OP
Bottomfeeder Brodie
Contributor
I keep a 100 ft finger reel in my utility pocket and a buddy line in the other. Both standard on all my dives now.
The pony taboo
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Diver Dennis
Contributor
A big SMB for your finger reel is something all divers should have too. Practice shooting it from depth.
vicdiver656
Guest
Brodie, I know that you are trying to gain knowledge in diving, but I really have to question your statement that DAN says most of the diving accidents could be avoided by having a properly sized pony bottle. OOA situations are not the only type of accident. Also, from what I've seen many divers do not wear a pony bottle because of the impracticality of it. You can make a direct ascent from 100 feet without doing a safety stop, as long you do it properly. You can google Controlled Emergency Swimming Ascent to find out more. My dive instructor told me about a diver who did a CESA from 90 fsw, with no problems afterwards.
So, in other words, just relax on the info, and learn! Knowledge will come soon enough, and we're more than willing to answer your questions!
dumpsterDiver
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The more I dive, the more I see the need for a pony bottle. I did not use one for 10 yrs, but after I got one it provided me a huge increase in my comfort level. I just do not feel safe at 90 feet without a pony bottle. I know I could PROBABLY make it up from 90 with zero air, but I also know that shop monkeys (that get paid as much as the grocery store check-out girl) get to work on my life support system. We have all had regs come back from the shop screwed up.
Not all dives need a pony bottle, not even solo dives. It depends on the depth and conditions.
Last year we lost a diver in florida who went dowm in 115 feet of water, essentially solo, and never came up. I spoke with the individual two weeks befor the fatality about a small pony, showed mine and even talked about a tiny little 6 cu-ft bottle that could be carried with negligible drag. My advice fell on deaf ears. No body was recovered, no witnesses, no clues, so the accident could have been 100 different things, but I will always wonder if I could have gotten my point across a little more firmly.
It amazes me why the scuba training industry has not adopted a much more universal acceptance of pony bottles.
Not all dives need a pony bottle, not even solo dives. It depends on the depth and conditions.
Last year we lost a diver in florida who went dowm in 115 feet of water, essentially solo, and never came up. I spoke with the individual two weeks befor the fatality about a small pony, showed mine and even talked about a tiny little 6 cu-ft bottle that could be carried with negligible drag. My advice fell on deaf ears. No body was recovered, no witnesses, no clues, so the accident could have been 100 different things, but I will always wonder if I could have gotten my point across a little more firmly.
It amazes me why the scuba training industry has not adopted a much more universal acceptance of pony bottles.
vicdiver656
Guest
It's also nice to have an SMB that has a overflow valve, that way you do not have to worry so much about popping the SMB if you inflate it too much.
OP
Bottomfeeder Brodie
Contributor
mearly my unqualified guesstimation on the out of air emergency ascent embolisms.
great discussion everybody....I see the opinions are across the board on pros and cons. I guess its all personal preference and personal risk assessment. Nobody is right or wrong and we all have our own comfort level. Thanks everybody!
PerroneFord
Contributor
Ah the pony bottle discussion. I'll take a crack at it this time..
Because they aren't needed. For recreational diving purposes, you start with a more than adequate supply of gas (air) on your back. If you cannot carry an adequate supply of gas to breathe, don't do the dive.
And those same deaths could likely have been prevented if the diver had simply chosen not to dive, if the diver had worked diligently to not separate from the buddy, or if the diver had bothered to pay attention to their gauges.
Is this a problem of gear failure or diver skill failure?
Again, is this the fault of the gear? Or is it the inability of the divers to plan and think ahead? As well as understand when it is time to turn around and go home?
So eliminate the reason, and you eliminate the need. For a recreational dive at 60ft, the average diver has an hour or more of gas strapped to their back. If the diver has skills so poor that they cannot manage to check their gauges for an hour, how proficient will that diver be when it comes to deploying a pony bottle? Something that requires practice and a cool head, especially when you add the stress of not being able to breathe.
There is no taboo. I think experienced divers realize the limitations in most situations and simply chose to dive in a manner that makes a pony bottle unnecessary.
