Is Deep Air / Light Deco (bounce?) Discussible on ScubaBoard?

[MXGratefulDiver]

... and with respect to the questions I asked ... which NONE of the proponents of deep air diving have stepped forward to attempt to answer ... I want to point to this ...

Ten years diving, having started at fifty and only sharing
you biased information if people ask you nicely or pay you


Surely you jest no?

No ... I don't jest. The fact is, that in the few years I've been teaching, I've done more to help the divers you CLAIM to want to help than you ever have ... or ever likely will.

I've been addressing the very questions I posed to you, VDGM an Halemano for several years now ... offering my knowledge freely to those who want to know, irrespective of how they treat me or how they choose to dive. It's published in my website ... where even you can access it. It's been published multiple times on this and other scuba forums. I've spent the past six years traveling ... at my own expense ... to offer free seminars to any dive shop or dive club who requested it. And I've not once asked to be paid for it.

This is my answer to the questions I posed ... the very ones that you, Halemano, and VDGM ... with all your decades of experience ... have not attempted to answer. Why is that Emile? Do you even KNOW the answer?

You prevent what happened to Kirby by knowing ... before you get in the water ... that you have enough gas for your dive plan. You then stick to your plan. Even under severe narcosis a reasonably experienced diver has the mental capacity to stick a depth and time number in their brain ... or write it on a slate ... and follow through without much ability at all to process information.

The gas management article on my website ... which has been freely given away for nearly eight years now ... explains how. It's not tech diving ... I've been teaching it at the AOW level since 2004 and I have never ... not once ... had a student who had to struggle to comprehend it.

That's my answer. What's yours? Either put the information out there or just admit what seems apparent ... that you aren't interested in helping other people ... you just want a place to brag about how awesome you are.

What should I do today halemanos sig

I know, I'll start diving and teaching as a menopausal gift to myself
in a swamp

Joke yes!

Yeah ... but the joke's on you for showing everyone what condescension looks like.

Bob, I know you get it.

Do you get that pigeonholing the masses in your quest, with bullying
feeds the stupid divers doing stupid fire and keeps these threads alive

You want to see a bully, Emile? Look in the mirror. I have never ... not once ... shown you the disrespect you've shown me in your previous posts in this thread.

Unlike yourself, I spend a lot of effort trying to help newer divers learn how to dive responsibly. I don't deride people who have less experience than me ... I listen to them, respect what they do know and admire that they want to learn more ... and I try to help them.

What do you do besides make cryptic posts, thump your chest, and brag about how many years you've been diving?

I'm sure everyone's impressed ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Hank49]

But if we're going to have a useful discussion about deep air diving, I'd like to ask Halemano, VooDooGasMan and knowone ... in particular ... what would YOU do to assure that such an incident doesn't happen to you? How do you prepare for your deep air dives in such a way that you mitigate the risk of just zoning out due to narcosis?

And finally I want to ask ... you three gentlemen in particular ... if this can happen to Kirby ... a guy who has at least as much deep air experience as you do ... don't you think it might, someday, happen to you? And if not ... why not?

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

It's obvious that even ample amounts of gas don't help in a case like this, if one forgets to check his tank pressures. So, given one knows his sac fairly accurately, a timed alarm would be useful. One that has a "snooze" button on it so it continually reminds the diver to at least check his guages. ??

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

It's obvious that even ample amounts of gas don't help in a case like this, if one forgets to check his tank pressures. So, given one knows his sac fairly accurately, a timed alarm would be useful. One that has a "snooze" button on it so it continually reminds the diver to at least check his guages. ??

That is essentially the mechanism I was referring to in the previous post ... if you know you have adequate gas for a certain depth and time at that depth ... you write it down on a slate. When the numbers on your bottom timer match the numbers on your slate, it's time to go.

I don't know if there are currently any dive computers out there that would let you program an audible alarm. But I agree that some kind of mental "trigger" has to be arranged prior to the dive.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[dumpsterDiver]

And finally I want to ask ... you three gentlemen in particular ... if this can happen to Kirby ... a guy who has at least as much deep air experience as you do ... don't you think it might, someday, happen to you? And if not ... why not?

