I think I would like to get a rebreather in the future because diving silent sounds assume. Aswell not having bubbles to scare away fish (sharks) is also a major bonus.
Something i was thinking about is that. I really like diving in fast current where you are definitely working harder and can be going up and down with the current. Would this be hell on a rebreather or dose it just take more skill and mental preparation.
You know, you are raising an excellent point....and it really relates to more foolishness within the dive industry itself.....
The deal is, you can use an open circuit scuba tank AND have no noisy bubbles. This is NOT news to the Rebreather Manufactures, or to the industry...but you sure don't here most divers talking about this...
Way back when rebreathers for the recreational market first began coming out..back with Jack Kellon's BMD and then Odyssey Rebreather, one of the things they played with was a "bubble diffuser", as the intent of the rebreather was to allow some air out of the counterlung on each breath, so that any potential injection failure would not require electronic alarms---the diver would empty the counterlung, and know they had a problem--so hypoxia and death would not result....anyway, getting back to the topic.......
kellon created a bubble diffuser that was very much like a sponge that exhaust air from the divers breath would be channelled through---the air hits the sponge like filter, and comes out into the water in a billion micro bubbles, and the result is zero noise. The big bubbles that come out of our 2nd stage regs with zero filtering are what makes the big noise.
All you need is a way to route the exhaust to behind your neck, to a sponge like filter, and your open circuit scuba will be effectively as silent to fish as the closed circuit rebreather at 100 times the price, and 100 times the danger of open circuit. Of course, for the rebreather mfg's and the industry, this means they might make 1/100 as much money selling rebreathers
They really don't want YOU to have this solution.
If you had a double hose regulater with your scuba tank, then the filtering via a sponge like media would be simple for almost any of us to cobble together. The standard 2nd stage we use makes this more complicated, because we would need to route exhaust gas behind us....either you add another hose that routes exhaust back behind you--or we look for a brand new well designed double hose reg---and this would be easy for a manufacturer to create with the real purpose being just movement of the exhaust to behind the head ( the Lloyd Bridges/ Sea Hunt position of air discharge
)
My point is , for a "typical open water diver" ( which the OP sounds like) drop the idea of a rebreather for now, and check in to a new version of a double hose reg that is easy to adapt to a filter. This is a smarter direction for most divers..Most of us are not allowed by the diveboats to do 4 hour bottom times on a rebreather while everyone else is limited to a 1 hour dive....most of the scuba diving masses are not diving a "mission" that justifies the massively more dangerous and complicated issues a rebreather adds to the activity of diving.
Obviously a rebreather can be safe, and add enormous range and flexibiity to a skilled diver that needs this.....my issue is that for most of the diving world, the rebreather would be the wrong solution for what they want---"they" want : dive it, throw it in the garage till the next dive, grab it just before you dive again next month and fill it on the way to the boat--no checking, no setup routine to speak of--put it on and go---this is the mass market of divers..