since that was accepted practice for such a long time. Here's a link to a short essay on reverse dive profiles written by Peter Bennett on the DAN website. Also, the Rubicon Repository hosts a short article written by Guy Williams in the South Pacific Underwater Medicine Society Journal.

Hope you find this info interesting...

 

[Puffer Fish]

I've seen things a lot stranger than hearing voices...some of which could have been fatal from being Narced. My favorite is the blank, lost behavior, but have seen agression, nerves, stupid happy...

However, I have been underwater and actual heard people talking on the surface from a surprising way away...only once and it scared the heck out of me. At the time I did not know what was going on. They were talking next to the side of a boat, and yelling... suspect the hull carried the sound into the water.. but don't actually know.

 

[Andy077]

Not to oversimplify things, but where were you? Was it possible that there was a boat in the water with a below-deck cabin in the area? Someone watching TV in a boat cabin might transmit sound to you underwater, sound does really odd things.

 

[MaxBottomtime]

A diver in San Diego posted a year or so ago that he heard voices underwater. It wasn't until he got shallow that he realized he forgot his cell phone in his drysuit undergarments. The suit squeeze was pushing the phone's keypad.

 

[gcbryan]

A diver in San Diego posted a year or so ago that he heard voices underwater. It wasn't until he got shallow that he realized he forgot his cell phone in his drysuit undergarments. The suit squeeze was pushing the phone's keypad.

HaHa! Something similar happened to me recently. I was driving at night and suddenly I heard a voice that I'd never heard. My car doesn't have any electronics that uses voice commands or whatever.

I thought maybe I was being stopped by the police or something until I looked around..nope!

It turned out I had my cell phone in my pants pocket (it's usually turned off) and the fabric got tight and activated the phone, it then activated the clock setting menu and the sound I hear was a female voice announcing the time and date setting and no I wasn't narced!

 

[sydney-diver]

It turned out I had my cell phone in my pants pocket (it's usually turned off) and the fabric got tight

:shocked2:

 

[diver 85]

Did you try to answer the voices? Maybe they had something important to say to you.

They said 'hello hello, anyone home?'...at least that's what mine always say....

 

[Jim Lapenta]

OK. I'm curious. The OP described fairly clear voices. What were the voices saying? Did you speak back to the voices?

@Jim Lapenta: You may want to reconsider how you are teaching reverse dive profiles to your students. Reverse profiles are probably OK, although we do have a more robust record of "forward" profiles since that was accepted practice for such a long time. Here's a link to a short essay on reverse dive profiles written by Peter Bennett on the DAN website. Also, the Rubicon Repository hosts a short article written by Guy Williams in the South Pacific Underwater Medicine Society Journal.

Hope you find this info interesting...

I've seen that info. But for the primary location where I do my AOW classes doing the deep dive as the first dive of the day on the second day makes more sense. The lake is at altitude (3250ft), the next two dives I do are search and recovery and Buddy skills and assist. Doing the deep dive at 8:30 am and getting it out of the way because I do it as multilevel dive as well and ends up being 45-50 minutes has us oiut of the water by 9:45 and gives us a good 2 hour or more surface interval. The next two dives require alot of attention to detail as well as being physically challenging.

I would not want to have student do a deep dive after them. they are relatively shallow and the final one has a good deal of surface work. In addition it is a popular site and once other groups get there we have others doing their deep dives and still doing vertical descents which quickly turns the vis to crap. I'd rather just have to deal with darkness and not rototillers mucking things up. Also I want all their wits about them and a good night's sleep helps with that. And we dive with tables and they are much friendlier with forward profiles. I do cut tables as well on v-planner.

The final reason is the dives are setup to build on each other skills wise, I offer Advanced Skills, Uw Nav, Night Low vis, Deep, Search and Recovery or Wreck if they want to pay extra to get to a site where we can do them, and Buddy Skills and Assist.
These are the only dives I offer for AOW. Anything else is a different course or class.