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

I admit your buddy Kirby story is scary. Well he screwed up, he lost situational awareness, had a bad day...etc. Hell last month I backed into the lawn guy's trailer at 7:00 am, I've probably totally spaced out and run through 6-8 stop signs in my life... I got tangle up in fishing wire on a 180 ft on a solo dive.... last time out diving, i switched out tanks between dives and set up on my first tank which was completely empty etc, etc., We all make stupid mental errors; sometimes they result in a hole in your rear bumper and sometimes they can be deadly.

My personal perspective is to set a depth limit of around 200 ft, try hard to pay attention, bail on the dive if I feel weird, don't over-exert myself...blah, blah, blah

However, I have to admit, about 8 weeks ago, I was having a frustrating dive, i was dropped too far from the wreck (with no current) and had to swim 250 yards at 160 feet BEFORE the real dive started, then I and was chasing a fish at 180 feet and missed a shot and who knows what else, but I ended up staying longer than I expected (or should have) and this resulted in a deco that was considerably longer than I could have done on my pony bottle.

This mental error was almost certainly related to narcosis, I was concentrating on one objective and let situational awareness slide. This was MY stupid, careless error and if I would have had a primary tank failure, I would have needed to use plan C (in-water recompression on oxygen, from the boat) which is NOT something I want to rely on.

There are some dangers that are NOT manageable. A total mental failure can and will kill you, but there are other aspects that are out of my control as well, what if a few big sharks decide to eat me? In reality, there is probably nothing I can do to prevent that or stop it.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

That is essentially the mechanism I was referring to in the previous post ... if you know you have adequate gas for a certain depth and time at that depth ... you write it down on a slate. When the numbers on your bottom timer match the numbers on your slate, it's time to go.

I don't know if there are currently any dive computers out there that would let you program an audible alarm. But I agree that some kind of mental "trigger" has to be arranged prior to the dive.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

I used to have an air integrated dive computer..pheonix. It would give you a digital reading of how many minutes of air you had left at depth before a minimal gas reserve was left (maybe it was 500 psi), it also gave you a reading of how many minutes it would take to reach the surface (including the currently acrued deco).

If your tank was big enough, it was helpful to just leave the bottom, before or when those numbers matched. It had a very big reading and was easy to understand and read and provided some buffer in that the minutes of air remaining was based on your real-time air consumption at depth. This was for solo diving, without the complication of another diver stealing your air.


I went through a few of those computers (they all died), but now, for deep dives, i try to remember to set my stop watch function on my G-shock on the boat or on descent and sometimes a glance at the elapsed time and remaining air, is more useful than trying to quickly decipher the deco info my computer is trying to tell me in a font that is too small for my tired eyes.

 

[Adobo]

...

Standards allow today's beginning diver to be air certified to 130' deep in probably less than 20 days; but then 20 years later, perhaps more than 2 thousand dives later, that diver is a fool to go air deeper than 130'??? Speaking of Standards; how many of you remember typing something along the lines of ... PADI Standards really only apply to PADI Training and PADI Program dives? Are not the other agencies Standards along those same lines?
....

Take 50 of these non-tech trained 20 year veterans with 2000+ dives in Hawaii - what percentage would you say have the knowledge on the various choices for how to execute a dive to 25 mins at 140ft? How many of them know how to plan the dive? How many know what the optimal gear choices are for this dive? How many know what deco strategy choices they have available? How many know what bottom gas choices they have available? Even if they know about and have access to trimix, how many of them know advantages/disadvantages of using one blend from another? You think 75% would know the answer to these questions? 50%? 10%? For the ones who don't know the answer, do you suggest that they go to the internet and find the knowledge there and learn how to conduct these dives through trial and error?

Wouldn't it be good if there was some organized, methodical activity where divers who had sufficient experience in recreational diving, could go and get the knowledge to conduct dives that are beyond the recreational limits? In that activity, all the above and other pertinent questions and topics are discussed. The leader of this activity could be someone who, while maybe not a 20 year veteran teaching open water classes, is trained lead an activity where he/she can pass knowledge to people who want to conduct dives to 175ft. This person, while maybe not a veteran of thousands of 40ft reef dives in Hawaii, would have hundreds if not thousands of dives in the 140ft+ range.

I'm interested in discussing whether or not an adult discussion with regards to light deco deeper than 40 m air diving could benefit the never going to tech dive but probably will dive air deeper than 40 m divers in the world.

