nitrox for niihau?

[boulderjohn]

N
At any rate Niihau is pretty far from, well, everything. So my final two cents here is: although there's nothing particularly dangerous about diving there, it's also not a place where I'd be pushing MODs or NDCs in any way.

Let's face it--if you have a problem related to MOD, your proximity to medical help on the surface is not an issue. If you do somehow make it to the surface after an MOD-related issue, believe it or not, you probably won't need medical help. In the only case I know of in which a person suffered an oxygen toxicity case at depth and was successfully brought to the surface, he was perfectly fine once he got there, except for his embarrassment about having cooked up the wrong mix of O2 and not having not checked it.

NDLs are another issue altogether, in which case it makes sense to use nitrox.

People are justifiably leery of violating MODs and suffering consequences because the consequences are serious. On the other hand, the MOD's are not set on edge. Far from it. There is a pretty good sized safety cushion there, and it is not at all easy to get into trouble. In fact, I wonder how possible it is for a diver on a single AL 80 to actually have an MOD problem with any recreational EANx mix. Please don't misunderstand me. I am not inviting anyone to violate MODs with impunity. I am just saying that straying to the contingency depth, or even beyond, for a few minutes is not something to panic about.

 

[Dr. Lecter]

111' on 32% is just under 1.4, keeping in mind that 33.0fsw/atm is itself a conservative rounding. Religiously staying below 1.4 is a practice of debatable necessity, but at least it's grounded in standardized training practice.

Air at 132' is around pO2 0.8. Narcosis may cause you to stay above 132' on air, but I think the general conception of MOD has to do with pO2.