Do you actually see people diving with pony bottles?

[uncfnp]

If I may ask, since you do mention it, what *is* your history?

Recurrent skin bends

PADI et al. should start teaching in the OW course that ponies are standard equipment, and then everyone in Cozumel will have one, and everyone will feel safer. It sounds like what PADI et al. currently teach is not safe enough.

The long primary hose still gets me weird looks now and then in various places around the world. (Some Coz DMs have them). I can only imagine what they would think about increasing numbers of visitors toting ponies.

The cynic in me says that if a pony were standard for every OW diver, we'd soon see a few divers insisting on sidemount, doubles, a rebreather or some such in Cozumel. (I have seen sidemounters there a couple of times.) One needs to appear safer than one's fellow diver, because one is not the "average" diver. We are all above average.

Lorenzoid. I don’t understand your hostility. Its not the dive location but the diver, the dive style and the diving conditions. Why does the fact that some “recreational” divers choose ponies as their redundancy seem to offend you so?

 

[Roger Hobden]

PADI et al. should start teaching in the OW course that ponies are standard equipment, and then everyone in Cozumel will have one, and everyone will feel safer. It sounds like what PADI et al. currently teach is not safe enough.

The long primary hose still gets me weird looks now and then in various places around the world. (Some Coz DMs have them). I can only imagine what they would think about increasing numbers of visitors toting ponies.

The cynic in me says that if a pony were standard for every OW diver, we'd soon see a few divers insisting on sidemount, doubles, a rebreather or some such in Cozumel. (I have seen sidemounters there a couple of times.) One needs to appear safer than one's fellow diver, because one is not the "average" diver. We are all above average.

Twenty years from now, everyone will be using ponies, and people will be saying "what were they thinking ?".

 

[MaxBottomtime]

It's a matter of how comfortable are you with security. When I began diving I used 72s with J-valves. Some of my buddies still dive without BCs. I didn't buy my first computer until I had several hundred dives. I am comfortable diving a single tank with no redundant gas and have done so for most of my 2200 dives. If I'm making a deep ndl dive I use more tanks and stage bottles. I take what I need to complete the dive. I don't take more than I need.
It's the same with what I did before diving. I used to hike to the top of mountains each weekend. I would take a day pack with food and water, map, a small first aid kit and matches. I didn't carry backups for everything. That would increase the weight of my backpack and make each hike more strenuous. I choose to dive the same way.

 

[markmud]

I find is somewhat arrogant and somewhat insulting that divers associate being an 'Air Hog' with being either a poor diver (over weighted, not trim etc) or out of shape. The amount of air required also has a great deal to do with size. I have seen divers under 5' and maybe 100 lbs soaking wet as the expression go and I have also seen divers that are close to 7' and 300 lbs. Yet everyone is expected to use an 80cf tank.

Hi ljpm,

You are absolutely correct. I normally dive with a pst 100 tank because I don't like having to breath like an athlete every second of the dive. I am 6' tall and al80s are ridicules for me.

I have large lungs, I can Hoover down an al80 in 20 minutes. I am not a petite female with small lungs.

Apologies,
M

 

[Lorenzoid]

Lorenzoid. I don’t understand your hostility. Its not the dive location but the diver, the dive style and the diving conditions. Why does the fact that some “recreational” divers choose ponies as their redundancy seem to offend you so?

Aww, let's call it cynicism, not hostility. We're all just here to share our ideas and opinions. In the end, I don't care what anyone else does, and I'm sure they don't care what I do.

Maybe I'm having a difficult time articulating exactly what it is that I see. I think I see some kind of trend. I mean, I think I see more ponies today than 10 or 20 years ago. Yet recreational diving has only, if anything, gotten safer, statistically speaking. That seems like a paradox to me. So I ask myself why?

Added thought: Or could it be that an increasing number of people are doing more aggressive diving? Is this a spillover effect from tec diving and "extreme sports" in general? I likewise think I perceive a trend toward more recreational drysuit diving today. I would bet a walk through the archives of SB would show the word "drysuit" trend upwardly over the years. I own one myself--something that I never imagined years ago.

