Question Practicing Out Of Air ascent: good idea, or bad idea ?

[CT-Rich]

I recall being taught to CESA properly in the classroom.

Dont recall practicing it. Did that myself. Starting easy, 15' up to my safety stop.

15' is absolutely the most dangerous depths to do it at. You would be far safer trying it from 60 to 40'. The change in volume is the last 15'. The reason it is so dangerous (in my understanding) is that your lungs aren't designed to feel pain. You can't feel an over expansion injury, so you may not know you have just killed yourself until after you have done it.

If you want to take the risk and try it out, there are no scuba police. But students should not be expected to try a skill that could unintentionally lead to their death if not done correctly.

 

[The Chairman]

If you want to take the risk and try it out

Yet, there is simply nothing gained by taking the risk. As an instructor, I was taught to do a 60 second neural assessment each and every time a student surfaced doing a practice CESA. Who's going to do that for you? Why risk a stroke?

 

[TMHeimer]

It's a bad idea. It shouldn't even be taught in class. Concentrate on gas management instead. Since I started using an SPG, I have never run out of gas.

Again, what about catastrophic failure?
Yes as Beau said, you can take your pony. I don't do that for a 30 foot dive.
As MidOH said, if you can't figure how to do it safely you need to analyze that. Agree, it
takes doing 3-4 easy things correctly as you were taught. If you're gunna have your airway closed
ascending you may even do that in a panic if unable to locate your reg -- not even trying to practice CESA. I guess we could keep going round & round (as on previous threads about this). I feel it is one extra tool to have just in case. If you can't do a simple thing like CESA safely you got problems.

 

[The Chairman]

Again, what about catastrophic failure?

If you don't plan or train for it, then it's a problem. I've been diving since 1969, and since I've started using an SPG, I haven't had to do a CESA. Mind you, I'm rarely on a dive I could do a CESA anyway, but there's just no issue I've encountered where I've had to do a CESA, including a first stage failure.

If you plan your dive like nothing will go wrong, then you're at the mercy of luck.

 

[MidOH]

15' is absolutely the most dangerous depths to do it at. You would be far safer trying it from 60 to 40'. The change in volume is the last 15'. The reason it is so dangerous (in my understanding) is that your lungs aren't designed to feel pain. You can't feel an over expansion injury, so you may not know you have just killed yourself until after you have done it.

If you want to take the risk and try it out, there are no scuba police. But students should not be expected to try a skill that could unintentionally lead to their death if not done correctly.

Thats what I meant. Go up 15 from 35'. Or go up 15 feet from, say, 60 feet.

Not do this at 15, to the surface. There's no need for that. We just want to see proof of concept.

The pay off is: When your reg fails on an OW NDL dive, there's no panic. Just think "darn" and calmly paddle to the surface (screaming).