How Deep on Air

[Tigerman]

...
Deep air can fry brain cells, be careful.
...

Really? That's new to me, care to elaborate? Or link a source?

 

[PfcAJ]

Really? That's new to me, care to elaborate? Or link a source?

That ones easy.

Just read some of the posts by the deep air proponents. Case closed.

 

[tomfcrist]

.......

 

[Tigerman]

That ones easy.

Just read some of the posts by the deep air proponents. Case closed.

Although I would call some of the deep air divers crazy (especially some "bouncers" with no redundancy and way too small tank), I don't think that neccesarilly mean they are unintelligent...

 

[PfcAJ]

Depends on how one defines 'intelligent', doesn't it?

As to Sheck, if anyone else was doing a ridiculously deep dive and was found tangled in line, what conclusion would we all come to?

Sheck was great. Sheck was a pioneer. Sheck let ego get the best of him. Its really hard to compare anything anyone is doing today to what Sheck did. We've learned a lot since then.

 

[Indydiver2]

Correct me if I'm wrong since I'm pretty new but I didn't know people routinely dived on air...

 

[Nirvana]

Correct me if I'm wrong since I'm pretty new but I didn't know people routinely dived on air...

Why not? In many of the dives I do, for example, I am not limited by my NDL; it is shallow enough for me to be able to set my limits based on how long it takes for me to do what I want to or on how long I would like to stay underwater. Air is more than adequate in these situations.

 

[Stoo]

As to Sheck, if anyone else was doing a ridiculously deep dive and was found tangled in line, what conclusion would we all come to?

You aren't seriously trying to compare a 1000' dive to a 180' dive are you? (I don't think so, but your wording is a bit ambiguous...)

Correct me if I'm wrong since I'm pretty new but I didn't know people routinely dived on air...

Huh? Air is an entirely appropriate gas to breath for most recreational diving. Up here, the limiting factor on many recreational dives is temperature. To use 32 is nice, but odds are, most people are heading to the boat because they're cold, and long before their anywhere near their NDL. I might dive Nitrox on a 100' dive or so, later in the season, but otherwise air does the job and worst case, I clean up with a few minutes of deco on 02.

Honestly, probably the biggest reason I don't dive Nitrox on those shallower dives is because when we leave the harbour, we don't know where we're going to end up. We dive from our own boat, and the site is chosen once we're into open water and see what the wind and waves are like. If we have planned to do a 100' dive on Eanx 32, but then have to go to a site that is a nice wall the drops to 170', we've now got a set of tanks filled with a gas that we can't use, or limits the depth we want to hit. (Which is likely a wreck...)

I use 32 whenever possible down south where temperature isn't a factor and am doing multiple dives a day. (Here we tend to do I or two, since most are deco dives.)

 

[rjack321]

Ahhh it has been awhile since we had one of these gems!

2yrs ago
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/t2t-general-discussion/441746-reasonable-deep-air.html

3yrs ago
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/advanced-scuba-discussions/331327-exactly-how-deep-deep-air.html

4yrs ago
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/basic-scuba-discussions/329658-why-dive-deep-air.html

Still 4yrs ago
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/technical-diving-specialties/322825-deep-air-here-we-go-again.html

5 yrs ago
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/technical-diving-specialties/239265-deep-air-diving-thoughts.html

way back when not even at the start of this 'debate' 11 yrs ago
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/basic-scuba-discussions/31545-max-depth-air.html

Funny though, over the last 11 yrs, roughly the same percentage of people are answering 170ft+
40/208 back in 2003 (19%)
15/89 today (16.8%)

Although I know at least 1 or 2 people commenting on the 2003 thread have died (scuba related although not necessarily deep air related) or have quit diving so their must be new people taking up the deep air mantra.

 

[Stoo]

Ahhh it has been awhile since we had one of these gems!

I'm pretty sure that you could come back 20 years from now, and find it still going on! And they're still won't be a consensus because people come from different backgrounds, and have had different training and different influences.

There's a successful dive shop near me that preaches that any dive below 100' (or so) should be done on mix. Yet, the odd time I've been diving with the owner/head instructor, he was diving air with me at 155'.

Not that I'm suggesting that much of the push to get people diving mix at 100' has any commercial motivation. I mean why would a shop prefer to sell a guy a $100+ trimix fill over a $20 air fill (or whatever it costs to fill a set of tanks)!

---------- Post added February 28th, 2014 at 12:09 AM ----------

Yeah, in the past there was no anesthesia, so next time you need a root canal done, ask you dentist to not use anesthesia, because that's how it was done in the past.

LMAO... I just noticed this comment... When I was a kid (and back when kids still got cavities), my Dentist never froze me before drilling. He was, I learned years later, especially skilled. I might debate that because I used to dread a trip to see Dr. Easter. I needed a root canal after knocking out a front tooth playing hockey when I was 19, and that was the first time that I had my mouth frozen...

I wonder if there's a correlation between kids who were tortured as children and adults that dive "deepish air"???

Maybe I'll start another poll!