What is the fundamental reason that prevents scuba diving from becoming popular?
- Thread starter Scuba Client
- Start date
Please register or login
Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.
Benefits of registering include
- Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
- A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
- You can make this box go away
That's exactly my point.
For newer divers, diving deeper sounds more bad ass than it really is. Like with every specialty, it takes more money, more equipment, time and specialized training. However more doesn't equal better and every specialty creates expertise in that field and that field only. Then lets define deep. Is 40m deep? Is 60m deep? I dove 58m on air to anchor a net back to a cement block. STUPID but I had no choice cause I wanted to get paid. Is that deep enough or less badass than doing 80m on Trimix? If a diver goes 101m is he more badass than the one that got to 100m? As you can see, criteria are very fluid and dependent on the eyes of the beholder.
What about cave diving, is that badass? What about working on a Dive Center all week, 3 dives per day, dealing with lots of 'wannabe' experts that according to themselves could do your job better than you, is that badass?
IMO badass is the diver that dives safely and is a pleasure to dive with because he respects his environment, procedures and his dive buddies. We advocate that diving is safe but it is still a dangerous activity as we remain artificially in a hostile environment. Regarding your paragraph, BRAVO. People assume than having personal skills and / or knowledge is the same as being qualified to transmit that knowledge.
All this thread started because someone mentioned that the BCD should be used a a rebreather when bailing out from 40m on an out-of-air emergency. As a DM, I strongly disagreed as this practice was dangerous and rendered obsolete in the 80s. Then, the usual TEC divers being better than the rest of us and bla, bla, bla started. Form the amount of BS these 2 are sharing it is OBVIOUS that they are not as good as they think they are. I would definitely feel uncomfortable diving with them.
In many cases, yes. I mentioned earlier that PADI wrote an open letter to dive operation and government employees in Belize fairly begging them to take action to stop new OW divers from diving the Great Blue Hole at 40m.
A huge part of this thread has been an exchange between a few people to which I have barely paid any attention. For a while I skimmed that exchange, and more recently that skim has turned into a blur. I got the sense though that part of it involved someone advocating breathing from a BCD during an emergency ascent. I am bewildered by this.
Emergency ascents as we know them in scuba instruction really didn't start being formally taught until the 1970s. I was not diving then, but a couple of years ago I did a search in Rubicon and found the published articles from that era in which people talked about different ways to both do it and teach it. Read them all and you will see the evolution of modern emergency ascent teaching.
Modern teaching does not include breathing from the BCD during an emergency ascent. In fact, no one in authority has ever really even suggested it. The primary reason is that there is no point in doing so. The standard emergency ascent procedures--whether CESA or buoyant ascent (minor variations of the same procedure) do the job nicely with no need for additional air.
The more radical of the two, the buoyant ascent, was thoroughly tested by both the British and US navies in the 1950s as a means of escaping from submarines. The British navy tested buoyant ascents from over 300 feet, which is significantly deeper than recreational diving limits. You can use Google to find training films from that era (and in present training situations) in which people go from depth to the surface in a shower of bubbles as they exhale all the way.
As someone who has watched these never-ending debates on ScubaBoard, I know that for some reason the majority of divers don't seem to believe they will have enough air in their lungs to reach the surface. The truth is (as the videos clearly show) you have too much air, which is why you need to exhale. But what if I run out of air just after I have exhaled? Well, the videos show that, too, because they are taught to exhale fully before starting the ascent. After you exhale, there is still too much air in your lungs for the full ascent.
So, even if you believe in inhaling from your BCD during an emergency ascent, it isn't going to happen in real life, because you cannot inhale from a BCD while expanding air is pouring out of your mouth.
Emergency ascents as we know them in scuba instruction really didn't start being formally taught until the 1970s. I was not diving then, but a couple of years ago I did a search in Rubicon and found the published articles from that era in which people talked about different ways to both do it and teach it. Read them all and you will see the evolution of modern emergency ascent teaching.
Modern teaching does not include breathing from the BCD during an emergency ascent. In fact, no one in authority has ever really even suggested it. The primary reason is that there is no point in doing so. The standard emergency ascent procedures--whether CESA or buoyant ascent (minor variations of the same procedure) do the job nicely with no need for additional air.
The more radical of the two, the buoyant ascent, was thoroughly tested by both the British and US navies in the 1950s as a means of escaping from submarines. The British navy tested buoyant ascents from over 300 feet, which is significantly deeper than recreational diving limits. You can use Google to find training films from that era (and in present training situations) in which people go from depth to the surface in a shower of bubbles as they exhale all the way.
As someone who has watched these never-ending debates on ScubaBoard, I know that for some reason the majority of divers don't seem to believe they will have enough air in their lungs to reach the surface. The truth is (as the videos clearly show) you have too much air, which is why you need to exhale. But what if I run out of air just after I have exhaled? Well, the videos show that, too, because they are taught to exhale fully before starting the ascent. After you exhale, there is still too much air in your lungs for the full ascent.
So, even if you believe in inhaling from your BCD during an emergency ascent, it isn't going to happen in real life, because you cannot inhale from a BCD while expanding air is pouring out of your mouth.
That is simply not true. That limit has no relation to emergency ascent, and there is no truth to the belief you will be running out of air during that emergency ascent.
I cannot show you a link to something that does not exist. If you wish to support your belief, you will have to provide a link to an authoritative statement that says it is true.
You seem to miss the point that you are not supposed to hold your breath while ascending. The amount of time it takes to get to the surface and the amount of air needed has nothing to do with how long you can hold your breath, because you are not holding your breath. You are exhaling the entire way.
Completely agree and you're totally correct -- good previous post BTW.
I've never done a CESA and have no intention of trying either. It's an absolute last-option when all other options are not available.
That said, knowing that an ascent from depth as your lungs fill -- I would think that -- your body would still be forcing you to breathe in even if you're constantly breathing out (CO2 build up, stress, etc.)
Wonder what the people who've done this say about the need to breathe?
Not saying hold your breath during the ascent, I mean the urge to breathe -- in most people -- is very strong and an ascent from "deep" would take some time
Can't be done. If you understand the physics of breathing, you will see that you cannot inhale while you are exhaling, even if you want to.
During a normal ascent, you are able to inhale because your lungs are not overflowing with excess air. If your lungs are overflowing with excess air, you simply cannot inhale.
But what if you slowed your ascent to the point that your lungs were no longer overflowing with excess air and so were able to inhale? If you are lollygagging to that extent on your OOA emergency ascent, you have a far better source for air than your BCD. Simply inhale from your regulator. Your tank was not out of air at depth--it just thought it was because there was not enough pressure in it relative to the ambient pressure at depth for the regulator to deliver that air. There has to be more pressure in the tank than ambient pressure for you to get air. When you ascend and ambient pressure decreases, you will be able to get air from the regulator again.
I wanted to make this point separately.
Aside from the fact that you can't inhale while you are exhaling, no matter how much you may want to, that powerful urge to breathe is not the result of a failure to inhale, it is because of a failure to exhale properly. When you do not exhale sufficiently, CO2 builds up, and that is what creates that urgent need to breathe. When you do an emergency ascent, you are exhaling all the way, which decreases that urge to breathe because CO2 is being eliminated.
Similar threads
