Lessons For Life

[ScubaTexan]

I just received my new copy (August) of Scuba Diving in the mail today. The "Lessons For Life" may be the most ridiculous one I've ever read in the magazine. Has anyone else seen it yet? Someone taking a spare tank with them down to 65 feet without hooking it up to anything??? Are you kidding me?? :11:

I thought I had seen everything in this section, but obviously I was wrong... :25:

 

[sasscuba]

Yes. Just finished reading it. Pretty bad.

 

[Kim]

What's the idea - that you can swop your reg onto it U/W?

Actually....what would happen if you did that? Obviously a little water would get into the first stage and maybe the hose to the second as well. Would it just blow through though when you turned the tank on? Would it actually be useable?
presumably you'd have a cleaning chore afterwards but would it work to start with?

 

[ChrisA]

I just received my new copy (August) of Scuba Diving in the mail today. The "Lessons For Life" may be the most ridiculous one I've ever read in the magazine. Has anyone else seen it yet? Someone taking a spare tank with them down to 65 feet without hooking it up to anything??? Are you kidding me?? :11:

I thought I had seen everything in this section, but obviously I was wrong... :25:

Yes this is a stupid move. But I've actually heard of divers doing this. In some places it is common practice to swap your reg over from one tank to the next while under water. I'm thinking of So. American lobster divers. For them owning multiple regs is just not an option as they are using older regs that have been rretiard from the rental markets and even those are expensive for a guy making only a ew bucks a day Even worse is the practice of breathing off a bare tank. Turns out if you just crack the valve and cup your hands over the bubble stream you can breat with no reg. This kind of stuff happens outside of the normal recreational scuba circles - mostly poor third world fishermen and the like with no formal training, very poor saftey statistics too with many dead or in wheelchirs.

If you think this is bad, I was at a History of Diving lecture recently. You should see what was common practive in the 1940's and into the early 50's I'm surprized that anyone lived to see their 50th dive but then only expert swimmers dove and I'm sure most could simply swim up from 100 feet CESA style

 

[Wayward Son]

It can be done & I know cavers who routinely practise it as a survival skill. I know at least one who had to do it for real. But for a recreational OW dive by a guy who has never actually done it, it makes about as much sense as, well, the TOS prevents me from saying that here.

 

[Cacia]

Dennis did it...I think I have a picture.

I see South Pacific islanders do it to fetch someone's camera, etc. Something gets dropped...they grab a mask and a tank under their arm (sometimes no fins even) and over the side they go, sometimes catching up with the computer or camera at 160 or so as it drops into infinity! Very tipworthy heroics. Of course you would never ask anyone to do that, but they do it very fast.

 

[offroaddiver]

read the article. why didn't the DM ask him what he was gonna do with that tank? sounds like the charter was interested in his money and not a whole lot more, granted they did save his butt.

 

[jpsexton]

I'm not going to say that people don't do some pretty stupid things but the "Lessons for Life" articles just seem too "made up" for me to believe them. It seems to me like they choose a Lesson for you to learn and them write a story to support it.

 

[ScubaTexan]

I'm not going to say that people don't do some pretty stupid things but the "Lessons for Life" articles just seem too "made up" for me to believe them. It seems to me like they choose a Lesson for you to learn and them write a story to support it.

Every "Lesson for Life" features this disclaimer:
This is a true story, but the names have been changed

 

[Dochueb]

I have a picture of a divemaster in the Bahamas breathing off a tank @ depth w/o a reg & no BC.

I can't, however, figure out how to attach it here...

I'll keep working on it.