johndiver999
Contributor
The answer I’m looking for is “depth gauge”. A watch is worthless for diving (except to tell you what time of day it is) without some sort of depth gauge.
If your computer craps out you better have some way of determining your depth. I would rather have a depth gauge than a watch if given the choice of one or the other if my computer craps out. If your computer dies the dive is over and it’s time to come up, no exceptions. You can always use your smallest bubbles as a way to time your ascent and you can always count one-one thousand or sing your favorite song to gauge a rough three minute stop, but if you have no way of determining depth besides your dead computer you’re screwed.
I think if you are watching your computer and you are below the Deco limit, then if/when the computer fails, you just need to come up at a reasonably slow rate, possibly using bubbles and or particles in the water to judge your ascent rate. When you get to a shallow depth, you can deploy an SMB on a string which may have a known length or possibly a knot or two in the string on a spool/reel. The diver can also estimate their safety stop depth from visually looking at surface if the visibility is decent. The actual depth of a safety stop is not critical anyway, something between 30 and 9 feet will probably work quite well. I don't see that controlling the ascent rate nor the safety stop depth as a big worry.
All this is predicated on a computer failure AND a loss of all buddies. Obviously you could refer to a buddy's computer to make a controlled ascent. Overall, I don't think a redundant depth Gage is necessary and I never use one myself.