Today was my 6th open water dive. Five divers following DM. MY friend goes thru air much faster than I do so DM took her back to the line so she could ascend. We stayed down a bit longer looking at turtles.
DM was leading thru a narrow passage, I was not comfortable with this, so I attempted to follow 10' above. Thought I was hovering just about them when I realized I had gently surfaced! I am concerned because I didn't do the safety stop at 15'. I was breathing the entire way up.
This was the last dive of the day. I stayed in the water for 5 minutes before climbing onto the boat platform. Should I be concerned about the lack of stopping for 3 minutes at 15'?
It's been 5 hours since & I feel fine.
Thank you for your help!
The amount of exposure (or put a different way, amount of inert gas that dissolves in your tissues) you have usually is a function of depth and time. Meaning, the more of one or the other or both, the more exposure. That's why when you look at dive tables, you get less NDL time the deeper you go (or more the shallower you go). The amount of inert gas in your breathing mix also plays a big role. I suspect you were breathing air which is comprised of 79% nitrogen. Others use breathing gases with reduced nitrogen. For example, I use Ean32 quite a bit. This breathing gas has 68% nitrogen. Less inert gas means less inert gas loading for the same dive as compared with air.
Anyway, if you spent the bulk of your time shallow and you were there for a short amount of time only, you have very minimal exposure. If you spent the bulk of your time deep and you spent a lot of time there, you have comparatively more exposure. Your dive tables give you an idea of where the boundaries are in terms of depth and time at that depth before your exposure gets beyond the scope of recreational diving. Or put another way, your dive tables give you an idea of when your optional safety stop is becoming more like a mandatory deco stop.
In my open water certification training, I was taught that all recreational dives by definition do not have mandatory decompression stops. It is recommended that divers perform safety stops but that safety stops are optional. What is expected is that the ascent to the surface is performed in slow and deliberate way. Slow being 30ft (or less) per minute.
You did not share much in terms of details of the dive profile. For example, you mentioned 53ft but you did not mention how long you were there for. You also mentioned that you tried to follow the DM at 10ft but wound up at the surface inadvertently. What depth were you at for the 5 minutes prior to surfacing?
Based on what little detail I can see, I would guess that the amount of exposure on this dive was incredibly minimal. I would even go as far as to say that if you got bent from this dive, I would suspect other causes than missing an optional safety stop.
---------- Post Merged at 02:33 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 02:27 PM ----------
Dive computers are conservative- some are more aggressive than others. If you own a more 'aggressive' computer, again safety stops become a bit more important.
Is that true? Every time I talk to the dive shop about computers, they always tell me that computers give you more bottom time. I think what is implied in that statement is that computers don't have the "round up" approach that divers are taught to use when using dive tables. It seems to me that computers are less conservative than a diver who plans their dive using dive tables.
A missed safety stop can be 'fixed'. You can descend immediately (air supply and conditions permitting) and complete your safety stop. Bubble formation tends to occur around 15mins after surfacing.
Why does a missed safety stop need to be fixed?
---------- Post Merged at 02:36 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 02:27 PM ----------
Many cave divers advocate what they call a surface stop, a period of calm inactivity on the surface after the ascent. In my training, we did it for 10 minutes after each dive, not 1. We were sitting on steps leading into the water.
And if this a necessary part of one's decompression strategy (waiting 10 minutes at the surface before undergoing strenuous activity), then you are hosed as an ocean boat diver.