A pony bottle is not a buddy. It cannot think. It cannot remind you to check your gas supply. It cannot tell you that you are too deep or breathing too fast. It cannot extricate you from fishing line, and it can't tell you not to do that swim-through because you'll get your fin caught and breathe down all your gas supply. A pony bottle has dubious purpose. IF your diving requires you to carry a larger gas supply, then you need a larger tank. IF your diving requires that you need redundancy because of the inherent danger of the dive, then use doubles.
The problem I see with most newer divers such as yourself is that you are discovering what most new divers discover shortly after OW class. And that is, the fallacy that "everything is always going to be ok". This is the impression OW class is designed to leave you with. On the opposite end of the spectrum, technical diving instructs that NOTHING will be OK, and we must plan for everything to fail. The truth lies somewhere in between.
So now you're doing dives and you realize, wow, what would happen if I got separated from my buddy and I needed air? I need a pony bottle. Or what would happen if I had a free-flow I couldn't stop it and I can't get to my buddy? I need a pony bottle. What happens if I don't pay attention and I run out of air? I need a pony bottle. No. You don't. What you need to do is to increase your diving skill and awareness so that you NEVER become separated from your buddy, and you NEVER become so inattentive to your depth and time, you breathe more gas than you should. And those two things won't cost you a dime.
Suppose, for instance that you actually learn how much air your breathe on the surface, and had a formula that told you how much you would consume at 60ft. And let's say that you learn that with your breathing rate, you knew you had 60 minutes at 60ft. And so did your buddy. If you both went to 60 ft and you cut off your tank, and shared with your buddy, you'd both have 30 minutes worth of air to breathe for an ascent. Plenty, with no pony bottle. Let's say you both went to 60ft did a dive of 30 minutes, and you shut off your tank. Now you share, and you both have 15 minutes worth of air to ascend. Plenty enough to deal with a catastrophic failure of either of your tanks, ascend normally, do a safety stop, etc. No pony bottle needed. But what happened was that your hour long dive now has to be 30 minutes long to have that kind of safety margin. So what happens if you both dive larger tanks? Well the time gets increased a bit, and you can stay longer with the same safety margin.
Suppose you increase your diving skill so that you and your buddy can always dive within arms distance of each other, even in zero vis? If you both had this level of skill, then losing your buddy would no longer be a reason to worry about carrying a redundant tank. Combine this with planning ahead so that you start your ascent with plenty of air in case something goes wrong, and you eliminate the need for the pony bottle altogether.
So what happens when you really DO want to stay for an hour, AND have the safety margin? You transition to doubles. That is why you see many technical divers move to doubles and never move back. It's not that the dives they are doing are always penetration dives, or very hard dives. It's that doubles offer a vast safety margin that allow them to deal with many underwater problems without stress or worry. I don't do dives below 70ft or so any more without doubles and a solid buddy. Just not worth the risk.
In my view, you should be working far harder on increasing your diving skill, including learning to plan your dives with adequate safety reserves, and you should be spending far less time worrying about what you can buy to mitigate the lack of those skills.
That's just my opinion, so take it for what it's worth.
Because they aren't needed. For recreational diving purposes, you start with a more than adequate supply of gas (air) on your back. If you cannot carry an adequate supply of gas to breathe, don't do the dive.
And those same deaths could likely have been prevented if the diver had simply chosen not to dive, if the diver had worked diligently to not separate from the buddy, or if the diver had bothered to pay attention to their gauges.
Is this a problem of gear failure or diver skill failure?
Again, is this the fault of the gear? Or is it the inability of the divers to plan and think ahead? As well as understand when it is time to turn around and go home?
So eliminate the reason, and you eliminate the need. For a recreational dive at 60ft, the average diver has an hour or more of gas strapped to their back. If the diver has skills so poor that they cannot manage to check their gauges for an hour, how proficient will that diver be when it comes to deploying a pony bottle? Something that requires practice and a cool head, especially when you add the stress of not being able to breathe.
There is no taboo. I think experienced divers realize the limitations in most situations and simply chose to dive in a manner that makes a pony bottle unnecessary.
