Question What's your safety stop depth?

Which setting would you use for your safety stop, given the choice?

  • 3 m

    Votes: 3 2.6%
  • 6 m

    Votes: 57 49.6%
  • Whatever my dive buddy uses

    Votes: 1 0.9%
  • Never mind what my computer says, I'm doing it at 5 m / 15 ft.

    Votes: 42 36.5%
  • I don't do safety stops

    Votes: 12 10.4%

  • Total voters
    115

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I do not have strict rules for my self. Very benign profiles on nitrox sometimes I skip (buddy agreeing). Often I do 5m-3min. On recent trip, we had generator failure in last LoB so nitrox was out of question. 3 dives very close to NDL daily on air for consecutive days. So, I did 5m-3mins + 3m-2mins.
 
I always stop at 6m, sometimes my Shearwater is informing me that I have a 5 minute stop and not a 3 minute stop after a 30 min dive at 28ish meters, probably due to my GF settings.

I frequently do a switch to EAN50 at 21m in order to mitigate any DCS issues cos I'm getting old and it keeps me in practice for gas changes as well as swapping bottles with my regular buddy in event of an OOG scenario.

I don't mind hanging around in the blue for additional minutes, some interesting critters float by, and a very slow ascent to the surface like a meter a minute is good especially if the water is clear enough to see the boat ladder.
 
The real issue is on what dives should you do a safety stop, and on what dives can you skip it. The practice nowadays is to do a safety stop on all dives, but newer computer technology may play a role in that.

When I do an NDL dive with my Shearwater computers, I leave them in tech mode, and I have the SurfGF mode open in one of them. That tells me how close I would be in percentage to the Buhlmann limits if I were to surface right away. What a lot of people are doing these days is ignoring the standard time of a safety stop and instead ending it when they see a SurfGF they like. In theory, anything under 100 should be safe to surface. An 85 should be good, and 75 should be very safe. Some will stay until it drops to 70.

When you start thinking along those lines, you look at the safety stop in a whole new way. I was just diving for 2 weeks in Roatán, and we spent a lot of time in pretty shallow water while using nitrox. I was the only one on those dives with a SurfGF feature, and everyone else did standard safety stops every time. I stayed with them regardless of what my computer told me. On nearly every dive, my final SurfGF was below 20, and it was sometimes below 10. On one dive it never got above 19 throughout the entire dive, but, by golly, we all did a safety stop. I do not believe a safety stop was necessary on any of the dives we did.

I think this is spot on!

If recreational diving usually just hangout at 6m till surface GF is around 75-80
 
I always stop at 6m, sometimes my Shearwater is informing me that I have a 5 minute stop and not a 3 minute stop after a 30 min dive at 28ish meters, probably due to my GF settings.
It's due to your having the safety stop set at "Adaptive".
 
It's due to your having the safety stop set at "Adaptive".

@Searcaigh Here you go:

DB236123-7308-4FC3-8379-28F6DAFE1396.png
 
I always stop at 6m, sometimes my Shearwater is informing me that I have a 5 minute stop and not a 3 minute stop after a 30 min dive at 28ish meters, probably due to my GF settings.

It's due to your having the safety stop set at "Adaptive".
Based on the manual excerpt that @Divin'Papaw posted, the answer could be both. Adaptive is definitely set to on. GF settings could also factor in to when the Adaptive triggers the 5 minute stop. If using relatively conservative settings, the dive could trigger the 5 minute stop even if the depth threshold is not triggered.
 
If using relatively conservative settings, the dive could trigger the 5 minute stop even if the depth threshold is not triggered.
Yes, but it is because with a lower GF-Hi you can more easily approach NDL, and it is the approach to NDL that triggers the adaptive SS, not the GF per se.
 
When I do an NDL dive with my Shearwater computers, I leave them in tech mode, and I have the SurfGF mode open in one of them. That tells me how close I would be in percentage to the Buhlmann limits if I were to surface right away. What a lot of people are doing these days is ignoring the standard time of a safety stop and instead ending it when they see a SurfGF they like. In theory, anything under 100 should be safe to surface. An 85 should be good, and 75 should be very safe. Some will stay until it drops to 70.
The SurGF feature does provide an "on-the-fly" option to make the dive safer through additional off gassing at the safety stop or another depth. Keep in mind that the NDL calculation takes GFHi into consideration so that an ascent directly to the surface will not exceed GFHi. You can always set your GFHi to a lower value for more conservatism. GF settings have made safety stops superfluous for additional safety. In the days when tables were used or computers without GF's, the safety stop was the only way to ensure additional safety.
 
The SurGF feature does provide an "on-the-fly" option to make the dive safer through additional off gassing at the safety stop or another depth. Keep in mind that the NDL calculation takes GFHi into consideration so that an ascent directly to the surface will not exceed GFHi. You can always set your GFHi to a lower value for more conservatism. GF settings have made safety stops superfluous for additional safety. In the days when tables were used or computers without GF's, the safety stop was the only way to ensure additional safety.
Exactly! The SS was developed when tables were the norm. Computers have made the SS less relevant, except for slowing down people's ascent during especially those last few feet/meters. The SS is still needed for many divers.
 
And for dives below 80 feet I do a half maximum depth pause for 1 minute during ascent.

You are doing a "deep stop" just afraid to say it outloud :)
 

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