Question What's your safety stop depth?
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Seems like using a micrometer to measure a yard. The navy dive tables were a wag by a physicist. Not an actual measurement of anything physiological. The navy does stops at 20 and 10 ft so padi said 15. I do my stops at 20ft for 5min mostly if my watch needs me at 10ft then i do 10ft to make sure it clears.
You might be interested in the actual history of this. A link was provided for it very early in this thread.
</facetious>
A great answer with in-depth knowledge.
My dive computer starts the countdown of safety stop time at 6.0m. If my hand drops down to 6.1m then the countdown is aborted, which greatly annoys me. Doing the safety stop at 5.5m or even 5m (depending on the site) removes this nuisance. I could always ignore the computer on an NDL dive, but I do not want to reinforce risky habits as I am doing some deeper dives with mandatory decompression stops too.
This is why I do the stop at 5-5.5m. Don't know why others do it there.
You do a safety stop on top of deco stops?
It's complicated
1) No, I don't do
I only meant that I do not want to get into the bad habit of ignoring any kind of stop the computer or deco plan asks me to do.
That is the sole reason why I mentioned deco diving. I do not do "safety stops" on dives that require mandatory decompression.
2) Yes, I do it
When the mandatory decompression stops (last stop at 6m) are done, then I will use a minute or two to ascent from 6m to 3m and dwell a short while there, maybe two minutes or even more, and then I will slowly resurface, take it easy on the surface, avoid strenuous exercise after the dive and drink water.
Sometimes I have added and extra 5...10 minutes to the last stop just because diving a bit longer is great (unless there are waves) and because DCS would suck. Near freezing water is a risk factor that the deco models might not accurately account for. People also tend to forget that a dive computer only runs a model, it's not the real thing, and while the computer keeps you 99,99% safe, there is always that 0,01% chance to get bent. It's very very small but I HAVE SEEN IT HAPPEN. So, a few extra minutes in the shallows never hurt.
Three more minutes of off-gassing or three more days at the hospital - you choose. And yes, I was the guy who had to go to the hospital to deliver a phone charger to my bent friend (he was deco-cleared and he then had a middle-ear bend). Told him strictly to do extra deco in the future
You are doing a "deep stop" just afraid to say it outloud
, I understand the controversy. And I am going to continue to do my profile dependent intermediate pause regardless. Real world, dealing with a wife or a buddy, handling a camera and other tasks, shooting a dsmb, whatever, I cannot claim I am always spot on my ascent rate or that I never deviate from a perfect safety stop depth (which was the OPs question). Maybe some few have reached such perfection. A pause allows me to regroup, get wife or buddy sorted and secure my camera and launch the sausage if needed and then continue a good ascent rate to the 20 foot safety stop depth. As to evidence or data for and against, dcs avoidance is an evolving topic, we learn more all the time and even from the Zoom seminar, The Aging Diver, there is plenty of unknown yet to be discovered as to how the body performs as we age. James
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