A pony bottle is not a buddy. It cannot think. It cannot remind you to check your gas supply. It cannot tell you that you are too deep or breathing too fast. It cannot extricate you from fishing line, and it can't tell you not to do that swim-through because you'll get your fin caught and breathe down all your gas supply. A pony bottle has dubious purpose. IF your diving requires you to carry a larger gas supply, then you need a larger tank. IF your diving requires that you need redundancy because of the inherent danger of the dive, then use doubles.
The problem I see with most newer divers such as yourself is that you are discovering what most new divers discover shortly after OW class. And that is, the fallacy that "everything is always going to be ok". This is the impression OW class is designed to leave you with. On the opposite end of the spectrum, technical diving instructs that NOTHING will be OK, and we must plan for everything to fail. The truth lies somewhere in between.
So now you're doing dives and you realize, wow, what would happen if I got separated from my buddy and I needed air? I need a pony bottle. Or what would happen if I had a free-flow I couldn't stop it and I can't get to my buddy? I need a pony bottle. What happens if I don't pay attention and I run out of air? I need a pony bottle. No. You don't. What you need to do is to increase your diving skill and awareness so that you NEVER become separated from your buddy, and you NEVER become so inattentive to your depth and time, you breathe more gas than you should. And those two things won't cost you a dime.
Suppose, for instance that you actually learn how much air your breathe on the surface, and had a formula that told you how much you would consume at 60ft. And let's say that you learn that with your breathing rate, you knew you had 60 minutes at 60ft. And so did your buddy. If you both went to 60 ft and you cut off your tank, and shared with your buddy, you'd both have 30 minutes worth of air to breathe for an ascent. Plenty, with no pony bottle. Let's say you both went to 60ft did a dive of 30 minutes, and you shut off your tank. Now you share, and you both have 15 minutes worth of air to ascend. Plenty enough to deal with a catastrophic failure of either of your tanks, ascend normally, do a safety stop, etc. No pony bottle needed. But what happened was that your hour long dive now has to be 30 minutes long to have that kind of safety margin. So what happens if you both dive larger tanks? Well the time gets increased a bit, and you can stay longer with the same safety margin.
Suppose you increase your diving skill so that you and your buddy can always dive within arms distance of each other, even in zero vis? If you both had this level of skill, then losing your buddy would no longer be a reason to worry about carrying a redundant tank. Combine this with planning ahead so that you start your ascent with plenty of air in case something goes wrong, and you eliminate the need for the pony bottle altogether.
So what happens when you really DO want to stay for an hour, AND have the safety margin? You transition to doubles. That is why you see many technical divers move to doubles and never move back. It's not that the dives they are doing are always penetration dives, or very hard dives. It's that doubles offer a vast safety margin that allow them to deal with many underwater problems without stress or worry. I don't do dives below 70ft or so any more without doubles and a solid buddy. Just not worth the risk.
In my view, you should be working far harder on increasing your diving skill, including learning to plan your dives with adequate safety reserves, and you should be spending far less time worrying about what you can buy to mitigate the lack of those skills.
That's just my opinion, so take it for what it's worth.
ianr33
Contributor
Just curious: Have you ever been taught anything about gas management,rock bottom and SAC rates? Or do you just aim to be back on the boat with 500 psi?
With a reliable buddy and proper planning any regular recreational dive is perfectly safe without a pony.
Divers rarely die, becuase they run out of air. It happens because they dive outside their limits without proper training and equipment. A pony is not the solution for high air consumption, better training and more experience usually is. Carrying a pony will make you even use more air!
When we conduct "deep" dives 90+ ft, the divemasters always carry some ponies down,
just for safety. Divers with potentially high consumption can choose to have one.
A pony is no substitude for proper air management.
When we conduct "deep" dives 90+ ft, the divemasters always carry some ponies down,
just for safety. Divers with potentially high consumption can choose to have one.
A pony is no substitude for proper air management.
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Excellent post, all of it. That's me, stuck in the netherworld between the two extremes. My pony has save me from making hard choices twice. Both due to my own temporary stupidity or inexperience. -trying to keep up with divers on doubles back in my singles days. Won't ever happen again. I notice that now all I do check the pressure and sling it before every dive. I promise to throw it away when I get good enough.
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