DC53
Guest
My question regards the three minute stop at 15 feet in the setting of recreational, no decompression diving... Yesterday my wife and I did a 40 minute dive. Most of it was in the shallow zone of the quarry at around 30-35 feet, working on skills, doing the swim throughs, etc., and then we made one short descent to around 70 feet. I.e., we were very much within the safe no decompression limits. Later my wife asks me, If we were so much inside of the safe no decompression limits, why did we have to do the 3 minute safety stop? (Now let me say that neither of us is in any way against hanging out at 15-18 feet for 3 minutes!) However, I could not give a concrete answer and so I am asking for input.
I have a related question which may be answered by responses to my question above. As you get near to decompression limits but still within the no-deco range (ie lots of nitrogen bubbles on the computer but no solid dots or deco warnings, or, going by the table but closer to the limits), does the safety stop serve as precautionary but non mandatory decompression stop?
I have a related question which may be answered by responses to my question above. As you get near to decompression limits but still within the no-deco range (ie lots of nitrogen bubbles on the computer but no solid dots or deco warnings, or, going by the table but closer to the limits), does the safety stop serve as precautionary but non mandatory decompression stop?