Decompression diving

[h90]

I enjoy the entire process of deco diving.

I enjoy the gear. There is more of it, more to maintain, to tinker with, to check and adjust and set up (or as my wife says, to play with ).

I enjoy the planning. Choosing dive location, depth and time and gasses and working through the profile.

I enjoy the gas mixing. We partial pressure blend our trimix and deco gasses. I enjoy going to the gas supplier and picking up gasses (although my buddy does that most of the time). I like hanging around the garage with my buddy mixing (although since he has gone ccr he has become a bit irritating in this area ). I like taking the bottles over to the LDS for air tops, doing the tops and shooting the breeze with the staff.

I like executing the dive. It's fun dealing with multiple bottles, maybe a scooter. I enjoy the precision of decompression diving - it's planned, not random, and I enjoy the intentional-ness of a tightly executed dive plan. I like doing the switches, which keeps me occupied so I'm never bored during deco - except at the 20' stop, and even there I am sometimes the most relaxed I ever am, just kind of meditating and reflecting on the dive.

I like the training. I like practicing for emergences and we do so on almost every dive. I'm not a thrill seeker, but I even like it when something unplanned happens and I am tested both psychologically and skill-wise, and my training pays off. Do enough deco dives and things will eventually go south. It's rewarding when (through your training) you can calmly and successfully deal with it. Deco diving is challenging, and I enjoy the challenge. I love enlarging my skills, and there always seems to be an endless pool of knowledge and skills ahead of me.

I like the people that deco dive. The personalities of people who enjoy decompression diving are fun to be around. They are usually more intense people, more head-strong, more self assured, both more serious (about training and skills) and more humorous (about everything else). These people are frank and don't beat around the bush. I like being around these divers for the planning, the preparation, the mixing, the drive to the site, the dive itself and the post-dive food/coffee/discussion. They stretch me as a diver and as a person, and I always learn something from hanging with these people.

I like it that the crowds don't go where deco divers can go. Even on a charter. Doing the Yukon once on a boat full of divers, I was the first diver in and the last one out, and never saw another sole during the dive. You stay longer or go deeper than the masses, and it's both exciting and peaceful. You see things everyone else can't.

I still enjoy bopping around on an easy shallow dive. But for me, technical diving has all that is offered to the non-deco diver, plus all the additional things I listed above.

And not forget the old one, who take the big air tank and dive 50-60 meter and make the deco. These who are doing it the last 30 years and just don't know that PADI teaches that you can't do it on air.......

 

[battles2a5]

I enjoy the gas mixing. We partial pressure blend our trimix and deco gasses. I enjoy going to the gas supplier and picking up gasses (although my buddy does that most of the time). I like hanging around the garage with my buddy mixing (although since he has gone ccr he has become a bit irritating in this area ). I like taking the bottles over to the LDS for air tops, doing the tops and shooting the breeze with the staff.

Too bad you live so far away. I would be happy to let you "enjoy" doing all my fills for me

 

[Blackwood]

1. There's nothing as satisfying as peeing in a borrowed wetsuit...

That there is signature worthy material if I've ever seen it.


BTW, if you ever make the trek here, I'm cutting the groin out of my wetsuit before you dive it

 

[Rick Inman]

Too bad you live so far away. I would be happy to let you "enjoy" doing all my fills for me

Just stack your bottles in front of your garage. I'll be right over...

 

[TSandM]

I think a lot of people who get into staged decompression diving do it because they are interested in shipwrecks, and many of those lie deep enough that you either don't get much time on them within "no deco" limits, or they're simply beyond those limits.

I have found that, for the most part, the highest density of sea life tends to be in shallower water. But there are sites with specific creatures that you won't see shallow, and sites in deeper water where current or other conditions lead to a very high density of life. And, of course, those sites are not as heavily dived as the shallower sites, because of the logistics involved in doing them.

I have enjoyed learning what I have about decompression theory, and my diving is certainly better for the in-water training I've had so far (and am continuing to get), but sitting for ten minutes in 42 degree, green, featureless water, staring at the upline and my equally bored, cold buddy, was something short of thrilling. I'd much prefer to staged decompression in a site where you could deco up a wall, and at least have something to look at during your stops!

 

[NorthWoodsDiver]

Where I live having the skills and equipment to do proper decompression procedures means seeing things most people never see and doing exploration. I'm surrounded by flooded mining pits (iron ore) which have depths that range from rather shallow to over 400 feet deep. most of these places have only been dove to recreational limits +/- and that means looking at shear rock walls usually cause the stuff is at the bottom. Lake superior is pretty close and offers some spectacular shipwrecks that are very deep too.

The cold portion is what limits my dives now, it sucks for sure even using a drysuit w/ p-valve and thick undergarments. Diving in warmer water would be nice but I dont live around warm water so I'm stuck dealing with the cold.

Something else I enjoy is cave diving, often times you can dive long distances into caves at shallow depths breathing EANX and still accumulate decompression obligations, though it depends on the cave.

Just like Rick said, decompression diving brings with it a different group of people who are of a similar nature. The best part of decompression dives is the work that goes into them and the friends you make. These are not simply people you meet on a boat and jump in the water with and then part ways afterward.

There is little I enjoy more than spending a couple days planning a dive and mixing gas and cutting tables and tweaking gear just for 20 minutes at 200 feet in 36 degree water.

its not for everyone. If your interested there are many books on the subject, I just started reading "deco for divers" which may be of interest to you as well as taking a basic nitrox course (its cheap and opens some new doors for you). Its a long and expensive process, I have spent nearly 2 years trying to learn everything I can on the subject and dive as much as possible.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I like playing with all the toys ...

Honestly, I got into tech diving to see some of the deep wrecks we have around here. The Lake Washington wrecks generally lie between 140 and 200 ffw. Many in Puget Sound are considerably deeper than that. And as Peter showed above, lots of deep walls in and around Vancouver Island have cloud sponges and cold-water corals that only grow deep.

I recently purchased a whole new camera setup specifically because I want to start taking pictures deeper than recreational depths (of course, I now have to learn how to use it properly).

Mainly my motivation for taking up decompression diving was to keep something new and fresh in my diving ... I dive a lot, and repetition gets a little stale after a while ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[String]

but what are the attractions for people diving beneath 140ft, other than particular things like wrecks

For me its the wrecks. Shallower wrecks are battered and flattened by storm and wave action. The deeper you go the more intact the wrecks.

And my whole reason for diving is to see wrecks - fish bore me.

 

[tgsmith]

You'll never see a battleship at 60 feet......and if you find one it won't be much.....

 

[Stoo]

I enjoy the entire process of deco diving.

Rick has expressed my thoughts beautifully. I dive alone most of the time, which adds to the pleasure. Having the discipline to plan and execute a multi-stage decompression dive and then having it work properly is very satisfying. The stops themselves are a little dull admittedly, but that's the price you pay to dive a little deeper and stay a little longer...