Gas Consumption Rant

[MasterFritts]

I dunno, things can go wrong in anything you do (like hitting a bird in a single engine airplane during the night at 3,000 feet). Just ask good ole Murphy. They even named a law after him. The gauge thing is just one possibility, I am sure there are others.

To me you are in an alien environment for your body. You have a life support system keeping you alive. There are a lot of variables. Better safe than sorry or worse dead.

I know when my wife's knee gets better from surgery I will be dragging her up to 15 feet with me.

 

[UnderSeaBumbleBee]

I quess I have a different take on this after having made two trips to Coz this year. The water is typically clear, 70+ viz, warm water, little surface chop, the diving is easy, you are usually in a group dive with a DM and a boat following at the surface. My buddy is my wife, she uses less air than me. When I get down to about 500 PSI I ascend by myself. She stays near the group and DM. I can still see the group below, they see me. I see the boat above, they see me. I do a safety stop then surface and the boat picks me up, no problems.

With all due respect, this is a highly unlikely situation, bordering on the "never happen".

Gauges are among our most reliable pieces of equipment, and the risk of one to being off 300-500psi at the low end of the scale is negligible, bordering on zero. I'm far more comfortable trusting my gauge than I am about most other things or people. If that weren't so, I'd replace it.

Those who aren's so sure about their gauges can test the low end readings once in a while by closing the tank valve and slowly breathing the air in the lines down to zero. The reg should start breathing harder as the gauge reads about 100psi and should deliver air until the gauge bottoms out.

What if your wife had a stroke or other medical event? How would you feel watching her struggle from 70' above with no way to help her? What if the other divers did not notice as she was not their buddy?

People can seem healthy and then have a medical event. Board member Littlejohn, just had an event, went for a couple of dives, got back on the boat and the events that ended his life a few days later began. Had he been in the water a few more minutes, those events would have started under water and he would have needed a buddy to help get him out of the water for the best chance of survival.

I am pretty healthy, go for my physical and have all the blood work an other good stuff done. About a year ago, I had a visual migraine (sp?) Never had one before or since that I know of. All of the sudden I could not see clearly and the objects that I was looking at began to wave and wiggle and the colors were not what they should have been. I was filling out a report and knew in my mind what it should look like. I became sick just trying to see. No head ache by the way while this was going on. I felt fine. Had I been under water it would have been difficult for me to see to read my gauges and get to the surface without help.

It was a very upsetting experience for me. We can all have a medical event without warning. My visual event lasted for about 10 minutes and then has never happened again. 10 minutes of that underwater would have seemed like forever and if I had been on my own in the water who knows what would have happened.

 

[ScubaSteve]

.......What you might assume is normal buddy behavior, may not be at all for the person you got paired up with.

This I believe is not a fair statement. I may be wrong (and I will admit if I am ) but I shudder to think that anybody out there diving with somebody else but would ignore a start ascent sign. What I think is even scarier....that someone would consider that acceptable because it was not discussed ahead of time....scary. So would they also ignore an OOA sign because it was not discussed. This is where I may vary from some.....it has been said....certain signals, if done clearly, should never be ignored or questioned. Calling the dive is one of them.

Unless you tell the person ahead of time you are on your own, I believe you are buddy diving and it should be treated as such. I like that you (Lynne) would end the dive with your buddy because it was call (irked or not) and would just try to find another for the second dive. That is an appropriate way of handling in my opinion.

 

[ScubaSteve]

With all due respect, this is a highly unlikely situation, bordering on the "never happen".

Gauges are among our most reliable pieces of equipment, and the risk of one to being off 300-500psi at the low end of the scale is negligible, bordering on zero.........

You might possibly want to call this statement into questioning. I will try to remember who it was and where the thread is (I am drawing a blank...hopefully someone else will recall it) but a well respected member of SB has personal experience of what exactly "acceptable tolerance" is to a computer/gauge manufacturer. This is not my personal experience however I DO have a computer, a tank checker guage and a buddy's console, all with a spread os 250psi from high to low....all different manufacturers but do you think you get to choose which one is accurate before the dive? I am personally going with the conservative one....that way I can dive again.

