nereas
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Some divers dive with no ditchable weight, while others have a certain minimum of ditchable weight, and yet others have all their weight ditchable.
All divers have specific reasons for why they do what they do. All these reasons involve personal choices and result in trade-offs with pros-and-cons.
Those diving with no ditchable weight are normally wearing drysuits, and their argument is the suit is their back-up for a wing failure. Since they have no compression issues as with thick wetsuits, they can set their weighting to be neutral at the end of their dives, and use their wing or suit to establish neutral or positive buoyancy at the beginning of their dives when the air in their tank(s) is(are) heaviest. They are betting that they will never experience a double failure of both wing and suit.
Those diving with a certain minimum of ditchable weight normally want to be able to establish neutral buoyancy even at the beginning of their dives without relying on their wing or drysuit as an inflation device. These divers do not gamble unnecessarily. This is what I do, and therefore I am biased in favour of this method.
Those diving with all their weight ditchable are normally wearers of thick wetsuits, even double layered, and so they would need to ditch lots of weight if really deep to establish neutral buoyancy in an emergency (which then unfortunately turns into positive uncontrollable buoyancy on the way up). Or they may be beginners who want to be able to perform a buoyant emergency ascent, if needed, or else that is how they were taught, or else their B/C cannot accomodate any trim weighting of any kind, and they have not yet "graduated" to an integrated B/C or to a BPW. These are divers who "want a boost" up to the surface in the event they ever need to drop their weight belts. They are betting that the "boost" won't give them DCS, and hoping they will remember to exhale continuously rather than trigger DCI embolism on the way up.
Whether you need a 20 lbs wing, or 30 lbs wing, or 40 lbs wing, or 50 lbs tech wing, is a separate issue.
All divers have specific reasons for why they do what they do. All these reasons involve personal choices and result in trade-offs with pros-and-cons.
Those diving with no ditchable weight are normally wearing drysuits, and their argument is the suit is their back-up for a wing failure. Since they have no compression issues as with thick wetsuits, they can set their weighting to be neutral at the end of their dives, and use their wing or suit to establish neutral or positive buoyancy at the beginning of their dives when the air in their tank(s) is(are) heaviest. They are betting that they will never experience a double failure of both wing and suit.
Those diving with a certain minimum of ditchable weight normally want to be able to establish neutral buoyancy even at the beginning of their dives without relying on their wing or drysuit as an inflation device. These divers do not gamble unnecessarily. This is what I do, and therefore I am biased in favour of this method.
Those diving with all their weight ditchable are normally wearers of thick wetsuits, even double layered, and so they would need to ditch lots of weight if really deep to establish neutral buoyancy in an emergency (which then unfortunately turns into positive uncontrollable buoyancy on the way up). Or they may be beginners who want to be able to perform a buoyant emergency ascent, if needed, or else that is how they were taught, or else their B/C cannot accomodate any trim weighting of any kind, and they have not yet "graduated" to an integrated B/C or to a BPW. These are divers who "want a boost" up to the surface in the event they ever need to drop their weight belts. They are betting that the "boost" won't give them DCS, and hoping they will remember to exhale continuously rather than trigger DCI embolism on the way up.
Whether you need a 20 lbs wing, or 30 lbs wing, or 40 lbs wing, or 50 lbs tech wing, is a separate issue.
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