Diving Safely Without A BC

[REVAN]

My philosophy is that divers could greatly benefit from learning to dive with no BC either as a diving style or simply just as a proper weighting learning tool, then returning to using a BC with this new knowledge. When diving without a BC you get a crash course on proper weighting the moment you hit the water.

I completely agree.

IMO, BCDs should be treated like what they actually are, specialty equipment. They are not required gear for scuba diving. They are required for some kinds of scuba diving. Divers should be taught to scuba dive without a BC. Then, once they actually have watermen skills and know how to scuba dive, they can take the option to learn the specialty skills of properly using a BCD.

 

[JamesBon92007]

I
Todays BC's allow for "elevator" diving which is relying on an inflated wing to stay on the surface as soon as hitting the water, during the surface swim, during the dive at all depths, during ascent, during the safety stop, and then to stay bouyeed and floating on the surface after the dive. Anything happens to the air cell during any of these stages results in the diver suddenly having a very real problem with dropping like a rock which more times than not they are not trained for. To compound this problem many weight pockets built into the BC's have squeeze clips which can take a little fanagling to get loose. It used to be that if a no BC diver got in trouble they just dumped their belt and went up, these days it's not so easy. Current training relies on nothing going wrong with the air cell on a BC.
I see some of this modern equipment as a benefit to manufacturers, dive shops, and instructors way before I see it as a benefit to the divers stuck using them.

Personally I've found them a bit tricky at times. I only wear when when it's required (dive boats etc.) so I'm not very adept in their use but one thing that gets me is they are not all the same. Some have the air release button on the end and some have it on the side. I've pushed the wrong button a few times when it's on the side and, judging from some incidents I've read about, so have others. Some of those people didn't fare so well. On one occasion I was unable to remove all of the air from the BC and, diving with an aluminum 80, was too buoyant at the end of the dive and zoomed right past my 15 foot safety stop. I even tried to suck the air out of it. Fortunately I was in no danger of the bends as I was well below my no decompression limit. Without the BC on I believe I would have been properly weighted. Some of them seem to have a string to pull on the bottom, somewhere in the back, that will supposedly dump any remaining air. Some don't. On a recent trip, after informing the DM how much weight I need, I was handed a BC that had the weights built in. I felt naked without a weight belt. There was a hint that since we were going to be sitting on the bottom the whole time (manta ray night dive) that I was going to be given some extra weight.. It seems to be standard for the crew on dive boats to inflate everyone's BC before we jump into the water and then the idea is to let the air out and descend. This is what I did and dropped like a rock. It was completely dark except for my flashlight so it was difficult to tell just how fast I was descending. It turned out to be a lot faster than I expected, based upon other dives using similar equipment. I very nearly hit the reef. If it were up to me I would simply have added and extra pound or two to my weight belt and dove without a BC as the depth was only about 40-45 feet.

 

[John C. Ratliff]

I had an earlier version Mae West that had a modified tire valve, it was three or four turns to to open or close. The CO2 cartridge would fill it on the surface so it would not overinflate, because there was no OPV. Regardless of what depth the CO2 cartridge was actuated the vest would not overinflate, however it was was useless for buoyancy if detonated very deep.


Bob

Bob,

Not being able to overinflated the Mae West-style vest depended on using only a 12 gram CO2 cartridge. Those cartridges also came in 16 and 25 gram sizes. A diver could get away with 16 gram cartridge, and the same thread, but a 25 gram csrtridge would most likely over-inflate the normal-sized vest, and perhaps burst it.

I did same experiments with inflating a CO2 vest in the 1970s for The Sixth International Conference on Underwater Education (IQ6). I'll see if I can reproduce it here.

SeaRat

 

[Sam Miller III]

JOHN
Ron's twin tube snorkel is very old - ancient technology way back to the very beginnings of recreational diving and spearfishing all the way back to the San Diego Bottom Scratchers .

I do applaud his ingenuity and techniques of adapting and certainly construction with modern materials

sdm

 

[John C. Ratliff]

JOHN
Ron's twin tube snorkel is very old - ancient technology way back to the very beginnings of recreational diving and spearfishing all the way back to the San Diego Bottom Scratchers .

