Michael Guerrero
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What an adventure!
my deep air story
- Thread starter mala
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mala
Contributor
I think if you are air diving on a very regular basis then a ppN2 of 5 would be about the max.
The length of time at depth has as much to do with it as the depth itself.
Dunno if im a devoted trimix diver but a little sure does go a long way.
Stoo
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I have a slide someplace that I shot in '82 in the Bahamas. My friend and I are at about 190' (on air) and she is working like a beast trying... wait for it... to remove the 15mm lens from her Nikonos III camera! (For those unfamiliar with this camera, (a) there's no way she could have done that with the pressure on it and (b) if she had been successful, it would have flooded her camera...)
Best of all, post-dive, her only recollection was of "fiddling" with her camera... not trying to murder it.
And yes, that camera was rated for 160', but they worked just fine below that too
Best of all, post-dive, her only recollection was of "fiddling" with her camera... not trying to murder it.
And yes, that camera was rated for 160', but they worked just fine below that too
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After my first serious deep air adventure, I began doing these practically every weekend--mostly weather dependent....We had to find what was going on with hundreds of hot marks we had from old timer fisherman, that no one had ever dived on 
We tried to be as smart as is possible with the effectively lowered IQ's of deep dives, and our Buddy Team rules and protocols evolved every time we heard of a Clusterf*ck somewhere that had any relationship to what we were doing. Each of us really enjoyed the deep buzz....I would be jonesing for it if I had to miss a weekend....BUT....after a couple of years of this we had heard of so many deep air deaths, had done so many deep air body recovers for the coast guard or other LEO's, that we we very receptive to finding a better way.
George dissappeared from doing the techdives on reefs and wrecks for about 6 months....and then suddenly he was back---with a mindblowing new skill set --he could penetrate deep into a narrow passageway in a deep shipwreck, and hang motionless like he was suspended by wires, and work a reel or do anything he wanted---this got me into some compartments after big fish I would never have tried without this....and it got all of us trying to emulate his impossible bouyancy skills.....these had come from training weekly with Parker Turner at Wakulla, and with Sheck Exily. I addition to these skills, George was crystal sharp on these tech dives--absolute zero narc, and the precision of his diving and decisions/behavior, reflected it... He told us about the Trimix he was using, and got each of us to read the US Navy manual on it.....and the next week, each of us was diving the 280 foot Rb Johnson/Cory'n Chris on Trimix...with the 30 cu ft bottle of pure 02 for the 20 foot stop.
It was a mind blowing change...we had done this dive more times than I could count...but I saw so much I had never noticed or appreciated before. I suppose you could compare this to looking at a painting of a beautiful woman, and remarking about how beautiful she was...but not having noticed she was standing on a pyramid, inside a rain forest.....
So, all of a sudden we had to retrace our steps, to all of the hundreds of deep sites we had previously explored on air---to see what we had missed.
I can't pretend I did not miss the narc--the night out on the town every dive, from which there would be no hangover afterwards--just pure fun....The big BUT, was that there was a terrible cost, for so many divers, in that diving with this tiny piece of your functional IQ intact, was leading to too many deaths. The deep air dives were just great--until they weren't--until they killed you. They were an evil mistress, hard to break up with....
But with all the people we experienced the deaths of....the decision made itself for us....we dropped the deep air diving.
Fast forward to today.....If I am going to do a 200 foot or a 300 foot deep dive, I am going to use Trimix. If I want to do the Hole in the wall at 135 feet, or even the Hydro at 160, as long as my buddy is Bill Mee or George, I am fine using deep air and an O2 deco. I say this because we did so many dives so much deeper, and so many at this 135 to 165 foot depth, I know a great deal about how I feel and do decisions and skills at this depth...and I can justify it.....BUT...If I was bringing my wife Sandra, who is almost narced at 10 feet....( kidding), she would be my responsibility, so she would have to be on trimix, as I would because I would want to be the best buddy I could possibly be....And I think this is a big deal for a lot of new tech divers to think about...you may not know what you don't know about you on deep air yet...and do you care about your buddy enough to risk their life with this--compared to how you could enhance their safety with trimix. George, Bill and I got into this deep diving before anyone other than military or commercial guys were into trimix. Further, in the 80's and early 90's, there was no thought of a "better way" than deep air. Trimix was not even thought of as safer--it was thought of more as the more dangerous way to deep dive, because of the way the helium comes out of your blood so fast, and many of us early tech divers thought that it would be a recipee for getting catastrophically bent. And, for those that survived the first hundred or so 280 foot deep dives, the thinking was that our biochemistry was "OK" with us doing this, and our protocols were working. Same way I knew I did not have a PFO...if I had had a PFO, I would have been catastrophically bent or died--since I was never bent, this was proof I did not have a PFO.
