The depth shall be 60, 60 shall the depth be, 61 is right out unless your AOW certified????

[beester]

Wow I really read this whole thread... but somewhere along the way I lost track about what it's all about... going from OW-AOW depth limits changed and imposed over the years to CESA and buddy breathing.

My early diving background was CMAS. Meaning learning to buddy breath, even with multiple divers (up to 7 in a pool), buddy breathing while swimming with three divers, CESA's from 10-20-30 and even 40m, even playing around breathing from a scubatank feathering the valve. All very gun ho and that... I feel like a regular dinosaur ;-)

I perfectly understand the background of these "exercises", when equipment was finicky (no manometers, 1 regulator, j-valves), decompression was less known... all in all circumstances were harder. At that time these skills made sense because there were no alternatives and aspiring divers needed to have good in water behaviour and were generally speaking athletes , who also regularly trained these exercises/procedures.

However equipment, procedures and theory have moved on. There is no reason whatsoever to even have to practice CESA or buddy breathing and in a way it's as silly as practising breathing a tank feathering the valve. Why???

- These are last course measures that are inherently dangerous. (blow up - lung barotrauma)
- These have no practical use without regular training in actual life circumstances. Since these are now only shown as a last resort measure, good luck keeping certified divers trained on this.
- There are much safer alternatives to solve the problems that could warrant using these measures. Like octopus, good gas planning.

I've once seen a diver going out of air on a maladives dive (channel, current, deepish (110feet), blue water looking for big life)... it took him 20 secs to get to the nearest diver (typical good warm water behavior, people are not close to eachother).... Kudos to him for not bolting to the surface. By the time he reached this diver, he pulled out the octo and started sucking that tank dry like there was no tomorrow. IE I'm VERY sure that buddy breathing would have been 2 dead divers, because the victim would not pass the reg back to his donator.

This has been the only time I've really seen an OOA diver (except myself when I young and foolish and both me and my buddy ran out having to skip 17' deco, that was a CESA alright).

I think it's about time that diving agencies move on and remove this rubbish from their curriculum.

 

[Diving Dubai]

Which agency requires buddy breathing?

BSAC require Dive Leaders to do Assisted Source (AS) ascent as donor and receiver from 15m. I did an Advanced Diver AS from 20m earlier this month, The student's concern was which hand would do what. Dry practice then the real thing and a very controlled ascent.

You're right, I meant AS. Being up late with little coffee in the morning makes for a fuzzy brain. And it was a BSAC DL course

 

[JamesBon92007]

For me the most interesting aspect of this thread is how it migrated from maximum depth limits to the evils of buddy breathing. Perhaps in the minds of the certification agencies 60 feet is the usual limit for a successful free ascent so they try to limit less-trained people to that depth. I haven't been paying attention but how many divers have an extra second stage on their regulator? How many don't?

I think it's time for a Grumpy Old Divers free-diving competition. It might be fun to see how many of us geezers can make it to 60 feet (or more). I suppose we can include the under 50 people too.

That just made my brain flash back to my second dive course in '83. We were doing some kind of exercise and were wearing 1/4" full wetsuits with no weights or masks. I'm pretty sure we didn't even have fins on. The bottom was about 35 feet below us. We were required to dive down and bring back a handful of sand. Everyone made it. Compared to that, 60 feet with weights and fins should be easy.