How often do you check your gauges?

[Storker]

The dives of yours that I have heard you describe seem to be cold water, hunter/gather type, not uber deep.

Pretty much, yes. But more precisely, one buddy hunter/gatherer, one buddy UW photog. That requires a rather extensive pre-dive chat, or a buddy pair who knows each other pretty well, though (the latter alternative preferred).

 

[redacted]

Wrist mounted computer is always in sight, if I wear it. Clipped off SPG is checked before splash, right after splash, during decent and upon arrival at depth. Then every 15 - 20 minutes to see there are no surprise. Check again at start ascent and during SS. For known shallow dives, I only take the SPG and check it every 10 to15 minutes.

 

[Akimbo]

The frequency of monitoring instruments is a side-bar in the real conversation you have with yourself. Just keep this question in mind: How am I going to survive any distraction, equipment failure, or reasonable entrapment crisis? Reasonable entrapment means getting hung up in kelp or some monofilament fishing line, not a cave of wreck collapse. This is the Basic forum.

As conditions become more demanding, you need to ask the same question assessing these factors as a combination of failures rather than individually. Illustrative extremes: Backyard swimming pool versus the Andrea Doria.

 

[RyanT]

My problem with this issue is that I'm not quite sure if it's is a sound development of my unconscious ability to track time and N2 loading, or if I'm becoming complacent and prone to normalization of deviance.

It's hard to predict this for someone else. First, I'll suggest that it almost certainly is developing an understanding of your personal gas consumption. That's always a good thing! It is also possible that complacency can be creeping in, coincident with skill development. So these two things aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.

Something that has helped me add a layer of safety/peace of mind is gas planning. This is standard practice on tech dives, but I've found it to be a really useful tool even on recreation dives, especially if they are deeper than 30 meters. So by knowing my SAC and planning up front, I already have a good sense of how much gas should be left at the end of the dive. A few checks here and there during the dive just help confirm that something hasn't gone wrong.

 

[Storker]

Reasonable entrapment means getting hung up in kelp or some nonalignment fishing line, not a cave of wreck collapse. This is the Basic forum.

Quite right. My personal limits are ~30m depth (due to narcosis issues and not being trimix certified), and no overhead environment whatsoever. Whether physical or virtual. Thus the choice of forum.

 

[AdivingBel]

Seems to me you have it about right. If I was doing dives in your posted environment (lowish viz, cold water) I would check every few minutes depending upon depth. In my "tidy bowl" world maybe not quite so often (unless at extreme rec depth). I dive with my wife defacto perma-buddy and we communicate a lot non-verb/non-overt signal, more glance and response. So when we catch each other's eye it's pretty much automatic to give a coarse display of pressure (usually more than one finger on good dives ). That probably increases my gauge check count a bit. Good buddies are a gem.

 

[scubadada]

it depends on how comfortable you are in the water, how stable your diving environments are, and how good your dive planning is.

less comfortable? check more often
new environment? check more often
great dive planning? check less often

i.e. you regularly do the roughly same dive profile, and have the dive plan done properly. Checking every 10-20 minutes is no problem...

...With proper gas and dive planning, you should only be validating the gas that you have at certain intervals and adjusting accordingly, not planning your dive based on how much gas you have left.

This is about right for me

I have a little over 600 dives near my home in Boynton Beach. I really only do 3 different dives, inside, west facing reef with max depth about 60 feet, outside, east facing reef starting at 70-90 feet usually with crossover to inside during the dive, and the wreck of the Castor, max depth about 110, avg depth more like 80 feet. I usually dive solo and my dives are rec or very brief deco. I am familiar enough with these dives that it is not necessary to check my dive time, gas and ndl very frequently other than to verify I'm where I think I should be. Of course, if the conditions dictate, strong current with increased exertion, more time at depth, etc, I will check more frequently.

On the other hand, last year, I spent 2 weeks on the Red Sea. I recently returned from a trip to Cocos. Both of these trips had dives of very variable depth and current and all the sites were new to me. I checked my dive time, depth, gas, and NDL considerably more frequently than I do at home.

How often do you check your guages? Well, it depends

 

[Storker]

Good buddies are a gem.

Quoted for truth

 

[KeithG]

I claim you are getting experienced AND complacent.

When a diver first starts out they have no idea of air consumption or NDL loading. Hence it is best practice to constantly monitor your instruments. Once you gain experience you have a better idea of your situation prior to checking your gauges.

We hardly ever look at ours anymore during a dive. On the way down depth is checked. After that maybe once or twice more during the dive. Over the years we have adopted a profile that keeps us away from NDL and OOG issues. We drop down to around 70 feet and slowly work our way up to 30 for the second half of the dive.

If we happen to be in a place where our default profile does not work then we check a little more often. But not much.

 

[Lorenzoid]

My answer is simple: about every five minutes. Even if it's an out-and-back dive at a single depth that I have done many times before, I still can't resist checking the SPG about every five minutes. It's more obsessive-compulsive than out of caution. But I'm not a photographer or spearfisherman--these are just look-at-the-pretty-fishes dives--so perhaps if I had more to do on a dive that required my attention I might not be quite so attentive to my SPG. In fact, now that I think of it, I took a Cavern class a while back, and there was indeed so much going on that I had to concentrate really hard to remember to check my SPG often enough.