I do applaud his ingenuity and techniques of adapting and certainly construction with modern materials

sdm

Sam,

As one of the original San Diego Bottom Scratchers, it's really great to see you are following this thread. Thank you for your input here. I was still a kid cutting off the ping pong ball of a plastic "C" snorkel to get a good snorkel for snorkeling in a cool YMCA Camp Silver Creek reservoir (see the black & white photo at this link) when you were doing this with the Bottom Scratchers in the early 1950s.

In those days, we who when into scuba diving had been snorkeling as kids for years before getting into scuba diving. I bought my first scuba unit (a Healthways SCUBA double hose regulator with a 38 cubic foot tank) from money I earned picking strawberries and beans in the fields of the Willamette Valley near Salem, Oregon. I was a YMCA and North Salem High School Swim Team member, and had gone through YMCA Lifesaving classes while snorkeling. I also was scuba diving in 1959, three years before getting certified by LA County, and a year before I got my first wet suit (a White Stag wet suit). Because of this, weighting was as if I were in my swim suit, and the need for buoyancy compensation was unknown until we went into deeper saltwater in Hood Canal, Washington.

Before scuba, we free dived for spearfishing, and continued that on scuba. The photos below show free diving, using paddle boards, and spearfishing as a teenager in Hood Canal, Washington. Note, in an emergency, we simply dumped our weight belt. Watermanship was a premium for diving, and we were very, very comfortable in the water. During our LA County scuba course, our last pool session was when Roy France, our LA County Instructor, dropped a weighted gill net over us as a buddy pair, and we had to remove ourselves from under the net, untangling it from each other's valves on the scuba unit, and helping each other out from under the net.

SeaRat

 

[Storker]

Originally all a BCD] was supposed to do was add a little air at depth to compensate for heaviness at depth with thick wetsuits. People with no wetsuits or really thin wetsuits didn't use them for quite some time before the industry decided to make it a blanket policy to require them in training.

You forget us dry folks. Also in a DS, a BCD is pretty nice to have. Even with fairly moderate rec tanks (the standard Euro rec tank holds about 100 cuf, so we're talking about a 3-4kg buoyancy swing here), the amount of air needed early in the dive is enough to make the experience awkward if we rely on having all our buoyancy in the suit. At 20-30m and with enough air in the suit to counteract squeeze and provide undersuit loft, you'll still be pretty negative in the beginning of the dive. Putting the buoyancy air in the BCD instead of in the suit makes for a much nicer dive.

 

[REVAN]

the amount of air needed early in the dive is enough to make the experience awkward if we rely on having all our buoyancy in the suit.

I have dove DS with a HP120 tank and without a BCD. It works just fine. It sounds to me like you were wearing too much weight.

 

[oldschoolto]

We all did fine before BCD and I could go either way at the drop of a dime...

Jim...

 

[MaxBottomtime]

All this double tube snorkel talk reminded me of these.

Doubles snorkel

Rebreather snorkel

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

You forget us dry folks. Also in a DS, a BCD is pretty nice to have. Even with fairly moderate rec tanks (the standard Euro rec tank holds about 100 cuf, so we're talking about a 3-4kg buoyancy swing here), the amount of air needed early in the dive is enough to make the experience awkward if we rely on having all our buoyancy in the suit. At 20-30m and with enough air in the suit to counteract squeeze and provide undersuit loft, you'll still be pretty negative in the beginning of the dive. Putting the buoyancy air in the BCD instead of in the suit makes for a much nicer dive.

I used to dive all the time with no BC when I used my Teknodiver Super Duty Commercial drysuit. It was a beast of a suit, 7mm back zip with a pee zipper. The zipper was some sort of special super HD type that finally gave up. I found out it was going to cost about as much to replace the zipper as I originally paid for the suit so I retired it. I found it was actually easier to dive with no BC in that suit because I used the suit as a BC just by default, when I would decend and add air to the suit to counter the squeeze it also kept me neutrally buoyant. When I had a wing on for basic recreational dives I found I never even used it so I started to just leave it off, one less thing to clean.