Deep Diving on Air

[ajduplessis]

It's about making the dive safer!!!! Using the right tools for the job. You can use a rock as a hammer, but it sure as hell is not the right tool for the job.

 

[Akimbo]

…What I see a lot of people doing on these deep air threads amounts to saying just jump in the water and hope for the best. That's not what I think we should be advocating on a public forum ... in fact, it's pretty irresponsible…

I would agree if I interpreted these posts as you do. There is a visceral response on this board inflamed by the term Bounce Dive. I saw the vast majority of these posts as an attempt at teaching techniques to perform bounce dives successfully — dead or bend qualifies as failure by my definition.

Even if you never see bounce dives in your sphere of visibility, I believe it is foolish to believe that they don’t happen… a lot. Repeatedly citing current scuba dogma will not stop the practice. I doubt it has even done much to limit it. It has made it difficult to learn optimum methods for performing them. Therefore I believe an unemotional fact-based discussion would serve the international diving community better than condemning any practice and pretending instant death results. That only diminishes credibility of opponents. Anybody can read all the tech forums here where much higher risk diving is the norm.

IMHO, snorkeling in a 6' swimming pool, shallow Scuba in Bonaire, solo diving, or commercial saturation diving is all the same — an engineering problem. You analyze the objective, identify the risks, mitigate the risks to a personally acceptable level, test your “design”, and execute. The greatest value of Scubaboard is to help identify risks and analyze mitigations. As with any problem, you don’t know what you don’t know. This board could help reduce this problem and provide a widely critiqued analysis. The anti-bounce dive rhetoric is just as irresponsible as the very few “just try it” comments that were soon factually and logically corrected.

 

[Dan G]

I'm not sure that I get the significance of many of the posts, in that, I do not equate a dive to 165 ft to that of 225 ft or certainly 300 ft. The specific issue of exceeding the ATA of 1.6 that occurs deeper than 200 ft would seem to be something that does not come into play at 165 ft. Yet, there is little differentiation of these points on most posts. The only thing I take away from most posts is >130 ft = evil and death.

As a diver of limited experience who has been following this thread in an attemp to learn, Charlie59, I find this post from you confusing. I don't see anyone equating those 3 depths to each other as the same, except for the fact that once deeper than 130' a diver has exceeded their agency training if he/ she only has AOW.

Your last sentence (bold added) I find a bit trollish because to take that away from 133 posts seems disengenuous.

 

[fdog]

I want 25 minutes of my life back.


All the best, James

 

[MauiScubaSteve]

I'm not sure that I get the significance of many of the posts, in that, I do not equate a dive to 165 ft to that of 225 ft or certainly 300 ft. The specific issue of exceeding the ATA of 1.6 that occurs deeper than 200 ft would seem to be something that does not come into play at 165 ft. Yet, there is little differentiation of these points on most posts. The only thing I take away from most posts is >130 ft = evil and death.

As a diver of limited experience who has been following this thread in an attemp to learn, Charlie59, I find this post from you confusing. I don't see anyone equating those 3 depths to each other as the same, except for the fact that once deeper than 130' a diver has exceeded their agency training if he/ she only has AOW.

Your last sentence (bold added) I find a bit trollish because to take that away from 133 posts seems disengenuous.

I guess you did not read the post quoted below (bold added) the same as I read the post quoted below ...

This is the Advanced Scuba Discussions forum and this subject qualifies. Given that deep bounce dives have not been unusual or especially noteworthy since the 1950s, it is unfounded to say they can’t be done safely. There is some risk and a minimum level of education and experience required just like all other forms of advanced diving.

I wonder if the folks who loved Opal would agree with that. After all, she had a pretty fair level of education and experience.

In fact, I daresay she used pretty much the exact same rationale for her final dive ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Dan G, your last sentence (bold added) I find a bit trollish, for starters because your post is post #123 (bold added).

A further reason to find your last statement to be trollish has to do with personal typing styles. I am a "campus brat" and I feel my typing is usually consistent with that background. After many threads and a few PM's corresponding with VooDooGasMan and Knowone, I think I have increased my comprehension of typing less like my own.

Charlie59 types "many of the posts" (underline added) in the first sentence of his "paragraph" quoted above. It is not hard for me to then see that when he types "most posts" (underline added) in the last sentence of the same "paragraph" he very well could be "meaning" most posts of the previously mentioned many posts, which actually doesn't even necessarily mean more than half the ~110 posts he was speaking of at that time.

 

[Adobo]

As a diver of limited experience who has been following this thread in an attemp to learn, Charlie59, I find this post from you confusing. I don't see anyone equating those 3 depths to each other as the same, except for the fact that once deeper than 130' a diver has exceeded their agency training if he/ she only has AOW.

Your last sentence (bold added) I find a bit trollish because to take that away from 133 posts seems disengenuous.

Dan G,

I can see why you would find this thread confusing. There is a lot of noise and other nonsense going on here.

To me, there are two lessons on this thread:

1) Deep air bounce diving, particularly done in a single tank is pretty much farm animal stupid.
2) No matter how farm animal stupid something is, there will always be someone coming out of the wood work to defend or advocate the idea. And it doesn't take long to figure out who the advocates are. What is completely baffling is why those people advocate for the stupid behavior/activity.

It actually reminds me a lot of when I was a teenager.. when friends would try to rationalize drunk driving.

This is not to say that I have any objections to people doing deep air bounce dives on single tanks. I only have objections to people I care about doing deep air bounce dives...

 

[Adobo]

I want 25 minutes of my life back.


All the best, James

I know what you mean. I feel dumber for having read some of the posts in this thread.

 

[MauiScubaSteve]

I want 25 minutes of my life back.


All the best, James

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/technical-diving-specialties/315535-deep-air.html

Back when the above linked thread was in play, I was probably "flirting" with Sas in some Whale Wars threads.

I did kind of wonder why DCBC makes way fewer posts on SB now than back in '09. After reading all of that above linked deep air thread, where the heavy hitters actually wadded through the muck with the techspurts, I now no longer wonder as much why DCBC makes way fewer posts on SB now than back in '09.

It was an hour and 25 minutes of my life, that provides me with many "gems" to quote for the next few deep air threads!

 

[VooDooGasMan]

Deep Air Diving is never going away so get use to it. The cost for going helium is never going to be in the hands of almost all divers so they will dive past rec limits and enjoy what kind of diving they can afford.

The threads close cause some members just want to get it off topic.

Charlie like I say lets see how many Deep Diver you run into in the next year. I have never met a diver yet that did not want to go deeper.

 

[blackvans1234]

I do not want to go deeper, my name is Richie, nice to meet you