Air hog

[scubamitch]

On a recent dive I witnessed something I had never seen before in all my years of diving . About half way thru our dive, I noticed the DM offer up his backup reg. to a new diver who had just joined us on our boat ( cruise ship p/u ) I thought at 1st. He was in trouble so I swam beside both divers for 10 min .approx. the DM ( Adam, Infinity Bay Divers) checked with him for the OK , at which time both began breathing from their own tanks. The DM had unselfishly offered up his own so this diver could continue to preserve his 500psi min. prior to accending to our safety stop. Alls well that ends well.

 

[Hawkwood]

It is more common than you might imagine.

 

[KeithG]

It is more common than you might imagine.

with operations catering to "vacation divers".

was this a "group" dive where every one's dive ended when the first person was out of air?

if so, the DM wants everyone to be happy. that would not happen if the dive ended after 20 minutes. DMs are generally fairly clever when it comes to customer service and trying to maximize their tips.

 

[Patoux01]

It is common and there's no issue with it... As long as both divers know what they're doing.

You're not losing any kind of redundancy by doing that, since both divers still have air readily available. I'll do it as well with my buddy sometimes if one of us blew through his air for some reason. I prefer not doing it "in public" because it's not a proper dive procedure to me, so I wouldn't do it as a DM. It's not "unselfishly", it's because the DM knows that there may, or may not, be a tip at the end. Also a diver that can do a longer dive will tend to come more often.

Cheers

 

[TSandM]

If this is done early in the dive, so that nobody is low on gas or will be low on gas, and the diver is comfortable gas-sharing, I really don't see a huge problem with it. My husband and I typically do this early in a dive, if we have to dive the same size tanks, because our gas consumption is different. Sharing gas for a little while allows us to optimize our dive time.

With tourist divers, my worry would be that they wouldn't handle the air-share well. But given that it's done before anyone is low on gas, you can terminate the procedure if the low-on-gas diver isn't tolerating it well.

 

[dead dog]

On a recent dive I witnessed something I had never seen before in all my years of diving . About half way thru our dive, I noticed the DM offer up his backup reg. to a new diver who had just joined us on our boat ( cruise ship p/u ) I thought at 1st. He was in trouble so I swam beside both divers for 10 min .approx. the DM ( Adam, Infinity Bay Divers) checked with him for the OK , at which time both began breathing from their own tanks. The DM had unselfishly offered up his own so this diver could continue to preserve his 500psi min. prior to accending to our safety stop. Alls well that ends well.

You can thank PADI for this 500 psi check in. It used to be 300 psi awhile back, same as a reserve on a tank ( 300 psi ) now it's 500 psi. I was in a dive shop recently and overheard two PADI Dive Masters talking about it going to 700 psi. That's great if you have a 4400 psi tank. 300 psi is more then enough no need to keep raising it higher.

Bill
dead dog

 

[Hawkwood]

If this is done early in the dive, so that nobody is low on gas or will be low on gas, and the diver is comfortable gas-sharing, I really don't see a huge problem with it. My husband and I typically do this early in a dive, if we have to dive the same size tanks, because our gas consumption is different. Sharing gas for a little while allows us to optimize our dive time.

With tourist divers, my worry would be that they wouldn't handle the air-share well. But given that it's done before anyone is low on gas, you can terminate the procedure if the low-on-gas diver isn't tolerating it well.

I was was waiting for you to check in!

 

[BRT]

Self Propelled Redundant Air Supply (SPRAS)

 

[RJP]

You can thank PADI for this 500 psi check in.

If a tree falls in a forest and no one from ScubaBoard is there to hear it... is it still PADI's fault?

PS - the only ops I ever heard the 500psi thing from have been NAUI ops. Go figure.

 

[TMHeimer]

There was a thread a while back on exactly this topic. I agree will all the responses, though have never seen this happen myself yet. My wife says I've led a sheltered life.