Bali Nitrox

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Mooseman1007

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Messages
134
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Location
Newcastle
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Hi Guys,
my missus and I are booked to go over to Bali in September, and have booked a week at Scuba Seraya, the question is...is it worth completing the PADI Enriched Air Course before we go? We both completed our Advanced Open Water in Egypt in March and wondered whether Nitrox would useful in the Tulamben region, or whether the diving is a little less rushed than from Dayboats etc. We will eventually do the course before we go back to Egypt next spring, but was thinking in putting off the course til then (to try cut costs on the Bali trip a little)
Anyway your thoughts would be gratefully recieved
Mooseman
 
Depends - do you usually end your dives due to low on air, time or NDLs?

There are a couple of dives in Tulamben - the wall and the USAT Liberty where you can go down to 30m, but they're both easy and fun to multi-level

If you're ending dives because you run low on air, then nitrox won't help
 
Plenty of people dive nitrox on air tables because they believe it will help. The cost/benefit calculation is merely easier when there is a tangible, measurable benefit (i.e. longer NDLs = longer bottom time).
 
What are tables??????? Nitrox can add a safety factor, which is important when you're doing multiple dives each day far from a chamber. Several dive sites off Tulamben & Seraya are deep enough to warrant the use of nitrox. It has cost me about $5/tank extra in Bali the past 2 yrs. Nitrox or not, don't push the NDL's. I usually set my computer to 2% less than the actual O2% as additional safety factor. Just remember the max allowable depth with your mix. You've been diving nitrox all along - it's just been 21%.
 
For me it has to do with how many dives I plan to do every day and how many days in a row. When I'm doing lots of dives, especially multiple days of multiple dives each, I prefer to dive on Nitrox.

I know plenty of colleagues who have been bent, and the doctors overwhelmingly recommend diving on Nitrox exclusively afterwards, even for "ordinary" dives. So even though we don't have evidence from double blind trials to support the idea that Nitrox offers some extra margin of safety, there is certainly quite a lot of informed opinion that it should.

If I were spending a week at Seraya, I'd dive Nitrox for sure.
 
Cheers guys,
I was planning to do the course over here, but have already spent a bloody fortune on the trip and its coming down to a cost issue at the min. The way I see it its going to be an extra £300 (£100 to do the course plus an Extra £3 per dive when away (6 days of min 3 dives a day) so another £50+) for both of us. I know the nitrox course will always be with me but given that I am often the limiting factor on our previous dives (rather than NDL's/time) i want sure if spending the extra £300 on this holiday would be worth it. I suppose the more dives i do per day ....whos to say we only want to do 3 a day :) enriched air would definately help to increase our safety profile
Why oh why didnt I choose a cheaper leisure activity.....
Mooseman
 
I know plenty of colleagues who have been bent...

I guess this isn't really the place to go into it, but if you know a lot of bent people, lack of nitrox probably wasn't the cause
 
I guess this isn't really the place to go into it, but if you know a lot of bent people, lack of nitrox probably wasn't the cause

You're right that it's something of a thread hijack. Nevertheless, here's my response.

If you re-read my post, you'll find that I made no claim that people I know were bent because they lacked Nitrox. In fact, I never suggested a cause of any of these bends. I merely stated that once a diver has been bent, it is often recommended by specialist (hyperbaric medicine) physicians that s/he should dive on Nitrox for future dives. As to the fact that I know a number of people who have been bent, I work in the dive industry at a place where there are hundreds upon hundreds of dive pros in a small area, and furthermore this place is on a resort island where we welcome thousands upon thousands of divers every year. It's only logical that I know a fair number of people who have been afflicted. Contrary to your implication, it doesn't really reflect on these divers' abilities but instead is only a question of statistical likelihood that with so many divers around, some proportion of them will have got bent.

My entire point was that if doctors think Nitrox is good for people who have been bent, it should logically-speaking also be good for those of us who have not suffered from a DCS event, and therefore, when I'm doing a lot of diving, I especially prefer to be on Nitrox.
 
I just dove Bali in the Seraya area, 4 dives/day. No Nitrox...wasn't a problem for me...but I'm not the type to complain if I'm getting closer to NDLs and need to ascend. Do you need it? Of course not, yet the diving is shallow enough (yes, I believe shallow depths to be safer for Nitrox) and I didn't experience any down currents. Either way, you'll get 2 camps of divers on this one, I think. All I know is that after being in down currents, oxygen toxicity scares me...but then again, I've never dove mixed gas and nor do I really have the desire...if it was up to me, I'd spend that 300 on 3 more days of diving...or just save it for your next trip.
 
Let the slight hijack continue...

If you re-read my post, you'll find that I made no claim that people I know were bent because they lacked Nitrox. In fact, I never suggested a cause of any of these bends

You implied that using nitrox may have prevented it; oir at least that's what I got from your post. Anyway, nevermind


Contrary to your implication, it doesn't really reflect on these divers' abilities but instead is only a question of statistical likelihood that with so many divers around, some proportion of them will have got bent

The fact that it's statiscally likely that some of them would have been bent doesn't mean that they didn't do something to put themselves at risk


My entire point was that if doctors think Nitrox is good for people who have been bent, it should logically-speaking also be good for those of us who have not suffered from a DCS event

My understanding was that this recommendation is based on divers who have suffered DCS being statisically more likely to suffer another one
 

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