Is Egypt Getting an Unfair Reputation When It Comes to Liveaboards?

[Nick_Radov]

Another problem with for example Agressor is that they write: approx 18 dives. So this means it can be 16 or it can be 20. But maybe max 3 dives a day? What are you doing all that other hours on that boat?
Offer 4 dives a day for the same price and the prices are getting a little bit better. And tell how much dives you really get. Not approximately.

Regardless of boat policies, doing 4 dives per day for multiple days in a row is a little sketchy from a DCS perspective. The numbers on your dive computer might look fine but none of our deco models have ever been experimentally validated for that level of repetitive diving. Need a little more surface interval for the residual bubbles to resolve (unless you're staying really shallow).

I know some divers do this and get away with it. But maybe we shouldn't be so concerned with getting our money's worth. Especially when we don't have quick access to a chamber.

 

[boulderjohn]

Regardless of boat policies, doing 4 dives per day for multiple days in a row is a little sketchy from a DCS perspective. The numbers on your dive computer might look fine but none of our deco models have ever been experimentally validated for that level of repetitive diving.

As you say, it has not been validated--we just don't know. But here is some information I learned in the past from a presentation at our dive shop from a DAN representative about 15 years ago. What follows is a bit fuzzy in the details because of memory, but the big idea is accurate.

IIRC, with divers on multiple day trips, 80% of the DCS cases happened on the first day. Of those, 80% happened on the first dive.

We in ski country know an old joke in which someone says 100% of the serious ski accidents happened on the last run of the day, the joke being that if it was a serious accident, the skier did not ski again. Similarly, people who get DCS the first day do not go on the dive the second day, usually. So that is obviously a factor in this, but I recall doing the statistics and deciding that the numbers we were given really were statistically significant.

So a least those numbers do not support the idea that multiple day diving increases DCS risk--just the opposite. We had a SB discussion about it around then, and IIRC correctly, some of the old timers argued that multiple diving on multiple days built something of an immunity. Who knows?

 

[NothingClever]

Blue Planet Liveaboards, which operates four boats: Blue, Blue Pearl, Blue Storm, and Blue Seas.

That's one LOB operation out of 64 listed on liveaboard.com.

I'm feeling charitable - 4 out of 64.

That's a 6% success rate.

Are we ready to call that a win for the Egyptian dive industry?