Reverse Profile Diving

[craracer]

I wondered if the difference in depth would be a factor, and if only 20 feet would be enough to make the dives "dangerous."

I may be mistaken, but I believe that at the conference they decided upon 12 meter (40ft) difference as being the standard (providing the dives were within the recreational limits of 40mws (130ft) and a no-stop dive.)

 

[BlueDevil]

I've heard some new thinking that reverse profile diving is not as dangerous as once thought. What are the thoughts of the ScubaBoard community in regards to reverse profile diving?

The Reverse Profile Workshop was held at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington back in 1999. So the concept of reverse profiles being okay is not really "new thinking". A Google search should pull up quite a bit of info on this topic.

Here is a summary of their findings

The Workshop Findings
1. Historically neither the U.S. Navy nor the commercial
sector have prohibited reverse dive profiles.
2. Reverse dive profiles are being performed in
recreational, scientific, commercial, and military
diving.
3. The prohibition of reverse dive profiles by recreational
training organizations cannot be traced to any definite
diving experience that indicates an increased risk of
DCS.
4. No convincing evidence was presented that reverse dive
profiles within the no-decompression limits lead to a
measurable increase in the risk of DCS.

Conclusion

The Workshop finds no reason for the diving
communities to prohibit reverse dive profiles for nodecompression
dives less than 40 msw (130 fsw) and
depth differentials less than 12 msw (40 fsw).