Honest question about DIR

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Maybe it has to do with the tensile strength?

Many plastics and polymers are black. When designers decide to "pretty them up", often some properties of the polymer are changed to make it possible to impregnate the color.

Black _MAY_ literally be tougher?????

Personally I have yellow fins.
 
Hmmm...

I tend to go for blue (see my profile pic). My buddies tell me I'm the easiest one to pick out of the group underwater.

When using wetsuits, I have an all black henderson goldcore and a blue trim microprene. Then they just have to look for the blue fins. :wink:
 
Originally posted by dc4bs
Hmmm...

I tend to go for blue (see my profile pic). My buddies tell me I'm the easiest one to pick out of the group underwater.


I have noticed that blue is surprisingly bright underwater as well. Recently a couple of the instructors at the shop I am doing my DM certification through got blue drygloves, and it was amazing how much easier it was to see their hands, even in very low vis! I wonder why it isn't a more popular color...more visible than black, shouldn't cause night blindness, isn't a fashion faux pas, even on land....But still, all the tech stuff seems to be black. It just doesn't make sense to me.
 
Because the industry is driven by this mentality that BLACK is 'techy' looking - like Navy SEALS or James Bond movies!
 
Yeah, black is in right now. My White's drysuit is black but has reflective piping on it which really shows up in low light when you have your light on...
 
Besides... I don't need to see Shane... all I need to see is the beam from his HID and I know:
Where he is...
What he is doing...
Where he is heading...
What he wants to communicate...
 
Originally posted by Zept
What if you were diving during the day, in tropical waters with 30m vis?
We stopped back at the home port for a couple of days to let off crew and then out we go again... not even sure which direction this time... too bad it isn't a diving trip...

But to answer your question...

While the HIDs do better than most even they are difficult to see in bright sunlight with good viz.... but then we are not faced with that problem too often in the PNW :D

BTW:
What would show up best in 30m viz tropical waters during the day....

Brightly multi-colored divers or...

The men in black :wink:

:D
 
Originally posted by Uncle Pug
What would show up best in 30m viz tropical waters during the day....

In my experience, yellow, lime green or pink. The black people blend into the bottomless depths (when there are bottomless depths) or the far-off shadows. Plus they all look the same (and what's the point of looking cool if no-one can recognise you afterwards?).

To be fair, when the vis is 30m it doesn't really matter what people wear. When it gets down to 5m, I find bright colours easier to see.

Z
 
Originally posted by Uncle Pug
Besides... I don't need to see Shane... all I need to see is the beam from his HID and I know:
Where he is...
What he is doing...
Where he is heading...
What he wants to communicate...

But what if something happened to you & Shane, and he and his light were injured together. He may be unconscious. You have to find and assist him. Wouldn't it be better if he was wearing some bright colors that you may glimpse a corner of using your HID to scan through the silt that has been stirred up during the traumatic event that caused the injuries?

I realize that you have lots of plans, rules, procedures and practices to PREVENT such a thing from occuring, but with many things in diving, especially technical diving, divers' have all sorts of additional backups to handle things that probably shouldn't occur if everything is done right. Why isn't having light-colored material on exposure suits/other gear the safest thing to do...in case your lights fail and you're separated? And if it is the safest thing to do, why isn't it addressed in DIR? It seems that it isn't banned in DIR (based on the picture from another post), and I still don't understand the night-vision thing completely.

The more I think about it, the more sense non-black gear makes to me...but since I really believe that most technical divers really do go through a lot of effort to maximize their own safety, I keep thinking that there's got to be deliberate reason tech stuff is black...but then again, colored stuff isn't banned in DIR...and around I go again.

So I'm confused about whether or not I should buy black gear if I ever want to move beyond the limits of recreational diving (with proper training, of course.)
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/teric/
http://cavediveflorida.com/Rum_House.htm

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