If there really is a trend, then why do people today, doing the same kind of relatively benign rec diving that people have long been doing, feel a need for increased safety? Is it a failure in training? There is no shortage of SB threads criticizing dive training. "Insta-buddies" and all that. Yet in those same threads there are persuasive arguments that training today is better than it has ever been.

What is it then that seemingly leads more people to believe that a pony should be their standard equipment for plain ol' OW diving? The impression I get from what the major agencies teach, and from what has been discussed elsewhere on SB, is that the buddy system, done as we're all taught to do it, is plenty to keep people safe, and people don't need to start lugging ponies all over the world. Are we seeing some sort of paradigm shift in OW diving?--away from reliance on the buddy system? Maybe we are. The idea of a Solo cert is rather new, just as a possible example.

 

[Diving Dubai]

Clipping it on and off sounds simple, but we see divers jumping in without FINS on, etc.! I don't use a camera--or at least not yet--but I do carry an SMB and cutting tools and have used them. I might need to use my SMB once in every 50 dives.

Oh come on now.

You really are making huge mountains out of mole hills. You are created such mountains from a position of "ignorance" in that you've never carried or used a pony

I submit to you, that clipping on and off a cylinder is a whole lot simpler than shooting a dSMB.

By your own admission you chose to carry a dSMB and I presume a spool, yet from your infrequent use, you are probably not that practiced and fluent in it's deployment. So either why carry it or why not practice more? Same with redundant gas?

Now I concede that on baby dives (50-70' warm clear water) a redundant gas is possibly over kill - after all you have your buddy or the guide to assist you.

When I'm guiding I always sling an 80 with a 60" hose to use as a dive extender for those heavy on gas or to provide controlled assistance without compromising my gas supply. So for sure if you were in my group I'm doing the risk mitigation on your behalf.

You have raised the issue of cost of a pony to the normal rec diver, yet you have invested in the fundies course and all the black kit, I presume that you carry out your drills on each and every dive.

I'm sure you'll agree that by your own yardstick most rec divers would reasonably consider this overkill and excessive.

Regarding your comment on potential use (1:10,000) The same could be said of a dive boat carrying emergency O2. The cost and inconvenience based on the likely hood of use, yet most carry it, and most divers wouldn't go on a boat without it onboard

 

[Lorenzoid]

Oh come on now.

You really are making huge mountains out of mole hills. You are created such mountains from a position of "ignorance" in that you've never carried or used a pony

I submit to you, that clipping on and off a cylinder is a whole lot simpler than shooting a dSMB.

It isn't JUST clipping it on and off, it's the whole deal of carrying it aboard the boat, stowing it, filling it, maintaining it, practicing with it, etc. I never said it was a "huge mountain." Indeed, it probably is more of a molehill. But I question whether we all need to be dealing with molehills in the first place. Minimalism and streamlining are goals I have adopted: take only what is justified by the likelihood of needing it. There are a lot of things I don't take with me on a dive because I don't think the inconvenience, however minor it may be, is worth it. I need an SMB and a cutting device fairly frequently, and they are really the only way to get attention and cut things. I don't need an extra tank for the kind of diving I'm talking about--the obvious way to deal with that unlikely event is my buddy.

By your own admission you chose to carry a dSMB and I presume a spool, yet from your infrequent use, you are probably not that practiced and fluent in it's deployment. So either why carry it or why not practice more? Same with redundant gas?

I practice SMB deployment often. When I said "once every 50 dives" I meant on average: If I'm diving somewhere without a DM, where the plan is that I am to deploy the SMB, then I would deploy it on every dive, but I do those kinds of dives less often than guided dives where the DM deploys the SMB for the group. My rough guess is that over the years, I have deployed it on average once every 50 dives. That seems frequent enough to carry it and be practiced deploying it.