 

[BDSC]

I quess I have a different take on this after having made two trips to Coz this year. The water is typically clear, 70+ viz, warm water, little surface chop, the diving is easy, you are usually in a group dive with a DM and a boat following at the surface. My buddy is my wife, she uses less air than me. When I get down to about 500 PSI I ascend by myself. She stays near the group and DM. I can still see the group below, they see me. I see the boat above, they see me. I do a safety stop then surface and the boat picks me up, no problems.

Now our typical California diving with maybe 20-40 viz and it's just my buddy and I, when one wants to surface the other does also. Different conditions, different actions. This weekend we did three boat dives. My insta buddy warned me he was a heavy breather. I had my HP 130 just in case I ended up with a very light breather. With the heavy breather I never used more than half a tank. No problem, I'll gladly pass up up some dive time to make sure my buddy is safe.

My buddy and I do the very same thing when we are in Cozumel. The conditions are usually just what you have described. Toward the end of the dive we are generally in 50 ft or so of water. So if one of us decided to go up and the other is not ready, we go up and the other stays with the group. We have been diving together for years and have no problem with this approach.

In other locations where the boat is tied up, we will go in one direction and then turn the dive together. When we get back to the boat we may go up together or one of us may swim around under the boat while the other surfaces. It just all depends on the situation.

BDSC

 

[ScubaSteve]

......I can still see the group below, they see me.........

So the group below you is swimming on their back watching you? Why pay the money to be in Coz then? I can swim upside down here....

......I see the boat above, they see me.........

I call this one a bad name.....The boat can see your bubbles. Any time I have been in Coz, the water has been FAR from smooth as glass. This is what would be required for a boat to monitor your progress with a visual of your actual person. What good is this anyways? When they see your bubbles stop coming, are they going to hope you float to the surface or sink to the DM? You never mentioned launching an SMB? All of my Coz diving has been drift diving where the boat goes off a short distance and comes to the area of the SMB when the divers surface. In this, there is no way they could monitor your progress beneath the surface. I guess your dives were run differently.

I have been sent up on my own in Coz and did it, but to say that it is OK because everybody is watching you.....sounds like a big stretch to me.

 

[BEM]

BDSC - If you or your buddy go up and the other stays with the group - has someone from the group agreed (before the dive) to be the new buddy?

 

[BDSC]

BDSC - If you or your buddy go up and the other stays with the group - has someone from the group agreed (before the dive) to be the new buddy?

Nope. I guess you could say at that point we are buddyless. But depending on the circumstances, I don't have a problem with that. I have taken a number of trips to Bonaire and from time to time I will do a solo dive off the house reef. I have always felt safe and confident in doing so.

BDSC

 

[Ruminari]

Ok so after quickly reading over a fair share of the post. I was just wondering a few things.

1. How deep was the dive?

2. Was it a follow the leader (DM) type of dive?

3. How long was the dive?

 

[scubadiver888]

Ok, so there I was in Cozumel on a cattle dive drifting peacefully along looking at all the pretty fish, turtles and alike. I check my gauges as I am prone to doing from time to time and I notice that I'm nearing the pressure at which I would typically turn a dive... I like to leave a small safety margin such that if there's any oddness that happens I won't drown, typically this means being on the surface with about 500psi in an AL80.

So I signal to my Buddy that I'm low on air (the agreed upon turn signal) and he looks at me as if to say "***??" and signals that he'd prefer to give it a few more minutes. Now I'm the first to admit that I'm not the kind of guy that can breathe of an 80 all day long and still have gas for the next day of diving but give me a break, if someone calls a turn you turn and you don't give your buddy a hard time about it... maybe it's just me.

Next time I'm bringing along my own buddy.

This is why I chat up divers and find someone I know is not going to complain if we have to call the dive early. On an AL80 I usually have to surface due to nitrogen loading rather than running out of air but I'll leave everyone with the impression I'm average with air and will probably be the last guy down and the first guy up.

Another option is always stay a little more shallow than your dive buddy. I used to do this before I got better with my air. Just staying 10' above them will give you a considerable air savings.