When is it okay to exceeding training limits?

[bl6394]

Your PADI wreck course included wreck penetration using line for when daylight was not visible?!

Not if it was completed according to standards... From the Wreck Specialty Instructor Manual:

Depths
18 metres/60 feet recommended without Deep Diver certification
30 metres/100 feet limit for Dive 1 (Wreck Adventure Dive)
40 metres/130 feet from the surface (vertical and horizontal distance
included) and within the light zone for penetration dives.

 

[mk706]

Your PADI wreck course included wreck penetration using line for when daylight was not visible?!

Redshift, if your question is directed to me recommend rereading my post. I made no such statement.

This is where I typically make a snarky comment. Instead I'll add that in overhead environments divers must dive within their limits. Divers who have taken a basic wreck or cavern course they know to have three sources of light, one of which is daylight. That also means no night penetration unless cave or advanced wreck certified.


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[drbill]

Back in the 60s when I got certified our depth limit was 130 ft. However, our training back then far exceeded what is done in today's OW/AOW series in most agencies and even included rescue training. While suggested or required limits at various certification levels are advisable, I think it also depends on the level of experience you have. I've known divers who have dived on a simple OW cert for decades and been fine at any reasonable depth and those who have done OW-AOW-Rescue and needed further training even for a fairly shallow dive.

 

[mk706]

For clarity on total distance to the surface:
- PADI wreck book says 130'
- PSAI cavern book says 200'


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---------- Post added February 8th, 2015 at 10:16 AM ----------

Dr Bill, believe that's part of the reason why ~90% of newly certified divers drop out of the sport after certification or shortly thereafter.

There is an expectation of immediate skill mastery without commitment, or consequence.


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[tursiops]

I'm not a PADI instructor, but did take a PADI wreck course. Seem to recall a couple basic rules:
- no more than 200' linear feet from the surface at any point
- if you cannot see daylight in front and behind, run a continuous guideline to daylight

Overhead implies the absence of a direct avenue to the surface. A diver must use common sense, diving through a swim through where you can clearly see, and have access to multiple egress points is not the same as entering a wreck or cave where there is no access to the surface for hundreds or thousands of feet.

Example, diving the Spiegel Grove. Clearly a diver makes widely different plans when diving the swim-throughs aft to fore at ~70' where the interior is wide, clear of entanglement hazards and has cut outs to the exterior every 50', than diving the aft main machinery room at 130', where it hasn't been cleaned out, is full of silt and no cut outs.

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I hope you are recalling incorrectly. The Wreck standards allow 130 ft combined depth and penetration distance, not 200 ft. So NO penetration at 130 ft depth. And penetration is ONLY on dive 4 of the specialty. And if you can't see daylight, you are in too far...Wreck Specialty penetration is only within the light zone.

This is an unfortunately rather good example of what goes wrong: limits are either ignored, mistated, misheard, or forgotten, and then the tragedies happen.

 

[Hawkwood]

...

This is an unfortunately rather good example of what goes wrong: limits are either ignored, mistated, misheard, or forgotten, and then .....

Add: "and then propagated by all as fact".

 

[mk706]

Apparently you didn't see my subsequent post with distances.


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[immersions]

First of all, as a new diver you are asking the right questions. 60 feet is only a recommended limit. It is taught that to exceed those limits one should enroll in a deep diver or advanced course. But as you stated in your post, you dove with a diving professional with much experience to lead the dive. That is acceptable. If you were diving in like conditions with another diver with the same experience as yourself, then in that case you should seek the service of a divemaster to lead the dive. As a new diver its sometimes hard to keep track of all the limitations of diving deeper, like air consumption, bottom time limits and your bearings to get back to your boat or beach entry point. This only comes with advanced specialty training and or experience diving with others that have more experience than you. So keep asking questions, plan your dives based on your personal experience and stay within those limitations. As an instructor myself, I do recommend advanced training, not only because it introduces you to deep diving, but other specialty areas as well that may interest you. Also the added benefit with advanced training is reducing one's anxiety about the dive to be made. Hope this helps.

 

[scubadada]

Years ago there was a prolific poster on ScubaBoard who told of the graduation exercise for an advanced program he had taken--a CESA from 100 feet. I have personally talked to people who have done emergency CESAs from 75 feet and from 100 feet and gotten a full description of the experience from them. Yes, it can be done, and it has been done. Here are some factors to consider.

1. If I were in that situation, I would probably ascend at greater than 60 FPM the whole way. I am not worried about a mild case of DCS. I want to get to the surface. It would take me less than 2 minutes.
2. Once you are ascending and the air in the air in the lungs expands, it starts coming out pretty clearly. It is not like the experience with a horizontal CESA in the pool. The people I talked to said that once it started coming out, it would have been hard to stop.
3. Because of the expanding air, you can exhale all the way to the surface much longer than you can hold your breath.
4. The main reason you can't hold your breath longer is mental. You don't need any more oxygen to hold your breath longer. It's the buildup of CO2 that gives you the panicky urge to breathe. You can get over that. Not only that, the constant exhaling is releasing CO2, so you won't get as much of an urge to breathe as you normally would when holding your breath that long.
5. Yes, as you ascend and the ambient pressure gets lower, you will be able to get air from your tank, and more than you might expect. I tell my students that in a deep OOA situation, your tank is not OOA--it just thinks it is.

If you are in that situation, the worst thing you can do is think you can't make it to the surface with a CESA, because having that bad notion may cause you to hold your breath.

1) I can't imagine how this would happen. When by myself, I have my pony to cover catastrophic loss
2) If this were to happen, I would get to the surface as quickly as possible, with my regulator in my mouth, looking for another breath
3) When I successfully gained the surface, I would go on O2...