Out of air incident.

[tursiops]

Let me try and say this again. There is a difference between a certification depth and the depth to which you are trained. The former is 130 ft; the latter depends on your training. Only in a few places do you have to show an AOW card to go past 60 ft. The 60 ft for OW is a RECOMMENDED limit, based on your training and experience. Why don't you call PADI and ask them if your OW card suddenly turns blank if you dive past 60 ft? Another point for possible confusion is that TRAINING dives are limited to 60 ft if you are OW, and 100 ft if you are AOW. A similar bit of semantics occurs in the depth and duration of a dive: people will tell you that a dive must be at least 15 ft deep and 20 mins long to be a "legal" dive. No. those are (approximately) the requirements for a PADI TRAINING dive; if you have a shorter and shallower dive than that, it is still a dive and you ought to log it and count it.

 

[admikar]

A diver with a PADI Open Water cert is supposed to be limited to a max depth of 60 feet. So the fact that you were going 25 feet beyond that depth and that he had just a few logged dives should have been a red flags for both you AND your buddy! Thankfully you were level headed and handled the situation allowing the dive to end without becoming a major incident.

No, the OW cert is valid to 130 ft. The recommendation is to dive to 60 ft, unless you have furter training/experience. I concur with the rest of your post. Good job, OP.

I don't agree with this. I was OW certified in December and they told us, and I also read this during the KR portion, that the limit for OW divers is 60' or the max depth at which you were trained. AOW is when you are certified to dive to the rec limit of 130'.

I am confused by what you are trying to say here. If you are telling me that the word beginning relates to the OW cert, then you are just saying exactly what I was saying. An OW certified diver is only certified to a depth of 60'. If you want to dive deeper you are technically supposed to be certified to that depth (i.e. -advanced OW or Deep)

I am not trying to argue here and I don't need to be right. What I need to do is have factual knowledge of the certified depth for OW. This is not about one person being right and another being wrong. This is strictly information sharing and exploration.

If, as you say, my statement is NOT correct, then why do I have to show an AOW cert to do a dive deeper than 60' ? Liability could be a reason however every songle piece of literature I can find all states 60' for OW.

Maybe I will start a new thread so this isn't hijacked anymore but I do believe that the disagreement here shows a major flaw in the systems put in place for training and certification.

Long story short, you were told by your training institution that you are limited to 60 feet. They were wrong. Your RECOMMENDED depth is 60 feet or deepest you reached while under training. After that, you can go deep as you want, as long as you think it is safe. Think of it this way, if limit was 60 feet, who trained instructors to train you for AOW? Or tech diving? Extended range? You get certified, after that you can go with experienced diver ( does not have to be an instructor), slowly increasing your maximum depth. There is no big difference between 60 and 62 or 64 feet. Besides, are you sure your depth gauge is correct? I am not saying that you go 100+ right away, but you can do it with some training (in this instance not formal training with an instructor, experienced buddy will suffice). It all comes up to you to decide.
In my AOW training I went down to 140 (I train under CMAS,so different limits compared to PADI). After training, I went to 160 on air, surrounded by two trimix instructors and a trimix diver keeping me safe. Why? So I can experience nitrogen narcosis and see how it affects me. Now I am not only trained, but I am SAFE to go 140 on air( of course, relatively speaking, I am still a newbie), because I know how those depths affect me. YMMV.

OK, let me do a simple math that you can prove me wrong. Let's say I'm in 60' deep, ~ 30 psig or 2 barg or 3 bar absolute (bara) ambient pressure. The SPG is showing 150 psig or 10 barg or 13 bara pressure. I have 30" long hose of each low pressure hoses for the 2nd stage primary regulator + octopus + BCD inflator (total 90" long) with 1/4" (6.5mm) ID hoses, which sum of the volume comes up to 76mL x 13 bara hose pressure / 3 bara ambient pressure = 328 mL ambient air volume. My lung has about 6000mL volume. 328/6000 x 100% = 5% of my lung volume. I call that OOA.

I guess this flawed math comes from your belief that 1. stage is closed at those pressures (you got it straight, though)? You forgot to calculate your tank into equation.

Edited to add: OP, good job!

 

[Divegoose]

My son-in-law is only "open water" certified - trained to a maximum depth of 60 feet. I have taken him down to almost 100 feet on a vertical wall. He was calm and cool, and maintained his composure even though he was below the "60 foot" depth limit. He is a fire fighter, and I know he stays cool under pressure. Was I violating a "standard" because I took him to this depth, or was I violating a "recommendation"? Because I know how he would react, I felt comfortable taking him to that depth. Had I not known him prior to the dive, ie: an insta buddy, I probably would not have gone below 60 feet until I was comfortable with his skills. I have observed experienced "advanced open water" divers who I would be hesitant to take below 50 feet, let alone the maximum recommended depth of 130 feet.

Divegoose

 

[Dan]

...I guess this flawed math comes from your belief that 1. stage is closed at those pressures (you got it straight, though)? You forgot to calculate your tank into equation...

Yep. Thanks for pointing that out. Glad to learn the flaw math is on the conservative side where my OOA estimate would actually still have enough air to calmly ascend & do the 3-minute safety stop.

