What do you do on deco?

[TSandM]

Freeze, mostly.

If there's any opportunity, I'll deco up a wall or slope where there is something to see. The Red Sea was great for that! Otherwise, I watch my buddies, watch my depth gauge, fret about my buoyancy, think about my cold feet, back kick a bit, look at my depth gauge and try to remember if we've been at the stop three minutes or four . . .

 

[Doc Harry]

I have enough trouble just maintaining my desired depth and orientation to my buddy to do much of anything else. Especially trying to deco in a high-flow shaft or something like that.

I did one deco where we watched out for alligators.

 

[Gilldiver]

I remember reading an amusing article written by a British female tec diver (Polly Tapson), and she was saying that when the dive team got to the first deco stop, all of the other (male) divers pulled out pornography to read.

That's quite a mental image.

The old Playboys that had the staples lasted a long time, put them in a large Ziploc between dives to keep them wet and you could get a full weekend out of them before the staples rusted away.

The archaeological divers in Bodram Turkey were know to read paperbacks on their hangs (160-190 on air for 20 minutes twice a day on Navy tables, you do the math). Every time the National Geographic would be coming to do a photo story they had to spend a few days cleaning up the lost pages

In a good current off of NC and up to the North I’ll use one or two jon lines to the anchor line and clip on at one of my chest D-Rings, put my hands out to the side and play airplane “Flying” by turing my hands.

 

[kanonfodr]

Scubuno

Peace,
Greg

 

[BabyDuck]

sword fights with beaver-gnawed sticks, laser tag with can lights, try to open the p valve around the deco bottle without pissing off the computer, fight with buddy who is also my sig other, look for hogchokers or itty snails to watch, fin pivots off the cave ceiling, watch the bubbles flow like mercury on the ceiling, steal reels & spools & arrows & whatever else is easy pickings...

just a note - if you're gonna tie all your buds together with a spool, make sure you tie yourself in, too, or it's too easy to figure out who did it.

 

[Dr Wu]

Poke jellyfish and hang on.

 

[memorex77]

Slowly swim around in circles or along the shore, wishing it to be over soon so I can go take a leak... after surfacing, trying to get the SMB under control again, waiting, dragging the heavy stuff back to the car, undressing, probably a total of another 30min with high pressure

 

[SurDo2]

Sleep...

 

[Tortuga68]

Not that I do long deco hangs... max 12 minutes at 6m usually... but:

1. Have a cat nap, spool between legs and arm crooked around the line (hopefully some one wakes me when it's time to go up)

2. Play Noughts & Crosses, Hangman or I Spy with my buddy and wetnotes (I Spy can be challenging on blue water ascents)

Once I saw a tiny tiny Frogfish float between me and my buddy, so sometimes it pays to pay attention

I know John Bennet, who did some loooong hangs, used to take a few pages out of a paperback and read them, then let them drift off when he was finished

 

[Diver0001]

I've been curious for the longest time: what do tech divers do on deco stops? Even some of my safety stops have degenerated into rock-paper-scissors, and those are only 3 minutes or so.

four things

1) focus
2) on
3) the
4) task

I do most of my deco (which is, admittedly only between the 15-25min) either free floating, on some kind of unstable upline or swimming.... which makes the task of holding precise depth a full time job.

With my normal buddy we even make a game of normal safety stops. We try our best to hold station and not move a muscle for 3 minutes, which takes as much precision (and concentration) as you want to put into it.

My thinking is that if you're getting bored on a 3 min stop then you aren't thinking about how to improve your diving.....

Oh... and me and my regular buddy have a little over 2500 dives between us so it's not like we lack basic skills.... the drive to continue to improve is just something we've never lost.

R..