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

[RTee]

Y'know, used to be that parents didn't discuss sex around children, thinking that if they don't know,
they won't do it.

The fact is, all this cuss and discuss is moot.

The majority of people will read the first paragraph (of whatever story), and react however the "spin doctors" or their predilection dictates.

"Shallow thinkers" will hear about bounce dives, and go "cool, I want to do that"

Thinkers will continue on to figure out how to do that.

Cautious thinkers will consider risks in the "how"

Critical thinkers will also consider why one should NOT do that.

Analyzers will know they need to do more training, learning, and reading to assess the risks of doing and not doing.

In the end,

Shallow thinkers will just do it, and contribute to the fatalities.

The critical thinkers and analyzers may or may not dive deep on air, but if they do, they will have trained and assessed the risk.


Does discussing it give tacit approval? I think not, any more than "Fast and Furious" gave tacit approval to street racing. People will do what they will do. At least, by discussing it, some of the wisdom of those that think will be imparted to those who are learning.

You win, you win, now can we go back to that sex part again?...

 

[Adobo]

Almost fifty years in the ocean will do that to you.

Stick with getting advice from people that hand themselves
over to an agency and are no longer able to differentiate


Or you can continue to listen to Bailey and Lynne
who with a combined existence of 115 years have a
TOTAL OF FIFTEEN YEARS DIVE EXPERIENCE
HAVING STARTED AT FIFTY YEARS OF AGE

Now there's me and halemano with almost a combined 100
years of life, with probably NINETY YEARS IN THE OCEAN

Diving unencumbered without four tanks and a shop full of gear
diving completely disconnected from the elements in a drysuit


But if I wanted to learn something and was too LAZY or STUPID
to learn it by taking the short cut of a dive course because remember
you have no idea what to know unless you DO IT outside the womb of
the mostly complete crap class

then I would ask dumpsterDiver, one of the very few
on here that goes about his business and gets it done

So.. if I wanted to learn something about deep diving, you are saying I should go to Halemano instead of Bob or Lynne for information, is that right? And using that same logic, I should go to Halemano instead of Bob or Lynne for cave diving information, correct? I mean, Halemano has been diving since Moses was around, right?

Does this line of thinking really make sense to you?

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

So.. if I wanted to learn something about deep diving, you are saying I should go to Halemano instead of Bob or Lynne for information, is that right? And using that same logic, I should go to Halemano instead of Bob or Lynne for cave diving information, correct? I mean, Halemano has been diving since Moses was around, right?

Does this line of thinking really make sense to you?

I suppose it depends on what you wanted to learn.

FWIW - I would not attempt to give anyone advice about cave diving. I barely know enough about it to keep from killing myself. What I would do is refer you to people who know more about it than I ever will.

Actually, I think I could learn something from Emile ... he has experiences I don't. Problem is that most times I can't make out what he's saying. I like haiku ... I'm just too dense to puzzle out its meaning.

On the other hand, I doubt I could ever learn anything from Halemano. He's too angry ... angry people scare me.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Centrals]

Maybe the better question is, what are the advantages and disadvantages of doing a dive to 54 meters on air vs. some trimix blend?

If I am diving in a familiar environement and had a couple of relatively shallow dives, deep air dive to 60m max is fine with me.
But if I am in unfamiliar surrounding and in open sea than it is different story. Additional of He really makes huge different. However, I had two serious narcosis when even on trimix!! One was a first dive of a liveaboard trip to a wreck at 48m and other was the last dive of a trip on Prince of Wales.
The advantage of deep air dive is the cost, readily available of air and easy to remember deco profile if you had done enough. And if I lose both my deco mixes I could still survive on my back gas only(20 mins BT max).
The disadvantage(air) is the potential of narcosis at depth.
The disadvantage(trimix) is the cost, available of the gas, extra analyser and the deco mixes are IMPORTANT.

One important thing that I had learnt over last 12 yrs on my babby tech dive is to KNOW when to CALL THE DIVE!!! Take NO risk and UNDERSTAND my PERSONAL LIMIT. There is always tomorrow if I am alive.

 

[gsk3]

I had two serious narcosis when even on trimix!!

Not that one can't be narked on mix, but I'm curious what FHe you had in the mix on your 48m dives.

 

[Centrals]

Not that one can't be narked on mix, but I'm curious what FHe you had in the mix on your 48m dives.

20/20
I believe the long boat journey(12hrs) and it was the first dive of the trip that probably contributed the narcosis.
I normally do not dive deeper than 30m(air) on my first dive of the trip. My body need dive to adjust to depth.
BTW, I had at least 50% of He on that dive on PoW(65m). I was pretty tired after 5 days of diving on Repulse and PoW so I was NOT physically fit on the last dive of the trip.

 

[DevonDiver]

... which only points out the fact that a person's life is worth less in some parts of the world than in others ...

Not really Bob. It's got nothing to do with the value of a life. People don't do these dives in the assumption that they might die.

Trimix is simply unaffordable as a regular diving gas for many people - especially for those working full-time in the scuba industry.

