Where did the 135 foot / 40 meter recreational max depth limit come from?

[Scared Silly]

As many are having fun answering quarantine questions (thank Pedro for the entertainment) I thought I would toss one out:

Where did the 135 foot / 40 meter recreational max depth limit come from?

No multiple choice answers, but a good old fashioned essay answer.

I shall now socially distance while folks answer.

 

[rjack321]

Because in the US Navy air tables this was the max depth you could achieve with no deco (5mins BT)

 

[Panther1880]

Because back in the day there was this social media influencer pirate scuba diving instructor with 1 hand and only 4 fingers left on it.

 

[Panther1880]

Sorry... I couldn't control my wild imagination...

 

[Sam Miller III]

Where did the 135 foot / 40 meter recreational max depth limit come from?

 

[jadairiii]

Not the main reason, but according to Dr. David Doolette, the USN tables were only tested to 150', everything below that was just extrapolated. So that had to play a roll in NDL's and recreational diving.

 

[Wookie]

NAUI and LA county and YMCA (the frontrunner certification agencies) adopted Navy no stop air tables as the defacto recreational diving decompression schedules.

 

[rhwestfall]

aren't there 72 reasons?

 

[rhwestfall]

the proper answer would be from the NAVY dive tables which were adopted for recreational diving.

but alas, the no-deco time (NAVY Tables) at 130' was considered the minimum allowable to actually get any work done...

 

[CT-Rich]

aren't there 72 reasons?

You are just not patient enough. Give them another five minutes and they will be arguing over the middle name of the dog that ate out of the dumpster at the LA YMCA and the influence it had on the process of Laminating dive tables which resulted in the adoption of the color scheme that was adopted by the printer of the first edition of the Science of Scuba diving and resulted in a font choice that limited the number of columns that ended up in only being able to go to 130’ on a page. Hence the 130’ limit.