Many of you missed the original thread, so as a result don't have a point of reference for our objections.
The person in the original thread took others to extreme depth with them on single AL80's while acting as a "guide." (His words, not mine)
Dr. Bill did the dives solo (a whole 'nuther argument) but he's not involving or endagering anyone else doing so. He also made more appropriate gas planning, including redundancy and taking into account deep stops. He is also not posting video and commentary on public boards glorifiying himself, or making it seem as if this type of diving is "ok."
I personally don't see a parallel to what Dr. Bill is doing and what was originally posted by Playa.
I've done my share of stupid dives, just as I'm sure a lot of us here has. The difference is the posting and chest thumping that makes it seem as if its routine and safe and possibly encouraging someone who doesn't know any better to follow suit.
Thanks, CaveDiver.
As I said, I do not recommend to anyone else to do some of the dives I do. I am not qualified to make such recommendations to anyone else because I do not know enough about them relative to the issues I raised. If anything, I would recommend to other divers that they do NOT do such dives. I do them for a specific reason... filming deep water habitats and species.
I think it is irresponsible for anyone, "instructor" or otherwise (unless certified as a tech instructor), to take other divers to such depths without proper training and equipment.
By the way, I dive with redundancy whether my maximum depth is 15 or 200 ft. I learned years ago that one may "plan" a dive to just 40 ft, but nature may modify your plan (in my case descending to twice that depth to film a bat ray) and then equipment failure may require the redundancy that you didn't take with you. Fortunately I was able to make a CESA from 70+ ft with "no" air in my lungs.
Given the buddy practices of many divers these days, a buddy is often not close enough to share their air in an emergency anyways.