rlw
New
One thing to always remember is that the air in your lungs at depth is compressed. And this means that you can ascend from virtually any depth without fear of running out of air. In fact, you generally must vent the air as you ascend so as not to bring on an embolism.
When I took the Divers Instructoral College training way back in the mid-70s, Tony Zimos and Dick Hammas once took us out to an area off La Jolla that provided about 100 ft. depth. And our exercise that day was to descend to the bottom and sit there with our eyes closed. At some point, Tony or Dick would come up behind you and shut off your air supply.
You were then to remove your tank, remove the regulator from the tank and then free ascend to the surface all the while venting the decompressing air in your lungs. This was actually much easier to do than it sounds and it illustrates that you can certainly survive an equipment malfunction at depth.
The 2nd part of the exercise required you to free dive back to your tank and regulator, re-assemble them and rise to the surface. This would seem to be very difficult for many, a 100 ft. descent is not easily done by many folks. However, you were allowed to breathe off the tank valve when you reached your gear, and that made it eminently do-able. And we practiced beforehand breathing directly off the tank valve in order to hone that skill.
I actually really enjoyed this exercise and did it twice, just for practice. And being able to do so gave me a lot of confidence that I could pretty much handle any emergency as long as I kept my wits about me.
I'll bet you dollars to donuts that nothing like this is done nowadays in our litigation-happy society...
-RW-
When I took the Divers Instructoral College training way back in the mid-70s, Tony Zimos and Dick Hammas once took us out to an area off La Jolla that provided about 100 ft. depth. And our exercise that day was to descend to the bottom and sit there with our eyes closed. At some point, Tony or Dick would come up behind you and shut off your air supply.
You were then to remove your tank, remove the regulator from the tank and then free ascend to the surface all the while venting the decompressing air in your lungs. This was actually much easier to do than it sounds and it illustrates that you can certainly survive an equipment malfunction at depth.
The 2nd part of the exercise required you to free dive back to your tank and regulator, re-assemble them and rise to the surface. This would seem to be very difficult for many, a 100 ft. descent is not easily done by many folks. However, you were allowed to breathe off the tank valve when you reached your gear, and that made it eminently do-able. And we practiced beforehand breathing directly off the tank valve in order to hone that skill.
I actually really enjoyed this exercise and did it twice, just for practice. And being able to do so gave me a lot of confidence that I could pretty much handle any emergency as long as I kept my wits about me.
I'll bet you dollars to donuts that nothing like this is done nowadays in our litigation-happy society...
-RW-