Safety stops
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The purpose of the safety stop is to let stay at a level where your body would stop taking on more nitrogen and give it time for the nitrogen to leave the body. I guess there's no harm stopping at a shallow depth for more than the usual allotted time, with the amount of gas left in your tank permitting.
The typical safety stop is 15 feet/5m for 3 minutes. As said before, this allows your body to off gas accumulated nitrogen from your tissues. Making a safety stop after every dive (even though if it is short/shallow) is a good diving practice. It also gives you a chance to practice buoyancy control. In tec diving what we do is do our deco stops while remaining still because if you are more active, it is more difficult for your body to release nitrogen. You don't HAVE to stay still though, you can even plan your dive so you return on the top portion of the reef at swim your way back at 15 feet. If you are concerned about safety in general, it may also be a good idea to do a "deep stop" at around 50-60 feet for 1 minute if you come up from a deep dive. Always allot time to do a safety stop into your gas planning.
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I usually stay about 4 mins., as I read 3-5 is a good idea. Not too good an idea to breathe your tank down very close to empty--you don't want any chance of water getting in there. Some charters want you back aboard with at least 500 PSI--but don't skip or rush a safety stop to accomodate that.
flots am
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Yes. The "no deco" limit for 15' is a little under 6 hours, although I'm not certain if that's real or just to make the dive tables work. I seem to remember that the NDL is actually essentially infinite at that depth.
In any case, you'll get cold, tired, bored or run out of gas, long before you run out of no-deco time at that depth.
flots.
Yes I agree with all the above, better to spend a little more time at the safety stop rather than to think you are brave and don't bother with them. One might never ever do a safety stop in say 4 years of diving, but MURPHY always lurks and the next dive might bring someone unstuck.
When we do many days diving in say Trukk and at some depth we do our allocated decompression stops and then often will stay at 5 m for an additional 2 minutes often breathing 50% Nitrox. Although the dive plan doesn't call for it, we believe it reduces the chance of getting bent.
I know of a number of people who have followed all the rules to the letter and have gotten bent so although for maybe 98% of the diving population the tables will always prevent an issue, there are some unfortunate people who do get affected. I may be one of them if I follow the tables, but am tired, sick and been drinking. When could this happen to me? Well who knows.
So on that basis we always try and dive conservatively. In this way when Murphy is lurking in the depths, if we dive conservatively, maybe we will miss him and survive for another dive. So if you enjoy doing it and it’s no big deal for you then another few minutes won’t hurt and might help. You may have come up a little more rapid in one part of the dive and not realised due to surge who knows.
I believe in diving conservatively and living to dive again, rather than being a hero once and finding I can never dive again.
When we do many days diving in say Trukk and at some depth we do our allocated decompression stops and then often will stay at 5 m for an additional 2 minutes often breathing 50% Nitrox. Although the dive plan doesn't call for it, we believe it reduces the chance of getting bent.
I know of a number of people who have followed all the rules to the letter and have gotten bent so although for maybe 98% of the diving population the tables will always prevent an issue, there are some unfortunate people who do get affected. I may be one of them if I follow the tables, but am tired, sick and been drinking. When could this happen to me? Well who knows.
So on that basis we always try and dive conservatively. In this way when Murphy is lurking in the depths, if we dive conservatively, maybe we will miss him and survive for another dive. So if you enjoy doing it and it’s no big deal for you then another few minutes won’t hurt and might help. You may have come up a little more rapid in one part of the dive and not realised due to surge who knows.
I believe in diving conservatively and living to dive again, rather than being a hero once and finding I can never dive again.
dumpsterDiver
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If you are doing repetitive dives.... hanging out for a super long time at 15 ft may not be beneficial. if you want to get the most time out of your 2nd or 3rd dive on the computer and your surface intervals are somewhat limited... like 45 minutes or something... you might be better off, offgassing on the boat than doing it super slow at 15 feet for an extra 10 minutes...
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