Taking Video May Have Saved My Life

[drbill]

No, I haven't had an incident recently. However, in the past I've done a fair bit of what many would consider risky diving. A few years ago my deep diving on air to depths of as much as 200 ft is not the safest thing I've ever done (but I did condition myself to do it over several months).

In nearly 50 years of diving, I've never taken a hit. In my early days it was largely because I kept reasonably shallow (above 100 ft) and rarely did repetitive dives as my schedule did not permit more than one a day. Over the last decade plus, I've done a fair bit of deep diving and lots of repetitive diving.

One reason I feel I haven't taken a hit doing this is that I always take my video rig. My primary reason for being under is to shoot. On all my dives, especially the deep ones, I've incorporated multiple deep stops routinely. They have not always been planned at specific depths. However, I continue filming as I ascend the slopes and may encounter a number of subjects between max depth and the surface that allow me to stop for a few minutes at each point.

So, IMHO, taking video may have saved my life!

 

[didekeer]

Sorry to say, but it looks to me that it was the opposite.

Deep air diving to 200 ft already seems pretty crazy to me. Don't tell me you didn't get narced at those depths (I would use 18/45 for a 200 ft dive). Adding a video camera to the mix, with the additional task loading that goes with it, sounds to me like suicide.

Just my two cents...

Dirk

 

[drbill]

Certainly entitled to your opinion. I've posted in other threads over the years how I judged my level of narcosis and how I acclimated to deep diving on air over several months prior to reaching those depths.

Take away the 200 ft dives on air and assess the video-based multiple deep stops so you aren't reacting simply to that depth range. Let's say max depth is 130 ft, but with the same multiple stops.

 

[hypnomatt]

I was thinking that same thing the other day. Since using my video underwater I've stopped doing deep air stuff because I want more light. I was always doing dives to 70 metres on air in Egypt but this tripI rarely went past 45. I had the exact same thought, maybe getting this video has saved my life before something happened...

 

[drbill]

Of course my reasons for the deep diving were to film deeper water species for a "deep ecology" segment of my cable TV show. Once that goal was accomplished, I saw no need to continue the deep diving, at least for now. Most of my current diving is at night... you guessed it, for a "night shift" episode... so I'm shallow again.

I also prefer more bottom time and increased light for my dives since the object is to acquire as much good footage as possible. Even my 180-200 ft max depth dives were often of 45-60 min duration (much of that off-gassing at shallower depths of course).