Should I try a rebreather?
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Protondecay123
Contributor
I did find an interesting presentation in this regard.
http://www.deeplife.co.uk/files/How_Rebreathers_Kill_People.pdf
KevinNM
Contributor
Deep life is selling ‘safer’ rebreathers, so don’t take that as gospel. But bad things can and do happen.
Protondecay123
Contributor
That PDF is put together by a manufacturer who is incapable of making a functional rebreather. They've taken money and not delivered units for something like 10 years? Occasionally one will trickle out of the factory. Their marketing strategy is to take every rebreather death and make unsubstantiated claims and incredibly faulty conclusions that the units are flawed in design and thus the cause of every rebreather divers death. There have been cases where the diver has perished, lost at sea, yet the purveyor of that document has manufactured ridiculous circumstances to conclude that it is the fault of the unit and that their design is the only one that is safe enough to use. They do this by publishing a list of rebreather deaths (another PDF) with factually incorrect information, conclusions based on supposition, and generally piss poor public behavior.
The owner/designer has, on several occasions, been called as an "expert" witness by defense attorneys seeking to sue rebreather manufacturers. On each occasion, his purported "expertise" has been forcefully re-inserted into him from the back end by actual experts. The latest cost Wes Skiles' widow Terry many many dollars to which she owes Lamartek, the manufacturer of the O2pima rebreather. She basically owes Dive Rite a metric boat load of money. One of his colleagues has, on more than one occasion, posted on forums during the course of a trial in order to manufacture evidence upon which the so-called "expert" can rely.
Dying in a dumpster fire is too good for either of those guys.
Protondecay123
Contributor
Obviously there are some strong emotions here, but regarding the claim in the pdf that despite the increased training and experience of rebreather divers there is a much greater incident rate than open circuit SCUBA. Do you think that is true?
PfcAJ
Contributor
Yes.
If you want to read a proper feature on rebreathers, read the pdf below
Richard Pyle - using rebreathers
I read this when I got my unit many moons ago.
Richard Pyle is a fish nerd, he does serious diving off Hawaii, in search of the new and the unknown. Most of his diving is on rebreathers, he has a huge amount of hours on them.
By his own admission, he has made most of the mistakes that are possible on a rebreather, and lived to tell the tale.
I strongly recommend this to new rebreather divers. It proves that it doesn't matter how much of an 'expert' you are on rebreathers (or any other type of diving equipment), you can still mess up.
At the bottom of the pdf are a list of 'operator' errors, the result of the error on the dive, and what may have happened if it had gone badly. Really, really worth a read.
Gareth
Richard Pyle - using rebreathers
I read this when I got my unit many moons ago.
Richard Pyle is a fish nerd, he does serious diving off Hawaii, in search of the new and the unknown. Most of his diving is on rebreathers, he has a huge amount of hours on them.
By his own admission, he has made most of the mistakes that are possible on a rebreather, and lived to tell the tale.
I strongly recommend this to new rebreather divers. It proves that it doesn't matter how much of an 'expert' you are on rebreathers (or any other type of diving equipment), you can still mess up.
At the bottom of the pdf are a list of 'operator' errors, the result of the error on the dive, and what may have happened if it had gone badly. Really, really worth a read.
Gareth
Yes absolutely without a doubt.
Some of that is because CCRs are allowing diver to do deeper or further dives which are inherently riskier or not even possible on open circuit in the first place. The double CCR fatality in the Plura cave is an example. There is no way the traverse that led to those deaths could be done on open circuit.
The movie doesn't entirely explain the accident, but is probably one of the best diving oriented feature films ever. Worth seeing for sure (no affiliation from me)
Diving into the Unknown
Sure, but you have to look at it in a reasonable context.
The number of OC dives FAR outnumbers the number of CC dives, however the risk profile of the dives typically done with a rebreather is SIGNIFICANTLY higher than on OC dives. Let's say there are 1000 OC dives every day. If 998 of those dives are recreational NDL dives, and only 2 are mixed gas decompression dives, compared to say 10 CC dives per day, 8 of which are mixed gas decompression and/or cave dives, the comparison falls apart.
Obviously I pulled those numbers out of thin air, but it illustrates the point.
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