And this is where the new tech diver is today....Do you make decisions like this PFO deal, knowing that 25% of all divers actually do have a PFO? Do you roll the dice, and if you live, you know you don't have a PFO? Do you convince yourself that other people have survived this, even enjoyed it, and so it must be worth the risk?
If I relayed even 20% of my diving stories, you would see a history of adventures in the 70's and 80's that read like an Edgar Rice Burroughs novel ( Tarzan, John Carter of Mars, etc) --- ie., dives where insane risks were taken because the adventure itself was so important, and because the protagonist believed they were practically immortal. Each adventure slowly created smarter future decisions, and better protocols. After 2 decades of this, the stupidity and absolute adventure, actually gave way to enough reflection that better decisions began occurring, such as using trimix, and most of the DIR ideology....And I had personally seen ( or done) the opposite of DIR so many times, that I was in a good place to appreciate the better way.
My point.....Deep Diving on air is fun....and stupidly dangerous for a very large percentage of divers. To find out if you can survive it, is not really the smartest course of action. Diving with a bunch of other divers that are chasing the "How deep can I go" mistress, got Sheck killed, and he was one of the strongest and best divers of all time....George blames his death directly on the peer group Sheck was diving with, that helped push him toward this adventure without regard for any chance of death. Peer groups really are a big deal to deep divers...as are buddies.
Can you dive deep air to 140 or 160? Some of you can, and will. Some can go alot deeper--until one day it is not a good day for deep air.
This is kind of like the "Riddle of Steel" in Conan. Your beliefs and your protocols are what will keep you safe, or kill you.
We tried to be as smart as is possible with the effectively lowered IQ's of deep dives, and our Buddy Team rules and protocols evolved every time we heard of a Clusterf*ck somewhere that had any relationship to what we were doing. Each of us really enjoyed the deep buzz....I would be jonesing for it if I had to miss a weekend....BUT....after a couple of years of this we had heard of so many deep air deaths, had done so many deep air body recovers for the coast guard or other LEO's, that we we very receptive to finding a better way.
George dissappeared from doing the techdives on reefs and wrecks for about 6 months....and then suddenly he was back---with a mindblowing new skill set --he could penetrate deep into a narrow passageway in a deep shipwreck, and hang motionless like he was suspended by wires, and work a reel or do anything he wanted---this got me into some compartments after big fish I would never have tried without this....and it got all of us trying to emulate his impossible bouyancy skills.....these had come from training weekly with Parker Turner at Wakulla, and with Sheck Exily. I addition to these skills, George was crystal sharp on these tech dives--absolute zero narc, and the precision of his diving and decisions/behavior, reflected it... He told us about the Trimix he was using, and got each of us to read the US Navy manual on it.....and the next week, each of us was diving the 280 foot Rb Johnson/Cory'n Chris on Trimix...with the 30 cu ft bottle of pure 02 for the 20 foot stop.
It was a mind blowing change...we had done this dive more times than I could count...but I saw so much I had never noticed or appreciated before. I suppose you could compare this to looking at a painting of a beautiful woman, and remarking about how beautiful she was...but not having noticed she was standing on a pyramid, inside a rain forest.....
So, all of a sudden we had to retrace our steps, to all of the hundreds of deep sites we had previously explored on air---to see what we had missed.
I can't pretend I did not miss the narc--the night out on the town every dive, from which there would be no hangover afterwards--just pure fun....The big BUT, was that there was a terrible cost, for so many divers, in that diving with this tiny piece of your functional IQ intact, was leading to too many deaths. The deep air dives were just great--until they weren't--until they killed you. They were an evil mistress, hard to break up with....
But with all the people we experienced the deaths of....the decision made itself for us....we dropped the deep air diving.
