200' on air for 5 min bottom time?

[Dr. Lecter]

Sure it does.

If you want to see whats deep, go do it. Take the right stuff with you (training too).
If you want to see whats inside a cave, go do it. Take the right stuff with you (training too).

You're making it extra dangerous by not having enough gas. Or having a high END. Or having a high ppo2.
You're making it extra dangerous by not running a line. Or having 3 lights. Or diving past thirds.

Its so consistant, the words are almost the same.

Also, you can't not be 30 once you reach 30. You CAN, however, not have a high END. See how those two aren't the same?

While you can't not be 30 once you reach 30, you CAN, however, not dive past 30. Unless you're saying you'd cease deep wreck/cave diving if He became completely unavailable, there's no real difference.

You're also making it extra dangerous by not using surface supply and a tender for each and every dive where the environment would allow it. Ditto for going inside a wreck without a CCR and a hell of a lot more markers to open water than a single guideline. Or any number of other, wildly impractical, steps one could theoretically take to enhance your margin of safety.

Also:

Ormsby, John 230' 1985

This is one of the best examples of confusing correlation with causation I've seen in awhile. Did he die deep on air? Yes. Did he die because he was narced? No; he died because he refused to listen to good topside advice he got about his rig and wound up making himself a semi-permanent addition to the Doria's wiring. If you want to claim he'd have calmly extricated himself were he at 100'END, you've read different accounts and seen different pictures than I have. One could say that at a 100'END he wouldn't have gotten wrapped up in the first place, but I don't think He can make you wiser than you were at 0' END.

 

[PfcAJ]

Helium is currently available and (for the most part) practical.
If I genuinely could not acquire helium, I wouldn't deep cave dive. I'd stick to the shallow stuff. In fact, I've done this when I couldn't afford helium before. I've also passed up dives on vacation because of no helium (I didn't work hard to get it, either). Its just not the end of the world.

I'm not advocating anyone not dive (medical conditions are a different story). I'm saying that people should choose the best tool available. Dont think for a second that I'm saying diving is risk free. That's baloney. If you can change something about the dive you want to do to make it safer, do it. You don't need a hard hat for every dive, or heliox for dives outside of a pool, a support team for a dive at Peacock Springs, or any other absurdity.

 

[DCBC]

...If I genuinely could not acquire helium, I wouldn't deep cave dive.

Your choice. Some might not be comfortable with taking what they perceive to be such a high level of risk (Cave Diving); which you seem to be comfortable with.

What have your choices and safe diving envelope have to do with others that have a different level of training, experience and susceptibility to IGN? Are Divers somehow to conform to your standard of risk? Why would you think that this should be the case?

 

[DaleC]

And of course the case breaks down even further once you look at exploratory cave diving, which in many cases, even if one attempts to mitigate all known risk, by its very nature has an very real potential for negative outcomes. At that point one has to ask why and whether the rewards out weigh the risk. For some it does, for others it doesn't. Ask Dave Shaws wife if she really really thinks it was worth it.

I'm not actually opposed to Pfc's point in a general sense, and I don't think Wayne is either. Narcosis does carry with it a very real potential for adverse effects, and those effects increase with depth. Any diver venturing into the zone where those effects can manifest should have a strategy for mitigating that risk. I know I do. The only difference is that some people see more than one way to mitigate that risk. Pfc comes from a regime that emphasizes standardization so I can see his perspective that everyone should adopt the same approach - but I also recognize not everybody shares that same philosophy.

 

[PfcAJ]

I think its interesting that as dangerous as exploratory cave diving is, there aren't that many fatalities these days from it. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that the guys who can get to the end of the line are pretty squared away and do good risk assessment/ mitigation.

 

[captain]

Question for AJ. I have dived air below 130 feet, I have jumped out of perfectly good airplanes, I have ridden motorcycles, I have raced cars, I have spent a lot of time shooting guns and being around others shooting guns, I have heart disease. Which is most likely to kill me.

 

[redacted]

Question for AJ. I have dived air below 130 feet, I have jumped out of perfectly good airplanes, I have ridden motorcycles, I have raced cars, I have spent a lot of time shooting guns and being around others shooting guns, I have heart disease. Which is most likely to kill me.

Pissing into the wind. It just is not going anywhere.

I can see why someone might insist on diving $100 worth of gas rather than $5. It is up to them whether the perceived risk reduction is worth it. But to insist that all should follow suit....