Whatever you want to call dives deeper than 40m/133ft, there are ways mitigate the risks involved in conducting such dives (and making the experience more enjoyable). A person can get this knowledge through trial and error (incredibly risky) or a person can leverage the experience and knowledge of all those that came before. The latter can be done many ways including through the interwebs were people like you and Lynne can't even agree on the proper style BCDs to use on cave dives and where people like VDGM claim that "Diving on air is safer then any other kind of diving". Or it can come from some organized activity where there is a reasonable chance that the information being propagated actually makes sense and is coming from someone who has a clue what he/she is talking about.

 

[VooDooGasMan]

Power went out yesterday, people come across from mainland, some holiday they say, so we went crabbing and seafood, Daniels Broiler steaks and drinks, just pulled crab pots, yard a mess from storm, and a girl is be held for in jail for 3 guys 19 to 22 in age that died in car crash here on the south end of Whidbey.

My answer to Deep Air Diving was closed By cave diver as I told how to do the Dive, plus I add how I have done on my dives, It is very simple to do a Deep Air Dive, of course NWG wants you to go down all confused and have all these gadgets that just get in the way.

As I have stated recently you go down and see how you are affected on gas supply, once pass rec depths your air supply will be less.
You dive site is a big factor, you need to free descent to the bottom as fast as you can without excerting at all, small breaths to just equalize mask and ears, I take a halls before diving and does the trick of cleaning head out. So congestion is a big part of your deep air or bounce dive. you will know your air supply needed for your work up dives as you progress, any physical movement will increase narcosis so you keep it to a slow relaxing dive as you possibly can.

The answer to bottom time is your experience, always maintain timing device and pressure gauge. Diving twin 100's is alot of time down at this point you know when to deep and rapture of the deep has got you, this is the experience part, must know how much air to release very fast and come up quickly, so if it hits you at 238' you will stop at 178' see how you feel and if rapture still has a grip on you ascend to 148' but not as fast and then if still not out slowly make it to the surface with all required stops. Getting narced is only the start of being able to only maintain a narc level, but once rapture of the deep hits you, this is a immediate ascent and must be ready to perform this the whole dive. I have gotton raptured where kiby was and I kow what he went through, go out in elliot bay is a swim and just a mud silt dive and you get messed up there it is as bad location to do Deep Dives, yes you can use scooters, and dit will do training, just from my exploring wear kirby was diving 10 years previous is just not a safe divesite for any kind of Deep Diving.

And the answer of Kirby having as much experience, Kirby has only been diving I think less then 10 years, and was also a trimix diver, so this tells you something he was doing dives and and got rapture of the deep and he made it to the surface without doing lik 46 mins of deco. Kirby and others could learn more before running into this the hard way, from Deep Air Diving experiences. there out there to be found and read them, Of course until you have done it, you can prepare how to deal with better, Sometimes here in the PNW its got me at 160', so be it I will try it another time.

To plan Max depth is foolish, only plan is how far you can go and then come back to the surface. So when diving wrecks at known depths you are trying to get to that bottom, but you turn as soon as you feel the comfort zone is no longer.


I have no Idea how it posted that way but oh well, the answer explained.

Fixed a little better.

 

[MauiScubaSteve]

Take 50 of these non-tech trained 20 year veterans with 2000+ dives in Hawaii - what percentage would you say have the knowledge on the various choices for how to execute a dive to 25 mins at 140ft? How many of them know how to plan the dive? How many know what the optimal gear choices are for this dive? How many know what deco strategy choices they have available? How many know what bottom gas choices they have available? Even if they know about and have access to trimix, how many of them know advantages/disadvantages of using one blend from another? You think 75% would know the answer to these questions? 50%? 10%? For the ones who don't know the answer, do you suggest that they go to the internet and find the knowledge there and learn how to conduct these dives through trial and error?

The "murk screen" from the pnw continues to obfuscate my opinions as something different from what my opinions actually are. I have worked as an instructor/guide for nearly 10 years; ~ half Oahu and half Maui. I personally know over 50 non-tech trained 20+ year veterans with 2000+ dives. No body is even remotely considering 25 minutes @ 140 ft. So; no body needs to know how to plan that dive, no body needs to know the optimal gear choices for that dive, no body needs to know the deco strategy choices they have available for that dive and the usual gas for those veteran divers is air.

