How Deep is Too Deep for You?

[TheRedHead]

Thal, do you feel like you are being censored in a way? I've never been averse to using the :whack: smiley.

 

[spectrum]

What's your personal limit on depth?

I have no real interest to go beyond single tank no deco so for the sake of bottom time and local sites I loose interest in the 80s. I'd consider reaching for 130 given a reason but to me short deeps dives are not what it's about.

Pete

 

[Thalassamania]

Not by you, not in any way.

 

[lamont]

In my mind, there are few DIR divers who really know what their limits are because they've been conditioned to avoid them.

I've run around burningman in the nevada desert high out of my mind and figured out what my limits are there where I can't drown. I don't comprehend why people need to figure out their limits of getting high while they're under 100 feet of water in the ocean. I've experienced exactly what its like to be at around 300 fsw on air with the whop-whop-whop sound going in your ears and the world melting away, and I don't understand the big deal about experience that in a substantially more dangerous situation under water (particularly when its coming from people who won't do drugs on dry land). When I go through 80 fsw on air/nitrox and my short term memory starts to drop out I immediately get that "coming up" feeling and I can extrapolate what happens deeper based on my experience. Why, exactly, do I need to dive to 160 fsw on air to "figure out my limits"? I *like* paying for helium and having my short term memory intact because I remember more of the dive and I function substantially better.

Instead of diving deep air, just go here for a week: http://www.burningman.com. Very difficult to drown yourself in the desert. And if you do enough polysubstance abuse there you will also experience states of mind which are substantially more challenging to function in than anything that any deep air diver has ever experienced.

I don't care if you do it because you learned how to dive to 160 in the past and you can't be convinced to change. What annoys me is people who dive deep air and think it makes them a better diver because people who don't dive deep air "don't know their limits".

 

[serambin]

we used to call that the "wop wop wop" or "the helicopter"...

only we were inhaling N2O at 1 atm...

WOW! At that depth you could fall out of your chair.

Stan

 

[Thalassamania]

I've run around burningman in the nevada desert high out of my mind and figured out what my limits are there where I can't drown. I don't comprehend why people need to figure out their limits of getting high while they're under 100 feet of water in the ocean. I've experienced exactly what its like to be at around 300 fsw on air with the whop-whop-whop sound going in your ears and the world melting away, and I don't understand the big deal about experience that in a substantially more dangerous situation under water (particularly when its coming from people who won't do drugs on dry land). When I go through 80 fsw on air/nitrox and my short term memory starts to drop out I immediately get that "coming up" feeling and I can extrapolate what happens deeper based on my experience. Why, exactly, do I need to dive to 160 fsw on air to "figure out my limits"? I *like* paying for helium and having my short term memory intact because I remember more of the dive and I function substantially better.

Instead of diving deep air, just go here for a week: http://www.burningman.com. Very difficult to drown yourself in the desert. And if you do enough polysubstance abuse there you will also experience states of mind which are substantially more challenging to function in than anything that any deep air diver has ever experienced.

I don't care if you do it because you learned how to dive to 160 in the past and you can't be convinced to change. What annoys me is people who dive deep air and think it makes them a better diver because people who don't dive deep air "don't know their limits".

Dear Lamont (and anyone else who might be interested),

I’m a pretty reasonable guy. I don’t get high, I don’t get drunk, I don’t like the feeling, I have lot’s of friends who do … it’s just not for me. I did not strap on a tank and scream down to 200 early in my diving to see what it was like. I don’t dive air to 200 feet for the fun of it, I never have and I never will. I most assuredly do not think that I’m a better person than those who prefer a different breathing media for diving deep.

Over the years, as I gained seniority and increased my depth certification I was called on to perform the deeper research tasks that came up and to serve as dive buddy/evaluator for those divers who were working on deeper certifications (the steps are 30, 60, 100, 130, 150, 200, each requires a specified number of supervised dives for a specified total bottom time as well as Diving Officer recommendation and Diving Control Board approval). I found that both in the water and in the chamber I did not usually get a significant high. I know a lot of divers who did, and they selected themselves out of deep (air, that’s all there was) diving as a result. If I had, I’d have done the same … remember: I DO NOT LIKE THE FEELING OF BEING HIGH!

