Global shortage of helium?

[PfcAJ]

Rebreather. Problem solved.

 

[broncobowsher]

Rebreather. Problem minimized.

corrected for you

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Ok, tightening up the rules a bit, no CCR’s, open circuit only, but you get to use any tanks you want.
There is a compressor and a big bottle of O2. You get to do PP fills
of any mix you want for deco.
What’s your personal deep air limit if the diving is guaranteed to be the most spectacular you could ever imagine. Let’s make it fun and just say an untouched Spanish galleon loaded with gold jewels artifacts and the works, all there for the taking. Nobody knows about it except for ancient lore, and it’s unrestricted open for salvage. How deep would you go on air to be a part of something like that?
This is just a hypothetical question to see how deep some of you would be willing to go on air to be a part of millions of dollars worth of booty plus not to mention the world wide prestige and fame it would bring.
Once in a lifetime diving and opportunity.

 

[ScubaWithTurk]

Ok, tightening up the rules a bit, no CCR’s, open circuit only, but you get to use any tanks you want.
There is a compressor and a big bottle of O2. You get to do PP fills
of any mix you want for deco.
What’s your personal deep air limit if the diving is guaranteed to be the most spectacular you could ever imagine. Let’s make it fun and just say an untouched Spanish galleon loaded with gold jewels artifacts and the works, all there for the taking. Nobody knows about it except for ancient lore, and it’s unrestricted open for salvage. How deep would you go on air to be a part of something like that?
This is just a hypothetical question to see how deep some of you would be willing to go on air to be a part of millions of dollars worth of booty plus not to mention the world wide prestige and fame it would bring.
Once in a lifetime diving and opportunity.

60 meters is the deepest I would be wiling to go in this extreme circumstance. On straight air that gives me a PO2 of 1.47 and with a deco cylinder or two of say 50 and 100, I would do it for the ability to dive this hypothetical opportunity.

However, if it was just a reef or wall dive to 60...no thanks. Give me trimix or ccr

 

[michael-fisch]

30 odd years ago my first 100M dive was in Lake Constance on air. 3 years later I had digested volume 2 of the USN manual enough to understand it and was doing 100M dives on Trimix - It's nice to be able to remember the dive afterwards and being able to concentrate on more than one thing during the deep portion is such a major difference.
If I couldn't get helium in my mix I'd probably still be diving on the B17G at 75M off the island of Vis but I think that would be my limit.

Michael

 

[peterak]

Trimix using hydrogen? It was good enough for the Hindenburg.

 

[Celt]

People are diving deep on air all the time. It’s just another skill to be learned for some.

 

[Searcaigh]

Deepest dive I've done on air was to 70m retrieving a camera housing in the Red Sea off Jeddah back in the 90s.

The only time I use air these days is for shallow dives <20m, beyond 20m I prefer a Nitrox mix, and anything deeper than 40m is trimix for my personal comfort.

 

[rjack321]

5 yrs into CCR diving I'm happy I switched when I did. Not just because of the latest shortage issues which honestly started about 8+ years ago once the MRI usage curve up intersected the US strategic reserves decline.

 

[J-Vo]

https://www.scientificamerican.com/...valuable-helium-deposit-discovered-in-africa/

That huge helium deposit under Tanzania is even bigger than we thought