Diving to 200' and Beyond

[FiddlerOnTheRoof]

Even if she is only doing a bounce dive, it's in my opinion a very high risk dive. Should something go wrong she could quickly go into major deco times with not enough gas to do it. I would never do it, but then again My dive buddies say I am over conservative. I have a family who needs me to come home!

 

[Stoo]

Should something go wrong she could quickly go into major deco times with not enough gas to do it. I would never do it, but then again My dive buddies say I am over conservative. I have a family who needs me to come home!

Isn't this the case with most dives that are beyond the typical recreational dive to some extent? I think of a typical weekend in Tobermory.

I popular first dive in the Forest City which runs from about 70' to the bottom in 155'. Many divers will stop around 130 and look down at the stern, but most will head down to the stern rail which is about 145'. A few will head right to the bottom. These folks are likely wearing doubles etc.

However, many of these people are wearing single 80s and because they are limiting their depth to 130', they consider a rec dive. They have not considered the effects of 38° water at depth. Reg freezeups are not uncommon even in the summer, let alone in the spring.

For many years, I have maintained that only through "Good luck and the grace of God" do these folks make it back to the surface intact...

 

[Storker]

They have not considered the effects of 38° water at depth. Reg freezeups are not uncommon even in the summer, let alone in the spring.

Do you guys dive that kind of temps with unsealed 1st stages?

On this side of the pond, sealed 1sts are the norm these days. Around here, I think it'd be pretty difficult to find an unsealed 1st unless you buy some old crap off our version of Craigslist.

 

[Kevrumbo]

My husband & I are on a 2 wk shore diving vacation in Curacao. We have met (and dived) with a solo diver here from France who has been solo shore diving for over 45 yrs (her entire diving career), by her own report. She owns one of the rental units where we are staying and dives solo here (& in the Mediterranean where she also lives on the sea) apparently 5 or 6 days out of 7, with a single 83 cu tank & a back-up pony bottle to depths of 200' or more, one dive each day. My husband & I talked with her (and others here who know her) before diving with her. She reports diving 250' to 270' or so - "many many times" - using trimix & a back-up pony bottle (she called our 100' Nitrox limit a "baby dive"). She says she dives for an hour & then has a 30 min safety interval along the way back. People that have dived with her, generally have stopped their dive at 130' to 150' or so (admitting that if you dive with her, you are really going to solo dive part of your dive as well). She then continues down on her own, as prearranged before the dive. (My husband & I dive Nitrox, so we stopped at 102' & she continued down on her own). When I asked about her being nervous diving to such depths on her own, she replied that during her training in France "many many years ago", students only had belts & regulators; during each student's training their regulators were shut off at 80' and they all had to safely surface in one breath; she has her pony bottle as her back-up, in case of trouble; she has excellent breath control ("not like divers, today" she told me); and "I am very, very careful" she emphatically claimed. My husband & I finished our dive, took our planned safety stops, cleaned off our gear, and she surfaced about 20 mins later. When she got back to the rinse station following her dive, she quizzed my husband & I on the length & depths of our safety stops (which WERE beyond the normal recommended stops), telling us, "you can never be too careful".

Admittedly, my husband & I have only been diving since 2008, but I have never met anyone like her before - only read/heard of them in documentaries. I have to ask - would this intrepid & fascinating woman be considered a "normal" advanced diver in certain parts of the world (other than in women pearl & sponge diving communities)? I would guess her to be somewhere around 68-70 yrs old. She said to me, "diving is my life".

As long as she doesn't have any equipment malfunctions, accrue any major decompression time, or experience physical exertion Hypercapnia at depth, then she's fine in the warm benign open water tropical conditions that she's used to.

Kudos to her and for a long life literally enjoying the "Rapture of the Deep". . . !

But understand that this Lady is a Solo Diver with an experienced set routine for these type of dives. Obviously, that doesn't include contingencies for helping other divers in distress or with emergent conditions at 60 meters and deeper --or any other depth above going to the surface for that matter either.

She is like a "Siren" --worthy of admiration & respect but dangerous nevertheless. Watch as she descends on her adventure but don't follow --for her sake as well as yours. . .

 

[Stoo]

Oops...

 

[Stoo]

Do you guys dive that kind of temps with unsealed 1st stages?

Not amongst my buddies, but Tobermory gets lots of "destination" tourist types that normally dive in quarries in the mid-west. Shops make an attempt to weed out the unprepared, but it isn't easy when many of the boats are club/shop charters...

I should add that all of my regs are Apeks DS4s /XTX 40 0r 50s... Never had so much of a fart of out them... and I have tried to freeze one up intentionally.