I’m not ego hung up on how deep I can go, and how much of a high can I still function with. I think that that’s stupid. I have some very close friends who are, and I’ve told them that to their face, repeatedly. If you want to prove that you’re a physiological freak and can do 400+ on air, do it in a wet pot, because even if you can get there and back, if you can’t perform work, then it’s just a stunt … a complete waste of time and effort.

I don’t know how deep I can go on a perfect day with being impaired, the science community’s regulations have never permitted air below 200, so I’ve never tested it out. There is a day to day and environment to environment variability and I’ve scrubbed more than one cold, dark, dive on the way down because it did not feel right.

I know from many years of oxygen rebreather work that 2 atas is not, for me, a big deal so 1.5 (while a little richer than the conventional 1.4) I find acceptable, of course factoring in work load, cold, etc. But I don’t recommend that number to others either.

I am who I am, I have no control over that and can take no credit for anything except the time and energy I’ve put into study and practice. As a result of a long painstaking progression that was not of my own design or choice I found out that as a result of where I am on a bell curve I usually can dive deep on air. I have no interest in testing those limits any further than I have to date.

My knowing these things about myself is an artifact of the times that I went through. Were I starting today I’d likely never learn these things, I know that, and frankly I think that the diving world is a better place today. Routine access to the depths and experiences I’ve had is there for all who are willing to train; all with a reasonable level of risk.

Some folks pay cash, by buying mix all the time, to be able to do that, and that’s fine, but I paid the price in time and gained experience back when there was no way to purchase access. The way we did things is dying out, and that’s likely a good thing, but that does not mean that I need change practices that have worked well for many decades and that I know do not put me at significantly greater risk. Believe me, it I have to go service an instrument at 200 feet south of Nantucket I’d go with some Helium in my mix, because of the ease of getting it and the expense of scrubbing the mission. But if I need to take a core sample at same depth in the Caribbean, I’d likely not bother, unless it was convenient. It’s easy to scrub the dive and go tomorrow; it’s much harder to get the Helium. If good mix was right there and you just turn it down, well … you’re just a junkie. CCRs will, I’m sure, change all this in time.

But it does piss me off a little to be criticized as though I’d not thought this all through, by folks who think that they know me and my capabilities and deficiencies better than I know myself.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Double post. Sorry.

 

[MikeFerrara]

I second Robert's post.

You'd hear more about it if the intermediate divers on the board would show some respect for the folks who've been there rather than just condem that which they know nothing more about that what their instructors (who likely have no first hand experience) have told them to believe.

I don't know if thast's it or if it's just going out of style.

When my wife and I started doing deeper dives we were doing 170 ft dives on air and that's what we did in classes too. If there was another option at the time, we didn't know about it.

Now days, you don't need to do it that way in training because there are options that let you bring in helium sooner. We didn't care for those depths on air and once we got our hands on some helium, we knew we didn't like it.

Now days, If I can't get or can't afford the gas I want I'd rather just do something else.

 

[lamont]

But it does piss me off a little to be criticized as though I’d not thought this all through, by folks who think that they know me and my capabilities and deficiencies better than I know myself.

I won't care what you do, if you don't care what I do.

In my mind, there are few DIR divers who really know what their limits are because they've been conditioned to avoid them.

That statement is total horse****, and was exactly what I was responding to with:

What annoys me is people who dive deep air and think it makes them a better diver because people who don't dive deep air "don't know their limits".

 

[Diver0001]

I don't care if you do it because you learned how to dive to 160 in the past and you can't be convinced to change. What annoys me is people who dive deep air and think it makes them a better diver because people who don't dive deep air "don't know their limits".

This is the very reason why I don't talk about it.... Anything you say about it is bound to be mistaken, misconstrude, misinterpreted, misused, misunderstood and most of all, it causes people to feel insulted and ego-bashed when it was not the intention.

On the internet, anything you say about deep air is bound to be labeled as "old-timer unable to change". It's hugely misunderstood by a whole generation of divers who reject it in same way that they may "hate" spinach without knowing what it even looks like....

That might not be your case, lamont, I don't know. What you will recognise, however, is that it's easy to ahve big mouth in cyber-space but it's much harder to have an opinion based on experience.

R..