Venting from short dive time

[Goingforsound]

Hi guys,

Just venting out from todays experience. I do a lot of diving here in the philippines and its mostly affordable. I choose a new operator on malapascua island to get some more hours on the double tank rig while my girlfriend dives a single tank.

Our two dives today were tricked short by two different dive masters. They are running a deep-ish profile for most part of the dive then "run out of ndl" and force the safety stop. Our first dive was 52min and our second was 49. My gf and the other diver came up with 110/120 bars.

I feel that most of the people on the boat did not care and everybody was happy while I feel a little let down. I am used to smaller operation who adjust the dive time to the divers air consumption. In my opinion, a dive should be a minimum of 60min or 50bars. We typicaly do 75-80min.

Thanks for reading my rant.

JC

 

[happy-diver]

You're right, with the amount of dives I've done, this would amount to hundreds for free they've stolen from me

 

[rongoodman]

Most of my diving for the last few years has been on liveaboard trips, and 60 min max dive times have been pretty much universal.

 

[dlofting]

Dive time does sometimes depend on NDL. If what you're looking to see is deeper, say 30m with nothing much else between there and the surface, then your dive time will be shorter.

 

[Saboteur]

Hi guys,

Just venting out from todays experience. I do a lot of diving here in the philippines and its mostly affordable. I choose a new operator on malapascua island to get some more hours on the double tank rig while my girlfriend dives a single tank.

Our two dives today were tricked short by two different dive masters. They are running a deep-ish profile for most part of the dive then "run out of ndl" and force the safety stop. Our first dive was 52min and our second was 49. My gf and the other diver came up with 110/120 bars.

I feel that most of the people on the boat did not care and everybody was happy while I feel a little let down. I am used to smaller operation who adjust the dive time to the divers air consumption. In my opinion, a dive should be a minimum of 60min or 50bars. We typicaly do 75-80min.

Thanks for reading my rant.

JC

I agree with you. Divers should be allowed to use up their air depending on NDL and allowance for the safety stop. I just got back from Grand Cayman and the op pulled that one on us as well. Two 45 minute dives, modest depths and 1200-1500 Psi left. I asked one of the crew about it and I just got a lame excuse about it being late in the day, they’ve had a long day, need to get back.... not a great customer experience.

 

[ThatDogDontHunt]

I agree with you. Divers should be allowed to use up their air depending on NDL and allowance for the safety stop. I just got back from Grand Cayman and the op pulled that one on us as well. Two 45 minute dives, modest depths and 1200-1500 Psi left. I asked one of the crew about it and I just got a lame excuse about it being late in the day, they’ve had a long day, need to get back.... not a great customer experience.

If you are on an organized dive (boat and / or guided) then you should expect to have time limits imposed as they have a published schedule to keep.

Breathing the tank down or hitting NDL could take as little as 20 minutes or longer than 120 minutes on the same dive site depending upon profile choosen. Too much variation to use that as a schedule decider.

 

[Khrissi]

Well in a way that sucks - however- was it a good dive and did you see lots of interest?

I have had a few dives now where i ran over my usual time on aacylinder but theretwasnt much of interest k

 

[Goingforsound]

The dive was a reef 14-22m, the profile could easily be adjusted to achieve 60min with proper ndl.

I know that an operation should keep a schedule. But 49 mins? Really?

Bring me up at 60min everytime I wont complain

 

[diveUAE]

Totally agree! We were in Lembeh in August, and was told by the manager of the resort that dive times would be around 75 min - give or take....

Great! However our guide constantly said: around 60 min/50 bar. It’s fine with the deeper dives, but especially our last dive, where I found a family of GPF, that he just swam past in his hurry to get back to the surface, and he waited a bit, but then signaled to end the dive at 65 min- while I still had 90 and my husband 80 bar - on 6 m so we could easily have stayed for the full 75 or even more:-(

 

[TheCoolBeans]

If the Diveguide gives you the safetystop signal at 45mins just signal back that you’ve got a 30min deco obligation and wave them off while you do your own thing