 

[Dan]

My son-in-law is only "open water" certified - trained to a maximum depth of 60 feet. I have taken him down to almost 100 feet on a vertical wall. He was calm and cool, and maintained his composure even though he was below the "60 foot" depth limit. He is a fire fighter, and I know he stays cool under pressure. Was I violating a "standard" because I took him to this depth, or was I violating a "recommendation"? Because I know how he would react, I felt comfortable taking him to that depth. Had I not known him prior to the dive, ie: an insta buddy, I probably would not have gone below 60 feet until I was comfortable with his skills. I have observed experienced "advanced open water" divers who I would be hesitant to take below 50 feet, let alone the maximum recommended depth of 130 feet.

Divegoose

12 years ago, my dive log # 15, my more experienced dive buddy took me down to 126' deep in Son of Rock Monster dive site in Cayman Brac in calm water with 100' visibility. The condition was so ideal, I could not feel any difference whether it was at 60' or 126'. He was closely next to me, watching my every move. Everything went well. Pretty uneventful.

 

[davehicks]

There are a lot of folks really caught up on the Fine Print of the OW Cert and obscure calculations of when a reg won't breath.

The issue here is that a diver with just a few dives ran out of air at 85 feet. This indicates that person (buddied with a stranger) was diving beyond their skill level. The reason that 60' vs 85' is important is that you will breath down your tank much faster even if there is 100' visibility. For a diver not prepared and accustomed to managing their gas effectively this is a bad idea and clearly led to a dangerous situation in the OP's story.

The lesson is don't dive deep with an inexperienced buddy you don't know, or even one you do know until you've done a few less challenging dives with them to measure their ability.

 

[lamarpaulski]

I had a close call diving with a resort group in Cuba this week. The dive centre is very well equipped and the staff are all very well trained SSI pro's and have years of taking groups of all levels diving. The group of 7 divers consisted of 2 staff divers and 5 clients. We were assigned dive buddies during our briefing and the diver I was with had a few dives and was a certified PADI open water diver. We initially worked our way down to 85' and the DM inquired about everyone's remaining air. My buddy indicated he had 1/2 tank. I was about 2100 psi so he was either hard on air or misreading his gauge. Further into the dive, we were at 70' and the DM inquired again of everybody and my buddy gave the "OK" sign, which I thought was strange as I was down to about 1500 psi, so at the previous rate he would have been closer to 500 psi.. He was busy taking pictures, so I figured he may have been using up air quicker than others. I decided to stay close by. A couple minutes later I heard a a muffled sound, and he had already ran out of air, replaced his regulator with his octopus out of panic thinking there was going to be air, and he had the wide eyed look of death. I was able to get to him, replace his octopus with mine, and get him to surface.
Here's what I learned:
Buddy diving means staying close and paying attention to each other. Tell you buddy that before getting wet.
The diver was from Canada and used psi. Cuba uses bar Maybe that caused confusion in the briefing.
If you rent or use someone else's equipment - know how to use it and your buddies before getting wet.
Take more training so you can react to your and others needs if required
Don't be embarrassed to ask your DM or guide to explain things if you don't quite understand. Possibly the Spanish to English translation caused an issue.
It could have been a lot worse.

Good idea to actually look at their gauge early into the dive & show them yours.

 

[archer1960]

I am confused by what you are trying to say here. If you are telling me that the word beginning relates to the OW cert, then you are just saying exactly what I was saying. An OW certified diver is only certified to a depth of 60'. If you want to dive deeper you are technically supposed to be certified to that depth (i.e. -advanced OW or Deep)

The wording that someone quoted a few pages back said nothing about OW certified divers being limited to 60 ft. It said "beginning" divers should not exceed 60'. My point is that "Beginning" is not the same as "OW certified".

 

[Divegoose]

The wording that someone quoted a few pages back said nothing about OW certified divers being limited to 60 ft. It said "beginning" divers should not exceed 60'. My point is that "Beginning" is not the same as "OW certified".

I think the key here is "beginning" versus "open water". One can be "open water certified" and still be a "beginner". One can be "advanced open water" certified, and still be a beginner.

Many years ago, on my first trip to the west coast, there was a group from Alberta staying in the same hotel. The group was doing their open water and advanced open water back to back, over a period of four days. While doing their first night dive, off the pier in front of the hotel, one of the divers ran into trouble. The diver got wrapped up in some rope, managed to ditch their tank and bc, and make it to the surface. The tank and bc floated away in the current, and was found a couple of days later by the coast guard. Suffice it to say, that even though the diver had completed their open water certification, they were still a beginner.

When I completed my "open water" certification, there was some encouragement to take the "advanced open water" course. Even though I was "certified", I was still a "beginner", and not totally comfortable in the water. I wound doing approximately 35 dives before I was completely comfortable, and going on to complete my advanced open water.

While some "beginners" are comfortable in the water right away, many take a number of dives to find their comfort level. It's just my opinion, but I think it is imperative that a new diver find their comfort level, before taking on bigger challenges such as deep diving or night diving - dives that are part of an advanced open water certification.

Divegoose

 

[admikar]

Yep. Thanks for pointing that out. Glad to learn the flaw math is on the conservative side where my OOA estimate would actually still have enough air to calmly ascend & do the 3-minute safety stop.

This shows a real worth for me, opportunity to learn from these threads.