How Soon Before Everyone is Using a Rebreather?

[Gill Envy]

I used to haul something like 12 tanks with me on a 4-5 day dive trip to the San Juan islands mainly because i'm a kayak and shore diver mostly... I found that to do the dives I wanted I needed to be that independent. I'm only 38 now and my back is already showing signs of wear and that was just diving singles. The weight per dive hasn't changed much but the overall number of bottles per trip has dropped significantly. one 80 full of o2, one full of air and a trans fill whip and i'm good for many days of diving without having to hit a dive shop...with our dive kayaks the opportunity for outstanding camping/diving in the pacific north west has expanded exponentially. and instead of coming back whipped from all the tank hauling and nitrogen, i come back relatively energized.

I realize this kind of diving is not everyone's cup of tea but using a rebreather for it has been awesome for us.

g

Honestly, I just don't see the need for RB's on recreational dives. Really, there are no dives I couldn't do in "recreational" doubles (i.e 80's) that I'd need a rebreather for. And if we're talking singles ... forget it. Way to complicated for what I want.

KISS. (No, not the rebreather type ).

Just my $0.02.

 

[grazie42]

what i dont get about rebreathers (well i do get it-it makes me wonder if its all worth it) is all the bailout you guys carry

you have a rebreather so you can stay longer at depths but just in case you have extra tanks to get you back

often i wonder if all the tasking on managing all the bailouts/stages/ponys (whatever your flavour) add work to the dive and as a result often overworks the diver to a bad outcome and therefore the high percentage of incidents and bad rep the units earn

when units are made more idiot proof they will become more recreational, im not saying this is a good thing... just the nature of the industry

cheers

I don´t own a RB (yet!) but I´ve done a good bit of reading up on it and I do technical dives on OC...

I do not expect the number of bailouts/stages/decobottles to really change for the deeper dives. What will change is that the rEvo will take about 25kg/50lbs off my back. I´m already doing dives on OC with 3 bottles and I don´t really notice them uw (except when crawling thru a wreck) and as they´re mostly neutral they don´t add much of anything to my workload...

As Gill Envy describes, what will change, is the number of fills...I´ll mostly be able to do a weekends/weeks diving with 2x3l, 2x7l & 1 al80 with maybe one or two al80s to refill the 3l bottles for the unit...that´s a weeks diving in the 150-300ft range...even in cavecountry in florida (where the logistics are the most convienient I´ve seen), we spent almost as much time filling tanks as diving...

 

[Tienuts]

... I'll probably get close to hitting the 100 dive mark... ... I do not think I have enough experience to even think about a rebreather at this time

Ask any CCR instructor, and he/she will tell you they would rather teach a RB class to a person with less experience, than a diver with tons of experience. CCR diving is completely different. In fact IANTD now has an open water CCR diver class, where you get your open water cert on a CCR.

When I took my Optima class, I had around 270 dives. I had difficulty un-learning all of my open-circuit habits. My partner in the class was much more experienced, having over 1400 cave dives - she had a much harder time than I did.

Space hogs - you see more of the vacation divers hogging all the room than anyone else. As Adrian said - we come to the boat with the smallest dive bags of all. Wetsuit, mask and fins are all that's in mine.

Any why would we take a RB on a boat with OC divers? Well we didn't invest 10 grand to let it sit in the closet. Plus once you make the switch, you should not go back and forth between OC and CCR.

Plus, no having to switch tanks on the surface interval!

 

[ScubaDadMiami]

Plus, no having to switch tanks on the surface interval!

Amen! :mooner:

 

[caveseeker7]

i will answer never as i cant imagine "everyone" using a unit, especially when you consider the vintage OC gear is still coveted by so many divers

Rebreathers are much older than OC dive gear. Dräger has been manufacturing diving rebreathers for almost a century, just google "Hans Hass" and you find images of him and his wife Lotte.

The first CCRs, the Electrolung and the CCR1000 are just a few years younger than Cousteau & Gagnan's twin hose regulators.

Rebreathers are a feast for vintage dive gear enthusiasts.

 

[caveseeker7]

Price is a major issue, however, like computers, the more that are made the cheaper, relatively, they will become.

Unless there'll be large numbers of RB sitting around in dive shops and manufacturer's warehouse waiting for buyers I rather doubt that.

Even with computers it's not entirely applicable. For a simple, single nitrox dive computer it's true enough, but look at the computers that have helium capacity and can calculate fO2 and pO2 (for CCR). A few years back, you could get the VR3, it was expensive, the Explorer, just as expensive, and the Cochrans, same price range.

Now the VR3 costs much more, the Cochrans too, at $1400 the explorer starts looking like a bargain after Shearwater, still fairly new to the game announced raising theirs from that price to over $1700. Which is still several 100 less than a fully optioned VR3 ... .

DiveRite is slated to release one one of these days, the first from an established manufacturer, expected to cost around $1300 ... .

At DEMA 2005 the Optima was the big buzz, with an announced price of around $5000 ... that didn't quite work out, just ask any Optima diver. Even without BC, tanks, O2 cells and other "options" the unit costs more than that, currently a tick below $7000.

 

[jepuskar]

i predict that this time next week OC will be a thing of the past.

 

[caveseeker7]

Your credit card must be hurtin'.

Too much Evo time, you gotta get off the lithiox.

 

[jepuskar]

Ugh...

I can justify just about any purchase I make...when I pull the trigger on this its probably going to be...the you only live once justification.

 

[caveseeker7]

I think there is going to be a spike in accidents/injuries/deaths from the casual divers who want to throw a CCR in the closet with their SCUBA kit and just haul it out right before a dive a couple of times a year.

The current state of rebreathers certainly doesn't allow for that.
Discipline is probably the single most important quality a rebreather diver needs.
Probably one reason the military has such good record with rebreathers.

I only hope the training can keep pace with the growth of the use.

Even in the past that has not always been the case I'm afraid. Some agencies have been rather lax with their own standards, so much so that the manufacturers of the units had to step in, refusing to accept instructor and even IT tickets.

Poseidon and Cis-Lunar are developing the MK-6 Discovery CCR with some new, interesting technology. You may have seen it at DEMA, a prototype was on display. On RBW you can find two videos, interviews with Richard Pyle (deepreef here at SB) and Bill Stone (best watched in this order). Like Deep Life's Open Revolution development (also at DEMA with a commercial bailout CCR for umbilical) the premise is to make the units safe so training issues and diver mistakes will be less of an issue.

The unit is being developed specifically for recreational diving, 40m MOD, to be used safely by the average OW OC diver, even for initial OW CCR training.

Gutsy projects, if they succeed I can see CCRs becoming much more common place.