No weights with steel tank unsafe?

[halocline]

Personally I would not dive with no ditchable weight. Why remove one lifesaving bailout for yourself.

Because in some circumstances you would be adding risk, of losing weight at depth unintentionally and risking an uncontrolled ascent. Divers lose weight belts and quick release pockets all the time.

For recreational diving, there is almost no scenario in which you would ditch weights at depth, unless you were severely overweighted to begin with. All this talk of rescue scenarios for unconscious divers at depth is pretty silly. First, it's just not that difficult to get divers off the bottom. Try it, take a rescue class, you'll find out pretty quickly that it's much less effort than you think. Second, if you do encounter an unconscious diver at depth, probably 99% of the time you're talking about recovery not rescue.

Having ditchable weight at the surface is a legitimate topic. How necessary it is depends on lots of other issues, not the least of which is proper diver behavior, like turning your air on. In the example you cited there are lots of problems that have NOTHING to do with ditchable weights.

Of course this topic gets beaten to death and that's not such a bad thing, I suppose. Better to endlessly argue about what's safer than about some of the other favorite topics on SB.

 

[Indian Valley Scuba]

Personally I would not dive with no ditchable weight. Why remove one lifesaving bailout for yourself.

There was a case some time ago of a diver diving doubles who forgot to turn his air on. He sank and drowned and was found on the bottom. Had he dumped his weights early he may have saved himself.



Adam

Not to be insensitive, but not only did this diver fail to turn his air on, but he also failed to perform a pre-dive buddy check, a pre-dive regulator check, or put air in his BC prior to entering the water. Four mistakes already and he had not even started his dive.....at what point does this tragedy fall under "operator error"? With all those mistakes, you really think that the diver would be savvy enough or rationale enough to think "hmmmm...need to ditch weights!"? I am thinking not.

 

[dschonbrun]

Jeff, there are a few ways to offset the move from AL to Steel. If you currently use a steel BP, you can switch a Plastic one. That's about a 4 lb swing.

The SMB is a good piece of gear for any diver, and if you're in a non redundant singles rig, then it's mandatory from a Tec perspective.

 

[heavyjeffd]

Jeff, there are a few ways to offset the move from AL to Steel. If you currently use a steel BP, you can switch a Plastic one. That's about a 4 lb swing.

The SMB is a good piece of gear for any diver, and if you're in a non redundant singles rig, then it's mandatory from a Tec perspective.

My Ranger already has a plastic BP, I am kind of leaning towards a dual AL alternate rig for when I want/need more gas instead of steel to counter buoyancy issues. It may only be a few lbs difference, but a few lbs is a few lbs.

 

[elan]

Personally I would not dive with no ditchable weight. Why remove one lifesaving bailout for yourself.

There was a case some time ago of a diver diving doubles who forgot to turn his air on. He sank and drowned and was found on the bottom. Had he dumped his weights early he may have saved himself.

I doubt it would help. Depending on what doubles he had he might not have had that much weight to dump. For buoyant doubles like A80 the major weight goes into the V weight and you cannot dump it. Looks like he has done too many mistakes as it has been pointed out already.

 

[elan]

I once had a failure of my BC fortunately on entry in a shore dive. Had this happened off a boat one way to extricate is to dump weights and abort the dive. In this case my mistake was not checking the BC to make sure it holds air, but the point is: you can't count on never making mistakes.
Adam

It's a good point to have redundant buoyancy device like a dry suit or dual bladder BC. Another technique that I have found useful is just before you jump from the boat inflate your BC all the way using oral inflator and then push the inflator button and listen for your OPV valve to relieve pressure. This way you will make sure the valve is working and the your both means of inflation work to and besides after few repetitions you will know how it sounds and you will be able to detect if it's the OPV releases air of you have a hole in your BC. Very easy and quick.

 

[John_B]

I actually went to my LDS and had them explain how to vent a drysuit just in case I needed to know.

If the exhaust valve is set properly, a drysuit will mostly vent itself on ascent. Just make sure the valve is "up".

 

[Gombessa]

Personally I would not dive with no ditchable weight. Why remove one lifesaving bailout for yourself.

As others mentioned, this is oftentimes dependent on what your proper weighting is. I oftentimes dive in the tropics without ditchable weight, because I can kick up my net negative buoyancy and stay at the surface.

And you can't always count on being able to swim up against a negative buoyancy.

As Matt S said above, you absolutely can count on it, if you plan for it. That's what having a balanced rig is all about, alongside proper pre-dive checks. Any diver with some minimal effort can know exactly what their max negative buoyancy is at the beginning and the end of the dive, and how much they're able to kick up to the surface. And if you determine the amount and know you can't kick it up, it's not a cardinal sin to not do that dive (or adjust your equipment until you can kick it up).

 

[Hatul]

As others mentioned, this is oftentimes dependent on what your proper weighting is. I oftentimes dive in the tropics without ditchable weight, because I can kick up my net negative buoyancy and stay at the surface.



As Matt S said above, you absolutely can count on it, if you plan for it. That's what having a balanced rig is all about, alongside proper pre-dive checks. Any diver with some minimal effort can know exactly what their max negative buoyancy is at the beginning and the end of the dive, and how much they're able to kick up to the surface. And if you determine the amount and know you can't kick it up, it's not a cardinal sin to not do that dive (or adjust your equipment until you can kick it up).

There are many reasons why a diver may find himself unable to swim up. You can become disabled or injured, exhausted, narced, run out of air, lose fins. Just about anything can go wrong and when it does, problems tend to compound themselves.

In the case I cited earlier the diver could not swim up because he forgot to turn his air on and had no air in his BC.

Adam

 

[heavyjeffd]

It sounds like that diver, as unfortunate as his accident was, made some cardinal mistakes prior to even jumping in the water:

Didn't check regs (would've noticed air off)
Didn't check SPG/PSI on computer (would've noticed air off)
Didn't inflate BC (would've noticed air off)

Etc.

I check those three before I even put my gear ON. *shrug*

Shame what happened to him but it seems it could've been easily avoided with the most basic of pre-dive self-checks.