"We don't need no stupid safety Stop!"

[metaldector]

Last year while on a dive boat off West Palm Beach the captain asked if anyone want to go down and check out a large blip he saw on his depth finder. He says that he's looked at this for a few weeks and wants to know what it is? Well, two divers take up his challenge and dive. They are down about 15 minutes. Meanwhile the captain is *****ing loudly that its a bounce dive and they should have just gone down and up. "What's taking them so long?"
Finally the divers get back to the boat and report that it's just a big coral head and nothing else. The captain complains to them about the time they took. They both said it was 70' to the sand, and they did a 3 minute safety stop at 15'. The captain says, "You don't need a safety stop when your bounce diving!" Who is right?

 

[salty]

Why we dont bounce dive

A nice little write up on bounce diving

 

[jonnythan]

I'd say the captain is wrong. I guess you don't "need" one, but 70' is fairly deep and that depth will probably load the fast compartments fairly quickly.. and a safety stop would give a little bit of time to offgas those.

I'm just speaking out of my a** from stuff I don't really understand well Either way, I would have done the stop too, and told el capitan that I'm not getting DCS for his damn coral head while he stays on the boat.

 

[octotat]

Technically, you don't NEED a safety stop in NDC diving, but it is a SAFETY stop. DCS is still poorly understood and this is just smart diving to do a safety stop. How many dives had been done previously?, at what depth?, surface intervals?, hydration of divers?, etc. etc. Too many variables, always play it safe. If that captain didn't want safety stops performed, he should have dove himself.

 

[Bretagne]

My agency teaches us a procedure for bounce diving: you add the time of the bounce with the time of the dive before, and you treat it as if it was one dive. For us, all stops are considered as deco stops, and we are trained to compute the stops on tables while under water (better to plan, I agree, but who plans bounce diving?). Then the stop after the bounce is longer that the stop before (except if we stay within the no deco limit, where it is 3'). If time interval is more than 15 it is considered as a second dive (compute group, residual nitrogen, etc)

Note: we have a procedure for bounce dives, but they are to be avoided... which is obvious when you work that way, because stop times can become very looooong!

 

[Uncle Pug]

If this was the first dive of the day they didn't need a safety stop.

In fact they could have done the dive as a free dive on a single breath from the surface... taking a few extra breaths on the way down to 70' and then on the way back up didn't necessitate an stops.

 

[divad]

With the safety stop, don't do you get back time for the next dive?

 

[Bretagne]

No, this stop is just an additionnal safety, but it is not taken in consideration in the computation.

 

[gj62]

Even with the safety stop, they spent a good deal of time (8+ mins) underneath - they needed that long to tell if it was a coral head? Not really a bounce dive...

As UP says, if it was their first dive, they didn't need the safety stop. If it was after other dives, then the article posted by Salty applies (it says, "Bounce dive *after* diving").

 

[DivemasterSteve]

IMHO its up to the person/people that makes the dives. lets face it, we all dive different and its up to you on wheather you feel a safty stop should be done. i have done it both ways before, just depends on the situation. most times i will make a safty stop, its always better safe than sorry.

steve