Fast forward to today.....If I am going to do a 200 foot or a 300 foot deep dive, I am going to use Trimix. If I want to do the Hole in the wall at 135 feet, or even the Hydro at 160, as long as my buddy is Bill Mee or George, I am fine using deep air and an O2 deco. I say this because we did so many dives so much deeper, and so many at this 135 to 165 foot depth, I know a great deal about how I feel and do decisions and skills at this depth...and I can justify it.....BUT...If I was bringing my wife Sandra, who is almost narced at 10 feet....( kidding), she would be my responsibility, so she would have to be on trimix, as I would because I would want to be the best buddy I could possibly be....And I think this is a big deal for a lot of new tech divers to think about...you may not know what you don't know about you on deep air yet...and do you care about your buddy enough to risk their life with this--compared to how you could enhance their safety with trimix. George, Bill and I got into this deep diving before anyone other than military or commercial guys were into trimix. Further, in the 80's and early 90's, there was no thought of a "better way" than deep air. Trimix was not even thought of as safer--it was thought of more as the more dangerous way to deep dive, because of the way the helium comes out of your blood so fast, and many of us early tech divers thought that it would be a recipee for getting catastrophically bent. And, for those that survived the first hundred or so 280 foot deep dives, the thinking was that our biochemistry was "OK" with us doing this, and our protocols were working. Same way I knew I did not have a PFO...if I had had a PFO, I would have been catastrophically bent or died--since I was never bent, this was proof I did not have a PFO.
And this is where the new tech diver is today....Do you make decisions like this PFO deal, knowing that 25% of all divers actually do have a PFO? Do you roll the dice, and if you live, you know you don't have a PFO? Do you convince yourself that other people have survived this, even enjoyed it, and so it must be worth the risk?
If I relayed even 20% of my diving stories, you would see a history of adventures in the 70's and 80's that read like an Edgar Rice Burroughs novel ( Tarzan, John Carter of Mars, etc) --- ie., dives where insane risks were taken because the adventure itself was so important, and because the protagonist believed they were practically immortal. Each adventure slowly created smarter future decisions, and better protocols. After 2 decades of this, the stupidity and absolute adventure, actually gave way to enough reflection that better decisions began occurring, such as using trimix, and most of the DIR ideology....And I had personally seen ( or done) the opposite of DIR so many times, that I was in a good place to appreciate the better way.
My point.....Deep Diving on air is fun....and stupidly dangerous for a very large percentage of divers. To find out if you can survive it, is not really the smartest course of action. Diving with a bunch of other divers that are chasing the "How deep can I go" mistress, got Sheck killed, and he was one of the strongest and best divers of all time....George blames his death directly on the peer group Sheck was diving with, that helped push him toward this adventure without regard for any chance of death. Peer groups really are a big deal to deep divers...as are buddies.
Can you dive deep air to 140 or 160? Some of you can, and will. Some can go alot deeper--until one day it is not a good day for deep air.
This is kind of like the "Riddle of Steel" in Conan. Your beliefs and your protocols are what will keep you safe, or kill you.
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Thanks....but... there are plenty on this board that already think I'm a dumb*ss, this would pretty much give them all the proof they would needMaybe you should share more of your stories Dan
Then again, I don't know that I care what some of my antagonists on SB think...
Thanks....but... there are plenty on this board that already think I'm a dumb*ss, this would pretty much give them all the proof they would need....
Then again, I don't know that I care what some of my antagonists on SB think......So if enough of the members on this forum would like to see some of the stories from the old days, I could oblige
Who cares what othe people think? You pushed the limits and you learned from your experiences, I'm sure that I'm not the only one that'd be interested in hearing your stories.
Thanks....but... there are plenty on this board that already think I'm a dumb*ss, this would pretty much give them all the proof they would need....
Then again, I don't know that I care what some of my antagonists on SB think......So if enough of the members on this forum would like to see some of the stories from the old days, I could oblige
+1 for me
SanDiegoSidemount
Contributor
Thanks....but... there are plenty on this board that already think I'm a dumb*ss, this would pretty much give them all the proof they would need....
Then again, I don't know that I care what some of my antagonists on SB think......So if enough of the members on this forum would like to see some of the stories from the old days, I could oblige
The fact you're still alive to tell the stories is a big mark in your favor!
Your revelations about discovering how to do things better (like your first dives on trimix) are the real "teachables" here (as if you need that excuse).
On second thought, forget the teachables, just tell us about all the crazy-ass s**t you did in the old days.
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