You have raised the issue of cost of a pony to the normal rec diver, yet you have invested in the fundies course and all the black kit, I presume that you carry out your drills on each and every dive.

My thinking is that investing in training is a one-time deal, and if you practice what you learned, it's a skill for life. That's good value. There's no additional equipment involved to ensure you and your buddy don't run out of gas. As I see it, I learned in Fundies to do more or less what we were all taught to do in our basic OW course but perhaps didn't learn it properly: use the buddy system.

Regarding your comment on potential use (1:10,000) The same could be said of a dive boat carrying emergency O2. The cost and inconvenience based on the likely hood of use, yet most carry it, and most divers wouldn't go on a boat without it onboard

You should have stopped before that analogy, because it's kind of a poor one. Assuming for the sake of argument that 1 or 2 in 10,000 dives is the average incidence of DCS among divers, it's not like every diver is carrying his own emergency O2. The boat carries O2 for all the divers they take, day after day, year after year. I would guess a dive boat in a busy location sees their O2 used at least once or twice a year. Also, do you think that at least part of the motivation for a boat to carry O2 is government regulation, and maybe another part is insurance, risk exposure, etc.?

 

[Diving Dubai]

My thinking is that investing in training is a one-time deal, and if you practice what you learned, it's a skill for life. That's good value. There's no additional equipment involved to ensure you and your buddy don't run out of gas. As I see it, I learned in Fundies to do more or less what we were all taught to do in our basic OW course but perhaps didn't learn it properly: use the buddy system.

So while I agree with your thoughts here, in practice it isn't so. In my earlier post I described from actual experience, only about 20% of divers on Con Ed, can complete an OOA exercise to a satisfactory standard as teh donor, despite being briefed and having a dry run on land.

The OW course is, overwhelming for a new diver - there is a lot to take in, OOA is one of many skills, and of course there is the basic buoyancy and divign skills to get right. Most people qualify and then "forget" or chose not to practice.

It's a sad fact that many people forget how to put their kit together or carry out buddy checks properly - so more "advanced" skills have no hope.

On a guided dive, this is really not an issue, because your buddy is in the case of an emergency, the group or guide, so I would agree that on this kind of dive a pony is not a necessity, and indeed a PITA.

When you diverge away from guided dives, and become reliant just on one buddy things change. If you know your buddy well and have decided that you can rely on them then yes, don't carry a pony.

If the answer is "maybe" or "no" then carry a redundant supply.

Divers seem to embrace the "new fashion". Pony's, Long hose, top of the range PDC and BP/W often pushed as the way to do things on the internet.

I still see no need for long hose for rec diving, indeed 2 people I've "tested" in a OOA scenario have both failed miserably, I almost died of boredom waiting for them to stop faffing (and one I had to put their alt reg in their mouth).

I'm happy to let them and others embrace their equipment choice, I just wouldn't' rely on them in an emergency, unless they've demonstrated that they can use it correctly before hand.

 

[Freewillow]

On a guided dive, this is really not an issue, because your buddy is in the case of an emergency, the group or guide, so I would agree that on this kind of dive a pony is not a necessity, and indeed a PITA.

.

In your part of the world, isn't the huge majority of the divers just doing this: guided tours?.

I still have to see one diver carrying a pony bottle, but I dived in the US only for my Divemaster training.

Most of my dives are done around the world, and I see no real reason to carry a ponny on baby baths: Tropical water 30/80 feet deep with huge visibility. Solo divers are not included in this viewpoint. For them, I would dive with a stage bottle, but this is e- a different thing.

 

[Compressor]

My buddy has a HUGE pony bottle on his back. The quality of my "buddies" varies of course. Some are just there in the water and don't have a clue of their own air supply let mine!! When I am diving with my real buddies, we stay VERY close to each other. In the event of an OOA situation or other emergency, it will be a matter of seconds for help. PLUS I would like to stress the importance of doing drills. When with other less reliable buddies, I take a 40cf irregardless of depth.(I like to practice).