An age-old question: ways to 60m.
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They say yoga is good.
Navy SEALS aren't stupid to do what some here advise. So much suicidal show off BS in this thread.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
I had enough dives on air in the 50-60m range to recognize I wanted more training so that I could draw a better mixture and keep doing the same dives but more safely. The first few dives on Trimix confirmed I made the right choice for me.
BACKGROUND:
Although I'd like to think I brought some experience into managing my narcosis on deep air and I benefited from (what seemed like) only one dominant symptom, I could tell my margin for error was pretty slim. I was used to operating under much more dangerous conditions in my professional career but having more control of the measures to mitigate various risks. I couldn't be satisfied to simply "survive" the effects of air density and gas at depth on my physiology; I was conditioned to aggressively seek to understand and mitigate the risks in every way feasible so that I was optimized to thrive during the dive.
When I got into my Trimix course, I could immediately tell the new mixture lightened up and expanded my margin for error. Not individual diver error borne from sloppy technique in the five fundamentals but the margin for equipment failures, procedural complications, environmental setbacks, etc. END was no longer an academic test question but a real planning factor with a tangible effect on problem-solving and enjoyment.
I don't begrudge nor choose to vilify those that dive deep air but I agree with another poster here. Encouraging curious recreational and new tech divers to regard deep air as "no big deal" is misleading and careless. Also, expecting divers who've chosen to move beyond deep air to somehow say "It's all good, dawg." lacks awareness of the huge body of positive evidence over decades of mixed gas diving. Trimix predates GUE by quite a few years so that ongoing civil war on ScubaBoard of "GUE vs World" is a red herring.
Bonne plongée!
We're all Internet tough guys until we catch each other talking to our pets.
I can pull together a whole troop of some of the most lethal people on the planet and, yeah, all the tough BS melts away when it comes time for treats and affection with our pets.
Usually the most entertaining is when the largest guy on the team has two or three cats. Nobody ever suspects him to be the cat dude until he starts in with the high pitched, baby voice saying "You want Daddy to give you some treats?"
Gotta own that.
CG43
Contributor
The laws of physics say that the pressure difference you have to apply when breathing increases with the square of the flow velocity of the air.
If we now take the example of Dr. Simon Mitchell, according to which at a depth of 30m = 4 bar you can only breathe half the volume of air, then if you take the same maximum pressure difference, the result is that the air density is linear (exponent 1) to the differential pressure.
If we are able to reduce the breathing speed to 1/3 we can increase the density by a factor of 9 which corresponds to a depth of 80m.
The question, however, is whether we can breathe so slowly .
This leads to an important rule: always breathe without exertion.
If this is not possible, we must inevitably dive higher.
It is unavoidable that this reduces safety compared to a mixture with a lower gas density. But we can train ourselves to consume less air by learning to produce less CO2 .
Blackcrusader
Contributor
I do understand the point and the risk but I am not about to take a course to start diving Trimix for dives deeper than 30m depth. Around a third of my dives are 30m- 40m depth and some are deco dives. Fact is many of the places I dive do not have helium and some do not even have nitrox. I assess the dive in the briefing and decide whether or not to "risk" the dive as you call it.
Maybe I should also not do those fast current dives due to their risk. Maybe I should stop taking video and photos of Mantis Shrimp as there is a risk one may attack my camera ( it has happened )
Maybe to reduce the risk I should just stop diving altogether? Could be the flight I take crashes or the boat I take sink. Or maybe the down currents will take me away never to be seen again. Maybe a great white or a tiger shark will nibble on me and take me for a snack.
Life is an adventure. Diving is an adventure. There are risks involved.
Blackcrusader
Contributor
One of the things many divers and guides comment on is they see me kit up early on the boat and get very relaxed before a dive. I get my mental state relaxed. Then when I do dives I can just slow my breathing. This really helps on deep dives where I do not exert myself and am very relaxed. Or even on shallow dives can do bottom times others cannot due to gas consumption.
Do I have some special tolerance to CO2? I don't think so but I go diving for the relaxation for the crazy balance of my mind.
Eric Sedletzky
Contributor
This is all quite entertaining and it's threads like these that keep the board alive. Great reading material!
Have we even defined what is "deep air" yet?
Or is that a moving target depending on who you talk to?
Someone once told me that people are idiots for breathing air at all, and only 32% is acceptable down to 100' and past that it has to be trimix.
Is that still a rule?
Have we even defined what is "deep air" yet?
Or is that a moving target depending on who you talk to?
Someone once told me that people are idiots for breathing air at all, and only 32% is acceptable down to 100' and past that it has to be trimix.
Is that still a rule?
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