The topic of this thread remains the same. Whether any Tech divers care to discuss the topic of this thread is a moot point. IMHO, the most at risk divers from the dangers of "deep air bounce, hardly any deco, if any" are neither Tech divers or non-tech trained 20 year veterans with 2000+ dives in Hawaii. I did not start this thread in either the Tech forum or the Hawaii 'Ohana forum, because my intended target audience is not frequenting those forums.

Wouldn't it be good if there was some organized, methodical activity where divers who had sufficient experience in recreational diving, could go and get the knowledge to conduct dives that are beyond the recreational limits? In that activity, all the above and other pertinent questions and topics are discussed. The leader of this activity could be someone who, while maybe not a 20 year veteran teaching open water classes, is trained lead an activity where he/she can pass knowledge to people who want to conduct dives to 175ft. This person, while maybe not a veteran of thousands of 40ft reef dives in Hawaii, would have hundreds if not thousands of dives in the 140ft+ range.

There are perhaps three shops and a couple independent Instructors on Maui that offer Extended Range / Deco training, and I am on descent to good relationship status with three of them. 3 out of the top 5 best tech instructors on Maui are SB members, and the "Recreational" CD for one of the Rec/Tec shops is also a member. If we now expand my first paragraph's 50+ circle of peers to include the Instructors in this paragraph, far and away the most common dive to 160'-180' is a pair of those peers, on air, for a quick peek, and then back up to 80' max for the rest of this multi level, hardly any deco (if any) dive.

Whatever you want to call dives deeper than 40m/133ft, there are ways mitigate the risks involved in conducting such dives (and making the experience more enjoyable). A person can get this knowledge through trial and error (incredibly risky) or a person can leverage the experience and knowledge of all those that came before. The latter can be done many ways including through the interwebs were people like you and Lynne can't even agree on the proper style BCDs to use on cave dives and where people like VDGM claim that "Diving on air is safer then any other kind of diving". Or it can come from some organized activity where there is a reasonable chance that the information being propagated actually makes sense and is coming from someone who has a clue what he/she is talking about.

Well, there is no data to use but do you not see the possibility that if you could figure out the number of air dives made annually world wide and the number of non-air dives made annually world wide, the possibility exists that per dives deaths are lower with air dives than with non-air dives? Could not VDGM now be playing a similar hyperbole game as his detractors have from the start, in a mocking way?

As for BC styles, if the cave dive requires doubles I think the #1 BC choice is BP/W; is that not also Lynne's #1 BC choice for a cave dive requiring doubles?

I am going to continue to express my opinion that the most at risk divers from the dangers of "deep air bounce, hardly any deco, if any" are not frequenting the General Tech forum, because they are not considering Tech training. I am also of the opinion that the most at risk divers from the dangers of "deep air bounce, hardly any deco, if any" are not my "peer group" as listed a few paragraphs above. DevonDiver has stated his opinion that not many of the most at risk divers from the dangers of "deep air bounce, hardly any deco, if any" are frequenting the Advanced Divers forum, so that seems to be the Administrator's reasoning for not allowing an adult discussion on the topic of "deep air bounce, hardly any deco, if any" in that forum.

But evidently, a childish poo throwing discussion on the topic of "deep air bounce, hardly any deco, if any" is allowed in the Advanced Divers forum (and pretty much here as well).

 

[Jax]

To be blunt, the For-Deep-Air crew isn't looking too good right now. Too many personal attacks, too many snide remarks, too much name calling.

NWGD has asked some pointed questions, and you guys are evading them.

Here I am, an AN/DP trained diver, and in this entire thread, haven't heard one reason why I should ever go below ~150 on air. You guys are not making your argument.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

To be blunt, the For-Deep-Air crew isn't looking too good right now. Too many personal attacks, too many snide remarks, too much name calling.

NWGD has asked some pointed questions, and you guys are evading them.

Here I am, an AN/DP trained diver, and in this entire thread, haven't heard one reason why I should ever go below ~150 on air. You guys are not making your argument.

Who WOULD argue that you should dive that deep?

You have very few dives according to your profile and nobody should be diving anywhere they don't want to be unless they are getting paid a lot of money..