Bad scuba advice you've received

[johndiver999]

50 years ago, there were no real BC's (or extremely rare)!! You pretty much had to use the dry suit.

 

[boulderjohn]

I seriously get tired of writing this in threads like this.

If you are a properly weighted single tank, NDL diver, you should be able to control buoyancy with only the drysuit. If not, you are likely overweighted. That is why, for example, the book on drysuit diving written by the owners of DUI recommended that. (I am not home now, or I would quote it.)

Add weight and/or depending upon the kind of drysuit, and things change. For example, a technical diver with loads of air for an extended dive cannot possibly use only the drysuit for buoyancy. The wing must be the primary source of buoyancy control.

People with extensive training understand the meaning of the phrase "it depends." People who do not have extensive training typically mock those who do.

 

[ofg-1]

Bad SCUBA advise? "Just ask on Scubaboard, they will know the answer."

 

[100days-a-year]

you didnt need to add "in current" after "Split fins".

And why is Tri-mix in a 100' "bad advice"? If helium was the same price as O2, I'd be using that sh*t on beach dives!!!

1. It is not KISS
2. It is not the same price as 02 sadly
3. For those without a mix cert, it would be another $K+ in classes

In a perfect world I'm with you, 400x40cuft is mighty pricey tho. Thats NDLish diving, extending bottom time would be probably double.
Love to use a rebreather, illegal for most spearfishing tho.

 

[Blackcrusader]

I saw a padi OWSI in Taiwan offer some dives. She writes max depth 23m. Max depth not square profile.
So I say I might be interested and ask what are the dive times. She replies max dive time including safety stop is 40 minutes.

I'm like sorry not interested in such a short dive time. She claims the dives times are short because all the divers she knows are bad on gas. Then she later claims the dives are square profile dives. So I reply that on Nitrox 32% which is what she is offering even a square profile dive time to NDL is 46 mins ( on my perdix ok 45/95 ) So lets say 40 mins but no need to call the dive simply ascend to a shallower depth.

In reply she now claims this. She will do a 25m dive for 50 mins ( of course not exceeding NDL )

Feck me the NDL at 25m at 32% is 37 minutes on my perdix lol

 

[Centrals]

Bad advice!
What is the news?
Plenty of BS in SB. I certainly do not believe story. ^ I am too smart for that!!! LOL.

 

[Wibble]

The old rule of thumb:

• 20 mins NDL at 30m/100ft on 21%
• 30 mins NDL at 30m/100ft on 32%
• For every 3m/10ft shallower/deeper add/subtract 5 mins on air or 10 mins for 32%

Obviously you use a decent dive planner to do the definitive calculations.

 

[NothingClever]

What bad scuba advice have you received? (Please omit watercooler talk found here on SB; let's focus on actual suggestions found in the wild.)

Actually, I think most divers on boats and shores are interested when others with more training and experience speak up to offer a more seasoned approach to planning, skills and techniques. Of course, I mean speak to share information and insight, not speak to impress or to weaponize our knowledge. So, the amount of really bad advice in the wild seems rather fleeting to me.

I haven’t read this thread to capture the general direction of the conversation but in the context of the original post, I find ScubaBoard to be the bigger source of harm. While there is still excellent content here, I find the harm part seems insidious or amplified when I consider the number of well-intentioned visitors who come here seeking basic knowledge and the answers to their question somehow slide off into an argument over RB techniques. Or someone in a technical conversation gets desperate and throws out the GI3 grenade. Good gravy…really? I have some serious weakness in my position if that’s my last defense.

And the primacy of increased site traffic (at the cost of educationally-focused discourse) to stimulate ad revenue is vulgar and unethical, IMO.

And, yes…you kids get off my grass.

 

[Wibble]

I'd go as far as to say that advice given gets "peer reviewed" on here. Any nonsense would be picked up and subjected to derision and ridicule from the Scubaboard massif. OK, with some exceptions...

 

[boulderjohn]

I haven’t read this thread to capture the general direction of the conversation but in the context of the original post, I find ScubaBoard to be the bigger source of harm. While there is still excellent content here, I find the harm part seems insidious or amplified when I consider the number of well-intentioned visitors who come here seeking basic knowledge and the answers to their question somehow slide off into an argument over RB techniques.

I'd go as far as to say that advice given gets "peer reviewed" on here. Any nonsense would be picked up and subjected to derision and ridicule from the Scubaboard massif. OK, with some exceptions...

I have been a part of ScubaBoard for a couple decades now, and there is a lot I don't like about it, but I think it does a lot of good for the reason Wibble points out. Almost any thread that includes serious misinformation usually gets thoroughly corrected.

I will contrast that with a very popular FaceBook scuba discussion site I toyed with for a while. It was incredibly frustrating. Someone would ask a question, and by the time I opened FaceBook and saw the question, 30 people had already answered, and 25 or more of those answers would be wrong. There was no way to distinguish the correct answers from the flood of misinformation.

I remember especially one in which someone asked about decompression theory related to dive depth, and of the first 100 responses, I would say 90 of the posters believed that tissues were like buckets when they received nitrogen. You could fill them faster at deeper depths, but if you stayed at any depth (even 5 feet) long enough, the buckets would fill. The handful of people who knew better and who cited research (including me) were completely drowned out by the flood of nonsense.