 

[DCBC]

I can see why someone might insist on diving $100 worth of gas rather than $5. It is up to them whether the perceived risk reduction is worth it. But to insist that all should follow suit....

Bullseye. I've done quite a bit of exploratory Cave Diving and deep-water saturation, so I'm the last person to throw stones at someone else for accepting whatever risk they decide to accept. I don't however promote foolhardy behavior. Diving fatalities often are a result of more than one error in a chain of decisions that start long before the Diver gets into the water. How they prepare themselves physically, training , experience, equipment maintenance, dive planning, etc., etc. When accidents happen, it's unfortunate. Personally however, I know that everyone dies, so if this occurs doing something that's important to me, there are worse ways of going. All I can do is be aware of my SDE, assess the risk and choose to either accept or reject it.

Like PfcAJ has stated "Perhaps it has to do with the fact that the guys who can get to the end of the line are pretty squared away and do good risk assessment/ mitigation," I don't believe this is only true of Cave Divers. It can be applied to any area of diving. You develop the plan, mitigate risk and make an assessment. It's your choice. You're the one that primarily pays for your decision. No Diver sitting on the sideline has the right to criticize. It's called personal rights and freedom.

 

[danvolker]

Don't know if this has been mentioned before....but there are those that LIKE Deep Air diving, for the high they get..for the narc...
When we were doing all of our deep air dives in the early to mid-90's, I actually loved the buzz I would get during the deep dives....And their were many different highs, much like saying you have coke, and pot, and LSD, and liquor, and beer.... The 140 to 160 was just a nice slightly elevated mini-buzz...it just made everything more fun, but I did not find it to be problematic for any skills or abilities, or for responsible decision making( in my own mind).

The next different drug, was the high you get at around 190 to 220....this was actually not usually as enjoyable as the drug at 140 or at 260 and deeper....You would feel this strong buzz, you could still do everything you needed to do, but on "some" days, this depth/drug would have you feeling edgy or slightly apprehensive--in contrast to the fun at 140 or awesomeness at 260 plus....

Then there was the drug of 260 to 290.....this was a rip-roaring party blast...you know you are very high, but you can still drive...you know you can--but you also know you have to really concentrate and not try any multi-tasking...this is where I know I can do three things reliably--I can check my remaining air left at intervals of every few minutes...I can check my computer for time duration every few minutes so that I will know it is time to get group together and leave at 25 minutes in--and I can hunt( look for fish and shoot)....But if I add one more task, I am likely to forget one of the initial 3 tasks, and the problem is that if the one you lose is air left, or time left, things could get messy. So while this drug feels great, you know it is like an LSD kind of a thing...where you need to be really careful to make sure you have a good trip.....the 140 foot stuff could be the one beer, or the puff off the joint, or the tiny line of coke....

So I added this perspective, just to suggest one more reason to do deep air, that many divers may include in the "multiple causation" make up of their choices on how to do a dive. I really did look forward to getting high on a deep dive at least once each weekend, and I know many of us used to talk about Jonesing for another deep dive, if it had been a while.

So maybe this is no worse than "Nightclubbing".... Most of us did that through college and survived. I did hundreds of deep air "nightclubbing dives", and I survived. At some point, I decided that driving home from a bar after alot of drinking, was not what I wanted to do any more....At a point in the mid-90's, after trying deep on helium, with no Nightclub effect, I still enjoyed the dive, and I realized I would be likely to do hundreds more of my deep dives like this, with a much greater safety factor.....and I would remember more of my Nightclubbing adventures



I can't get preachy about deep air... I liked it, when I did it. I have made a choice to use Trimix now, but who knows what I would do if someone put a HUGE ADVENTURE in front of me, and there was no trimix to be had....???? Thankfully, trimix is as easy to come by as air on Palm Beach or Lauderdale, and I don't have choices like this to agonize over

 

[Dan G]

The unfortunate nature of these deep air threads is how so many just talk past each other. One group states that diving deep air is just plain stupid. The other states that it is only stupid if done without the necessary knowledge and planning. Then the conversation devolves into defending nuance.

The main issue stems from the OP, which was not a problem of lack of specificity in his intent. It was the fact that the question had to be asked. Coop: the fact that you had to ask the question in the first place is strong evidence to suggest that you are not ready to complete this dive, regardless of the gas you use or the dive plan you create. While you stated as much in a follow up post, your question illustrates just how much divers like you and I have to learn and how much we do not always know what we do not know.