Deep Air

[Jenbowes]

and make sure your DAN insurance is up to date

OH! I LOLed. Thanks for that!

 

[Doc Harry]

OMG, after diving on EAN to 150 feet I can't imagine that anyone would want to dive that deep without helium. I was so narc'd I couldn't even do simple math. How safe is that?

 

[boomx5]

I've been more narced at 80' in cold water on air than I have at 150' in warm water on air...I'm really a shallow narc. I've even gotten a little narced switching from 18/45 backgas to my 50% @70' on deco.

 

[Kevrumbo]

Since you have bent the poo out of yourself making poor decisions underwater in the past, I think you should spring for the helium. Its cheaper and less hassle than the chamber. Or do some shallower dives. Or make the trip a little shorter to compensate for the helium costs. There are ALWAYS alternatives to diving right on the edge of disaster. You've had some lucky disasters in the recent past, don't push your luck again.

Thank You rjack . . .and belated Happy B-day!

and make sure your DAN insurance is up to date

Just renewed DAN automatically this month. (The parent company for the Chuuk Chamber in Australia has lost track of the bank wire funds I remmitted to them last month for last years Table 6 HBOT: gotta get that squared away in case I need them again this trip).

my thoughts would be be careful and have fun

Actually I'm going to have fun the week before in the Philippines with some similar work-up deep air and 20/20, 18/45 mix dives (and other kinds of "dives" as well. . . --gotta be more careful 'bout that!).

 

[dumpsterDiver]

I often dive to around 160-185 on air for around 12-15 minutes. I generally don't sense that I am very narced, but I am definetly aware of the depth and try to be extra careful, double check my decisons etc.

Last time out, I was solo on a wreck at around 180 ft and shot a relatively small fish. I was a little worried about sharks, so I got the idea that I should shove the fish down the neck of my wetsuit (after I killed it of course). As I was doing it, I was thinking, "how come I never thought of this before?" "I wonder if it is the depth and if this is a really stupid idea?" I was real careful not to ram a dorsal spine into my throat at depth. Generally, I try not to come up with too many "new ideas" when diving that depth.

My buddy typically does another deeper wreck solo (max depth around 225-230) and he also uses air. My personal comfort level is right about 200 on air, but I've gone a little deeper a few dozen times.

 

[Blackwood]

I got the idea that I should shove the fish down the neck of my wetsuit (after I killed it of course).

How unfortunate that you were solo. Video or photographic record would be priceless.

Okay . . .I've got another week long Truk Lagoon Trip coming up... . . .

thoughts, ideas and useful comments appreciated.

I'm jealous.

 

[Thalassamania]

Here's a question.

Do you think the previous generation of deep air divers would have become deep air divers if helium, proper training and tools like Vplanner had been as readily available to them as they are to us?

We know the song they sang, but would they have sung a different tune if they could have.... :thinking:

R..

You may not know it, but helium was available (been used since what, the 1930s?), we allready knew how to breathe in , breathe out, and control our depth and time, and who needed Vplanner? We had phones, faxes and Bill Hamilton's numbers.

 

[Aquamaniac]

Last time out, I was solo on a wreck at around 180 ft and shot a relatively small fish. I was a little worried about sharks, so I got the idea that I should shove the fish down the neck of my wetsuit .

I often dive to around 160-185 on air for around 12-15 minutes. I generally don't sense that I am very narced.

Ahhh....I think ya should!

 

[Trace Malinowski]

While helium has certainly captured the hearts and minds of most sport divers, there are a lot of places in the world where the availability of helium or the cost of helium is prohibitive. The more remote an area, the less likely that helium is possible to procure and the more likely such an area would hold very interesting unexplored wrecks, caves or other treasures for divers. Since you cannot keep an explorer from exploring, and since true explorers are rarely defined by dogma or popular opinion, deep air diving will still be conducted even if it receives little attention or just pure condemnation from the industry.

Those divers who find it impossible or impractical to take advantage of the plethora of benefits helium offers, can be supported by a long history of the use of air in sport, commercial, science and technical diving operations. Air is no more a "death gas" than what Nitrox or Trimix were branded. Any gas, in the hands of the wrong person, can be fatal. Gases are tools and no tool is always the perfect tool for every job. Sometimes the perfect tool isn't available and improvisation must be done.

For the sport diver, the decision to not dive if such tools are not available is easier than for others such as scientists who are conducting research in remote areas. It is also easier to thumb a dive due to a less desireable gas when one isn't driven to explore or when one hasn't had deep air experience. The Rouse accident demonstrates that divers who had experience with both air and trimix were not so in love with trimix that they were against diving deep air when push came to shove.

While the future of diving is undoubtedly trimix and rebreathers - especially as a way of using trimix to make diving safer in remote areas while using less of a helium supply open circuit would demand, deep air will be a lifelong partner of divers - even if it were only to be used as a "vintage" gas. I once pointed out to a literature professor that future-thinking sci-fi writers rarely remember that people cling heavily to objects of the past.

The diving industry media will begin to move even the weakest recreational divers away from air in magazine articles, and within a short time after proclaiming air as being archaic and dead, they will begin running stories about revisiting deep air diving. Not all of the science and data is back yet regarding the perils and pitfalls of helium diving for the masses. As time moves on, we may find problems with helium diving that we would scoff at today. While I personally love trimix - I've even got 25/25 in my tanks ready to go for some easy 100 foot training dives this weekend down from the 18/45 I was using on the Jodrey before a trip to Bermuda - I'm not going to write air off. Personally, as a PSAI instructor trainer, I would love to convince Gary Taylor that the Narcosis Management program is archaic, but even I'm surprised at the success of the program around the world, and the passion some of the old guys, who have years of experience using both air and trimix, share for deep air diving.

As I do not have their experience, I am not willing to mock them. I remain a skeptic. However, I am also a hypocrit because I would not be afraid to take air to 130 feet since I have had a long history of doing so prior to a time before nitrox and trimix were even mentioned in the sport diving community. "Deep" is purely subjective. However, I do not believe that most divers should be using deep air. I believe gas protocols would make diving safer for those divers who lack experience in deep diving. The success of GUE and UTD demonstrates it is possible to train the most inexperienced divers to do deep dives safely, efficiently and with a great deal of skill and artistry when stringent training and dive protocols are followed.

We would only be arrogant to believe we have diving gases and their consequences, "all figured out".

 

[Tortuga68]

Thanks for your post, very interesting

The Rouse accident demonstrates that divers who had experience with both air and trimix were not so in love with trimix that they were against diving deep air when push came to shove

From what I've read (Shadow Divers, The Last Dive) the Rouse's died due to blowing their deco schedules, when they had other options available; while I understand that narcosis due to their choice to use air over 'mix probably contributed to this outcome, it wasn't the cause of it