I'm not arguing that this would be a valid reason for taking risks - just that availability of gas (including financial availability) does tend to shape people's diving habits.

However, in many of the locations where trimix is a financial burden.... the water conditions (narcosis triggers) tend to be very favourable. Deep air diving down to 50m (as per qualification limits) is quite common in Asia. Deeper air diving does happen, but from what I've seen, it happens on the basis of proven experience, progressive depth build-ups and only in the most favourable water conditions.

is 24 min time to surface is an extremely light deco, even by governed by computer ?

IMHO, yes it is. Because:

1. It's deco on back-gas (non-accelerated).

2. I don't judge deco on the basis that I might need to skip it. Light doesn't mean 'survivable if skipped'.

3. Deco/Ascent air consumption is sufficiently low to not require specific 'lost deco gas' contingency planning between a buddy team. It's covered by rule-of-thirds, on backgas, between 2 divers.

4. Deco/ascent time is not (much) longer than descent/bottom time.

consensus by quality, or by quantity ?

is a majority of people tellling the same words create a truth ?

As I said..."In France...."

 

[Thalassamania]

"it's that they end up promoting the notion that this type of diving is somehow a "shortcut" to proper training and experience."

I suspect that Bob has something there. When the agencies do not provide any useful guidance then people will tend to shortcut.

Do you think the many deep air / light deco (bounce?) threads are promoting deep air / light deco (bounce?) diving?

No, but I do think that there are individuals who are doing so in all of the aforementioned threads.

Do you think it would be helpful to an adult discussion to have working definitions about what we are discussing; like perhaps a definition of a deep air / light deco (bounce?) dive?



None of us may be able to describe it perfectly, but we all know it when we see it.

So, if you are really going to participate in like manor to others who participate in like manor, just hit the "reply w/ quote" button at the bottom right of this OP and make your first reply just to this post. (I encourage then deleting the quote of the OP before hitting your post button)

[/QUOTE]
Err ... that's like manner (as in behavior rather than house).

 

[Hydreliox]

Seeing as this has completely degenerated from the OPs request of keeping the discussion on topic:

Is the internet really the place for people who don't know better to gather information on how to do deep air dives?

Yes probably as tens of thousands of hours of experience from all levels of divers are available. Your argument could be applied to any aspect of diving. I agree that the internet does not even begin to substitute for appropriate training, however I do feel there is a huge resource of knowledge available for people to be able to learn from, and I think taking that away from people can only make the situation worse and not better.

The unfortunate thing is you can't control a discussion like this in a manner that suits the people who are requiring information (such as this threads degeneration from the OPs questions - myself now shamefully included).

It is also unfortunate that we have now got to a stage where exceeding 1.4pp02 (let alone 1.6pp02) is considered as death sentence. I guess its why the tech community never starts 100% 02 deco @ 6m

This level of resource at our fingertips combined with appropriate training can only be better than only having access to one or the other?!

For anyone interested in further reading here is a starting point: Insights on Deep Bounce Dive Safety From the
Technical Diving Community by Richard L. Pyle

 

[MauiScubaSteve]

Do you really dive to a ppO2 of 1.8? That alone shows either your training is outdated or you have an extremely high risk-tolerance, or both.

I'll be there's someone out there in the world still willing to train halemano to 2.0, so then he could push it even further, and still be able to stand by the fact that he was 'trained' by someone else and so therefore it must be okay...

[ ...and this really points out another problem with deep air -- it tends to be symptomatic of the diver in general believing that they're smarter than everyone else and the rules don't apply to them... ]

Many of the players in these debates are fully disclosed, if you know how to operate the member profile function.

First, click on the member name. With me you have two options; "view profile" or "visit homepage" (halemano.com sadly not updated since '08)

If you, or any other, really wanted to know about "my" nitrox training, you could have navigated to my "'06 resume page"

Since I don't believe most follow links, the short story of "my" nitrox training is that in the spring of 2001, the founder of IANTD invited me to do a personal, one on one, instructor crossover. I spent 4 or 5 days philosophizing and theorizing with the father of recreational nitrox to qualify for my IANTD Advanced Nitrox Instructor card, but the 4 or 5 weeks where I was a mostly quiet happy hour guest at Dick's Round Table (Sharky's Bar) were worth every penny of the 25 grand I invested in Florida that spring!

I will not argue that my risk tolerance is greater than most, in most eyes, but perhaps the truth is that risks takers are not equal; they are all different....

Lets get real about MODs for a moment.

1.4 is incredibly conservative. In fact, 1.6 is rather conservative. Those are numbers pushed forward by agencies with liability concerns, physicians with liability concerns, and manufacturer's with liability concerns ... in other words, lawyers.

In the 1960s we dove to 2.0 routinely, we dove pure oxygen rebreathers to 30 feet with occasional bounces deeper, even to 60 feet and we tested our oxygen tolerance in chambers, on pure oxygen at 60 feet. There were not a whole lot of hits, all that I personally knew about were on chamber tests. So I have to admit, I am a little amused at the trepidation that diving 1.6 and decompressing at 1.8 is met with.