 

[Colliam7]

I should add that all of my regs are Apeks DS4s /XTX 40 0r 50s... Never had so much of a fart of out them... and I have tried to freeze one up intentionally.

And, DS4s should handle it just fine. Now, if you had said you use a US4 in those conditions, I would be truly impressed.

 

[beester]

Isn't this the case with most dives that are beyond the typical recreational dive to some extent? I think of a typical weekend in Tobermory.

I popular first dive in the Forest City which runs from about 70' to the bottom in 155'. Many divers will stop around 130 and look down at the stern, but most will head down to the stern rail which is about 145'. A few will head right to the bottom. These folks are likely wearing doubles etc.

However, many of these people are wearing single 80s and because they are limiting their depth to 130', they consider a rec dive. They have not considered the effects of 38° water at depth. Reg freezeups are not uncommon even in the summer, let alone in the spring.

For many years, I have maintained that only through "Good luck and the grace of God" do these folks make it back to the surface intact...

Like someone already posted. Some people realise very well that they are taking additional risk(not diving mix or insufficient redundancy... I mean a spare air is for some also redundancy). There might be good or not so good reasons to dive like this, but in the end they made a calculated decision... right?! They dive and nothing happens right... Good dive... and the next... and the next... and the next... after a while it's no longer a risk, cutting these corners. I've done this before and it's "safe".

Then there are people who don't have the experience yet to realise the risks. Due to not sufficient training or experience or both. Fortunately diving is relative safe, equipment doesn't malfunction that often. So nothing happens on this dive... and the next... and the next... now they have experience diving a wreck in a risky manner without recognising the risks. This becomes a safe dive, because I've done it so many times it must be safe doing it in the setup I'm using with my training.

Both are basically falling for the same reasoning error. It's very human... cut corners (equipment, gas, training, experience)... everything goes right... so I'll be alright next time. While you might just have been lucky... and luck tends to run out. If something goes wrong at those depths there is not a lot of room for question marks, bad communication and "let's improvise".

I'm not pointing any finger... I've been victim of this myself... cutting corners... thinking it's alright... and it ended up with my buddy and me stuck in netting on a North Sea wreck and only barely making it out. We came up and my buddy's reaction was... well that was tricky, but we are GOOOOD divers... so that's why we made it out. While my reaction was being shaken to the core, and evaluating to quit diving or sincerely change my way of thinking about diving... which set me up to the GUE path.

I hope this lady is in the first and not the 2nd group.... and I hope she remains lucky.

 

[Lorenzoid]

She probably just stays at max depth for a couple of minutes (if that) and does a 'normal' multi-level dive. If your average depth is only around 20-25m/60'-75' she's not gonna have much deco. It's bounce diving basically. The pony is probably only for bail out.

Exactly. So I suspect that her bit about how "magnificent" and "less ruined" it is down there--at least in Curacao on these dives where she apparently has something like a total of 120 cubic feet of air--is mostly just boastful. She may have some admirable accomplishments, and she may do deep trimix dives with a safe reserve of back gas when she's home in France, but it seems to me that her Curacao bounce dives are more about risk than reward. That is, unless one considers being able to speak paternalistically to relative novices like the OP (with her "baby dives") to be rewarding. She may be an interesting lady to chat with, with much dive experience, but to me she would be no role model.

- I did ask her what she saw down there that kept her going back. She said the sponges were larger, the coral was "more magnificent", and "less ruined by pollution". She also said she saw marine animals not seen frequently in the "shallow" water (meaning anything less than 130'-150' ). Before my husband & I turned around, we looked down, & we could see the top of a wall below us (and the end of the reef we were swimming, which others told us begins at about 130-150' deep). She said the "most beautiful" part begins at the top of that wall & continues "even more so" as you drop down to over 200'. No one has mentioned that she has ever brought a camera with her. . . .

 

[Storker]

all of my regs are Apeks DS4s /XTX 40 0r 50s... Never had so much of a fart of out them...

In our neck of the woods, Apeks XTX regs seem to be pretty popular. I have the impression that Apeks regs are cheaper compared to e.g. Scubapro on this side of the pond, so that they're rather popular is no big surprise. Good performance, and the XTX 40/50 series 2nds with the DS4 1sts are pretty good value for money.

Living in an area where "winterized" reg sets are the norm, I've been a bit surprised at the issue here on SB about free-flowing 1sts in cold water. I've done my share of "cold" (3-10C) water diving, and I've yet to experience a 1st stage freeflow. 2nd stage, after surfacing, that's more or less the norm, but 1st freeflows and/or underwater freeflows? Never. IME it's basically a non-issue.