SSI Open Water max depth

[nereas]

Air is unsafe below 75' because??? Narcosis is negligible for most until about 100'. PPO2 is safe down to 187'. Even at 100', you still have a 20 min NDL. I made a 70 min dive last month down to 111' without exceeding NDLs using an air schedule. This is utterly ridiculous.

Isn't the first thing they say to you in Nitrox class "Nitrox does not let you dive any deeper"? You can usually stay down longer, but it comes at the cost of reduced safety and a higher PPO2, none of which probably makes sense to the OP at this point.

Oh, for crying out loud, a beginner asks a simple question, and you bring up Trimix and rebreathers. For F's Sake!

Not entirely true. A lot of wrecks are on pretty flat bottoms, and the only interesting things to see are on the decks. I spent last weekend diving between 105'-120' on the Wisconsin. Not exactly a square dive, but close to it.

That's not a good thing. I had a real OOA on my third OW checkout dive in about 35fsw. If I was that much deeper, I might be dead.

Just take it slow. I've got a couple hundred dives now, and I've been diving for about 10 years. Until last year, I don't think I had any dives below 100'. I didn't care- and still don't- about anyone else's definition of safe diving limits. I've always been more concerned about what's safest for me. Until I did a bunch of shallow dives, I didn't know what that was.

Tom

I believe that with your 10 years of gained experience, if you give diving some thought, you will see that air is not a very great mix for any scuba diving, other than scrubbing the barnacles off the bottoms of boats, however that air is tolerable, even with its high inert gas fraction, to about 75 ft depth.

Nitrox, with less inert gas, is much more appropriate for the 75 to 130 ft depth range.

For anything deeper, definitely not nitrox.

Since your mind seems to focus narrowly, then I suppose you are not interested in any discussions of trimix and CCRs, although I find them fascinating, as it holds the keys to the understand of all scuba. Maybe not for you, though.

 

[Don Wray]

I believe that with your 10 years of gained experience, if you give diving some thought, you will see that air is not a very great mix for any scuba diving, other than scrubbing the barnacles off the bottoms of boats, however that air is tolerable, even with its high inert gas fraction, to about 75 ft depth.

Nitrox, with less inert gas, is much more appropriate for the 75 to 130 ft depth range.

For anything deeper, definitely not nitrox.

Since your mind seems to focus narrowly, then I suppose you are not interested in any discussions of trimix and CCRs, although I find them fascinating, as it holds the keys to the understand of all scuba. Maybe not for you, though.

I don't know what you're smoking, but you ought to just watch the pretty lights instead of posting on the internet.

 

[deepdiverbc]

Two factors for you to consider are your air consumption and task loading.

Many new divers can go through their air fairly quickly. If a new diver goes deeper than 60ft and doesn't monitor their air (and nitrogen load) consistently they can get into trouble. A more experienced diver will check air consistently but also has the advantage through experience of knowing what their air consumption rate is at different depths. When I dive I pretty much know what my gauge is going to read before I look at it. One tip when you do go deeper is to force yourself to check air at set intervals until you get comfortable with your consumption rate. Another tip is to ask your buddy to tell you when they hit 1000psi.

The second factor is task loading. As you go deeper your nitrogen load and air consumption are all accelerated. If you are not comfortable in the water with buoyancy, buddy skills, computer monitoring, air monitoring, new gear, low vis and dealing with unexpected situations it is easy to get distracted. Add in the effects of Nitrogen Narcosis and you could easily loose track of time along with your air and nitrogen load and get into trouble. Also if you experience a problem, as a new diver you are more likely to get stressed and your air consumption will increase even more.

In short, if you want to go below 60 ft you "and your buddy" need to be able to stay relaxed and be comfortable with your gear. For some divers this happens quickly and for others it takes more time. Just don't rush it and have fun.