Wet decompression

[Bent Benny]

I was just recently watching a video on youtube of a panicked diver caught in a downcurrent. The diver made an ascent that looked way too fast, along with their dive buddy. When they got to the surface the buddy of the panicked diver kept saying "Go back down to 30 feet! We need to go back to 30 feet!"

I am newly certified for OW and I was taught that you should NEVER go back in the water to decompress if you have to make an emergency ascent or something along those lines. In the comments there were alot of people defending this though.

Would there be any situation where you think going back down to decompress would be the best course of action?

 

[JohnnyC]

There's something called "In-Water Recompression." It's very involved, very risky, and, generally speaking, should only be used by people who know what they're doing, and only in situations where getting to a chamber is a relative impossibility.

 

[Marie13]

Perhaps you might give the YouTube scary stuff a break for a while. Get out and dive or go swimming or something. Just a friendly suggestion.

 

[Bent Benny]

Perhaps you might give the YouTube scary stuff a break for a while. Get out and dive or go swimming or something. Just a friendly suggestion.

I have dived 8 tanks in the last 3 days. I live on an island and have been diving almost every day. Thanks for your contribution though.

 

[kafkaland]

When it's a relatively minor obligation that you accidentally blew off, you're still in the water, have no symptoms, plenty of gas, a buddy, and the conditions are otherwise safe, going back down for a short while might be your best option. Otherwise, O2 on the boat.

 

[PfcAJ]

So there's a few things being discussed.

In Water Recompression is a controversial method for treating decompression sickness.

An Omitted Decompression procedure is what you need to do if for whatever reason you blow off a mandatory deco stop.

Going back underwater after a fairly rapid ascent would be closer to an "omitted deco" procedure assuming the diver does not have DCS symptoms. If its a rec dive with no mandatory stops I'm not sure its worthwhile to do that. On a deco dive with mandatory stops I think it almost certainly is worthwhile.

 

[Damselfish]

The situation where you didn't technically miss a deco stop, but did a rapid ascent and missed a safety stop - I might go back for an extended safety stop if it seems to make sense all around. Depends some why it happened to begin with - if you got in trouble because of downcurrents or other snarky conditions, down might not be the best place to be if you don't have to.

 

[scubarushu]

It's my understanding that any situation with significant risk of DCS carries a proportional risk of complications (e.g. drowning) with in-water recompression.

It may be a case of the cure being worse than the ailment.

 

[boulderjohn]

It's my understanding that any situation with significant risk of DCS carries a proportional risk of complications (e.g. drowning) with in-water recompression.

It may be a case of the cure being worse than the ailment.

As PfcAJ clearly said in post #6, this is NOT a case of in-water recompression.

 

[scubarushu]

As PfcAJ clearly said in post #6, this is NOT a case of in-water recompression.

Apologies. I didn't quite understand the differences and promptly forgot the details of what I read there. Is it just that there's a missed deco stop and no DCS symptoms yet? Is that the only situation where one should(?) descend to some depth(?) again? I'd like to better understand procedures if a stop is missed in such a situation.