a personal view on stage bottles

[mattmexico]

yo all

Stage cylinders are generally used in addition to “back mount” cylinders or in addition to “side mount” cylinders while cave diving. The reasons that cave divers, wreck divers and technical divers use stage cylinders include but is not limited to increase the total volume of gas during a dive so that penetration distances or dive times can be greater, to hold different gas mixes (for example a decompression mix, a travel gas, or a bottom mix), to hold a volume of gas needed for team planning or as a safety bottle, and to provide an open circuit bailout source during Rebreather diving applications, to provide safety air volumes needed when planning dives using DPV’s and calculating for failures requiring a swim out.

The entire article can be found on the ProTec Blog Protec Advanced Training Facility — Protec Blog

greetings
Matt

 

[TSandM]

Very nice article, Matt.

 

[Michael_Lambert]

Great article.

 

[Garth]

thank you for your article.

 

[Jeff_S]

We tend to dive stages a lot in open water to accomplish two tech dives on one day without having to bring a second set of doubles...stage and little of the backgas on dive one, backgas on dive two. Keeps space on a boat to a minimum, reduces the hassle of changing out doubles on a small boat, and maintains rock bottom.

Jeff
Unified Team Diving

 

[Mike Edmonston]

We tend to dive stages a lot in open water to accomplish two tech dives on one day without having to bring a second set of doubles...stage and little of the backgas on dive one, backgas on dive two. Keeps space on a boat to a minimum, reduces the hassle of changing out doubles on a small boat, and maintains rock bottom.

Jeff
Unified Team Diving

Ditto what Jeff said. We go spearfishing off Palm Beach all the time (60' to 90' average depth). What I like to do is carry a single BM steel 130, and stage a al40 as extra gas. I will breathe the 40 until is is almost dry, then shoot it to the surface with a Marker buoy. The tank is buoyant when empty anyway, and the boat picks it up. This allows me to do 2 long dives on my single 130 without switching tanks on the boat.

Cheers,

 

[nadwidny]

Ditto what Jeff said. We go spearfishing off Palm Beach all the time (60' to 90' average depth). What I like to do is carry a single BM steel 130, and stage a al40 as extra gas. I will breathe the 40 until is is almost dry, then shoot it to the surface with a Marker buoy. The tank is buoyant when empty anyway, and the boat picks it up. This allows me to do 2 long dives on my single 130 without switching tanks on the boat.

Cheers,

Must be a very crowded boat. I just dive a set of doubles.

 

[Mike Edmonston]

Must be a very crowded boat. I just dive a set of doubles.

Hi Brian,

We're on a private 23' boat and we usually go hunting by alternating 2 teams of 3 divers. So yeah, space is at a premium. I prefer the mobility of a single steel cylinder when I am hunting as we're not doing any deco past the 1 minute 1/2 depth stop and the 3 minute 15' stop. Our hunting dives are geared towards NDL's on 30% to 32% at a 1.3 Po2 (Depth dependant). Therefore not switching tanks between dives leaves room for more fish on the bow

Doubles are not friendly on gelcoat either.

Cheers,

 

[nadwidny]

Hi Brian,

We're on a private 23' boat and we usually go hunting by alternating 2 teams of 3 divers. So yeah, space is at a premium. I prefer the mobility of a single steel cylinder when I am hunting as we're not doing any deco past the 1 minute 1/2 depth stop and the 3 minute 15' stop.

Sounds reasonable

Our hunting dives are geared towards NDL's on 30% to 32% at a 1.3 Po2 (Depth dependant). Therefore not switching tanks between dives leaves room for more fish on the bow

For those kind of dives with doubles I don't need to switch tanks either. So if I was inclined to shoot fish there would plenty of room for them. Plus the floor wouldn't be littered with empty 40s so there would be even more room for fish.

Doubles are not friendly on gelcoat either.

No they are not. Rubber mats are gelcoat's friend.

 

[Mike Edmonston]

For those kind of dives with doubles I don't need to switch tanks either. So if I was inclined to shoot fish there would plenty of room for them. Plus the floor wouldn't be littered with empty 40s so there would be even more room for fish.

This is true. Then again for those kind of dives on doubles, you wouldn't need a stage either. As far as the 40's, they fit nicely in the floor lockers, so they stay out of the way.

Any Hunting dive deeper than 120' or with accumulated Deco will be done in doubles, but we don't do that too often. If we do, it's to get 1 or 2 larger fish, then get the hell out of dodge. We have some good numbers at 180' - 210' where you can get some nice sized cobia, as long as you're willing to shoot them off the backs of the bull sharks!

Cheers,