How deep have you gone on air?

[scubadada]

Some of us grew up with considerable experience with altered states. i admit, I don't mind a little narcosis.

Best, Craig

 

[Gilldiver]

Yes.


I've done several dives on air to around 200 feet. Double 80's ,2 deco tanks.
Limit the bottom time to around 15 minutes to keep the O2 under control. Only do this in perfect conditions. No overhead,good viz,warm water and no current.

The narcosis is certainly there, but it's manageable on a simple dive.

The70's, 80's and most of the 90's saw the deep wreck dives to 200-250 on air using twin 80's and a 30 or 40 pony of air. Sometime around 88 or so we started using boat supplied O2. All on Navy air tables with most dives planed for 15 to 25 minutes max due to the limited gas supply's of the tanks we had available at that time.

One buddy of mine was Gary Gentile's usual buddy for the Doria, he would hang up at 200 to 220 and shine a light on Gary down at the debris field inside at 230 to 250 so that Gary could turn and look up and see the way home.

We worked up to these dives over many dives so that when we were narked we could function at the level we needed to do the dive. Where we safe, well some of us were not and paid the ultimate price. Now that I'm 50 with kids and a mortgage my air limit is 150' with mix preferred below 130.'

By the way, I never thought I was badly narked at 180 till I started taking a camera with me and had to figure out F-Stops for a film camera down there. Getting the 3 variables of shutter speed, aperture, and distance correct takes a relatively clean head.

 

[Gilldiver]

Of course, you haven't been real deep till you have heard the WAH WAH


The Tale of the Wah Wah

 

[Slamfire]

I think it'd be more accurate to say that you were narc'd but that you had dived enough to build up a mental adaptation that allowed you to function narc'd at that depth. Humans are quite adaptable in terms of training our bodies and minds to function on autopilot ... but that adaptation doesn't change our physiology.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Maybe so. On May 8th I was diving the Hydro Atlantic in Pompano, FL. I was at about 160ft on 21/35. I saw a big Jewfish (160 lbs?) outside the wreck through an opening in the hull. As we come out of the wreck I again saw the Jewfish and several big jacks around. Then I noted a guy, not part of our team, holding a Hawaiian sling. My thoughts were, "what the hell is this guy doing so deep, surrounded by big fish, with an underpowered toothpick-tipped Hawaiian sling?" When we got back to the boat I asked my teammates about the guy. They replied, "didn't you see the dead Lionfish he had right in front of him?" I assure you I did not see the lionfish... And I was not feeling anywhere near narked -- I was only at an equivalent nitrogen depth of 75'. I've been wondering if the narrowing of mental focus on something very specific is one of those adaptations for narcosis that subconsciously just showed up when there was no need to.

Back to topic, it's 200' for me. A personal narked sign for me is the loss of dexterity and agility. I do simple tests to try to gauge how narked I am: how difficult I find it to unclip and clip the SPG, or how many tries before I actually grab a big shrimp with my hand. On that one 200' dive on air I managed to grab a small halibut (juvenile? ~1.5ft long) by the tail. I have enough presence of mind to compare work of breathing at depth of different regulators I have recently worked on. etc.

The profile below is not of my deepest dive, but of the most recent deco dive I did. Bottom gas was air and deco gas was 77%. On that dive I saw for the first time a Bocaccio Rockfish, fairly big for a rockfish and apparently they usually live at around 150' or deeper. I also saw a more common copper rockfish gulping in shrimp. Visibility that day was crap, particularly in the upper levels where it was at around 3ft. Hence I extended the 20' stop a favoring it over the 10' stop. There was also some current.

Bocaccio Rockfish

 

[mdax]

quite deep in the puget sound, however i'm older and wiser now and don't dive on air at all if i can help it. Certainly wouldn't go beyond 100 for any reason.
Now that trimix is available and bloody common where i dive i can't imagine a reason to use deep air.
"Adapting" to being narced isn't something i believe in or would want to experience in a cave.

 

[Slamfire]

Howe Sound, Puget is a little bit south of here. I haven't done much diving in Puget Sound, but in Howe Sound visibility can get affected by the Fraser River. For the last month, the Fraser has been spewing out very brown water, doubtless contributing to the crappy vis we've had lately.

I haven't done any physical overheads below 100' on air... yet

Seriously now, I probably won't ever do any physical overheads below 100' on air and I do not recommend it to anybody.

 

[windapp]

My usual norm is 300. But once we managed to go through a liter and a half over a course of 2 dives which lasted 12 hours overall. It was me and my buddy whom I did not see for 3 years. The bottom mix was 40% and we decompressed on air, right on my balcony. We definitely felt narc at some point but in general we had no issues operating the valve on the stages. We had out of mix emergency once but looking more closer we found another stage bottle in the cabinet. We did not prepare well for the dives as it was unexpected but I managed to have many stages half full so overall we had more than enough mix. The decompression lasted for the whole following day and was done on 6% mix.

 

[windapp]

28 msw but 24 degrees celcius so other than the gigantic wreck covered in coral, I couldn't distinguish the feeling from diving at 7 m.

 

[elmer fudd]

My deepest was 140' on the Lobster Shop Wall. Experienced a silt out at 130' and got a heck of a dark narc. I don't like those at all, so most of the time I keep my depths to 100' or less.

If I were diving in warmer water with better visibility then I might actually enjoy narcosis a little more, but here in Puget Sound 90% of the time it just scares the crap out of me.

 

[gryder]

186' on the San Francisco Maru - Chuuk Lagoon.
Floating calmly over live hemispherical mines in the hold... 'tink tink tink'... no, I wasn't narked at all!!