90 foot deep free diving between scuba diving? I am by no means an expert but everything I have heard/ read on that suggests it is definitely not a good idea to free dive in between scuba... Am I missing something or have I been misinformed?
Some dives that the other 15 divers are doing on a 90 foot bottom, particularly with a pinnacle coming up to 3 feet from the surface, I would just opt to freedive rather than scuba....so for this I am saying 'in between the many scuba dives in days....So in most cases, this is either the first dive of the day for me to freedive, or I have been having to wait an hour or more as we go to some far away 2nd dive site, or 3rd, and I will elect to freedive.....
But....I would also sometimes go against TRADITIONAL WISDOM and freedive during a normal surface interval, as I have been doing this for 40 years, and have never been bent. You need to understand that the "popular" understanding of the tables and surface interval behavior is something of an "Art"..it is not pure science--they predict what they guess will occur to a large population of people.....I already have my own "tables", based on so many thousands of dives over such a long period, and this is based on me alone. And I also have the special WKPP Tables created by George Irvine, Dr Bill Hamilton and Bill Mee, which were based around George and others with VO2 Max scores over 65ml/kg ...which I have been using since around 1997.
So..no you have not been mis-informed....your belief is the smartest course of behavior open to you. I just don't always follow the normal tables exactly, but when I deviate, I usually do have an expectation what I am doing is safe....
That being said...there are some dives you can do out on these pinnacles, with such incredible marine life on them, that there is just NO WAY that I can end the dive after only an hour of scuba----so I rip of the tank and BC, and get back to business......
I'd start out doing surface snorkeling and relaxed putzing around for 10 minutes or so--this is actually a huge area for off-gassing behavior, right on the surface, that gets practically no attention by the agencies....In fact, it is hugely important, far more so than being on the boat doing nothing. This can actually be part of the "shape" of your deco profile from the previous dive. The "Shape" of your deco is a big deal, all by itself..but that's another thread
After my doing 10 or 15 minutes of this, I may start doing drops to 20 feet...with long surface runs between...and by 45 minutes after the start, I may well do some drops to the bottom....but I am already very clean for this( of bubbling) by this time. The average diver is NOT going to know how fast they "clear" of bubbles. George Irvine and I were in Doppler studies, so I do know.
What you should know, is that if you ever pushed harder/more aggressively on a dive than you should have--
if you are thinking, wow--this was dumb, what if I get bent from this profile--why did I not come up sooner-----what you should know, is that the smartest course of action here, is that once you have finished your last safety/deco stop--the BEST thing you could do is slide out of your gear in the water ( ask someone else to pull it on the boat), and you float around in the water for the next 20 minutes or so....if you have a snorkel, all the better to float and enjoy what is under you, but without doing any drops !
