This is my contribution to the ending of deep air diving.

Here is the WAH_WAH article from the old Aqua Corps Magazine, for those 
who haven't seen it. This is proof enough in itself that deep air is 
stupid. It is hard to believe that anyone can be this ignorant. I am not 
near the level of the other divers on the list, but I am smart enough to 
learn without bodily harm or death. "STAY AWAY FROM DEEP AIR" 

THE WAH WAH

Gilliam, TDI President, and other participants in the Drager/UWATEC 
rebreather
training program.
"As I was going up, passing 325 feet, I heard  this 
noise-wah-wah-wah-wah-really loud.
It really scared me. I didn't know what it was. I could not see my hand 
on the cable. All I could see was my gauge. Everything else was black. 
Joe Odom says when you hear that noise, you've been fucked up on air, 
you've been deep on air. It's called the "wah-wah."' -- Bob Raimo

A handful of leading training agency officials and instructors conducted 
deep air dives, some exceeding          400f/ 123 m on non-redundant 
single 80 cf   cylinders, raising serious questions about the dichotomy 
of individual freedom versus instructor responsibility.
  The stunts, as some have called them, occurred at Drager/UWATEC's first 
formal rebreather training seminar in the Bahamas 9-14 July 1995, with 
over a dozen Technical Diving International (TDI) instructors present. 
TDI president Bret Gilliam and NSSCDS Chairman Joe Odom led the dives, 
and each used single 80 cf cylinders, and had no redundancy.
  While all divers survived the experience, New York-based TDI instructor 
Bob Raimo, who carried an 80cf stage as a back-up, nearly died on his 
second dive beyond 300 f/92 m.
  The participants tried to keep the dives secret, both at the seminar 
and afterwards.
THE REACTION
  Reports of the clandestine dives spread like a wildfire among tech 
divers, and have provoked a plethora of questions. Why make a deep air 
dive in the first place when no useful work can be performed at depth, 
and when mix is available? Why risk diving without a redundant system? 
How can tech diving instructors teach their students to stay within 
limits, yet exceed those limits themselves? What responsibility do these 
industry leaders have to send the right message to their followers?
  Many leading figures in the field privately condemned the stunts, but 
were reluctant to comment publicly. However, reaction in general to the 
practice of deep air diving beyond 400 f/123 m without a redundant system 
was strong and one-sided.

  "You wouldn't catch me doing that:' said training instructor Lamar 
Hires, Joe Odom's associate at the NSS-CDS.
  Hall Watts of the Professional Scuba Association (PSA), who trains 
divers on deep air, said, "Our training standards don't permit it. If 
you're making deep dives, we require enough gas for the dive, plus extra 
gas on the descent lines in case of emergencies. People do it, it's okay, 
but we have to consider,'What if?"'
  Les Joiner of Ocean Corporation said, "We had to deal with the problem 
of cowboys in commercial diving twenty
years ago."

  Another leading tech diving expert, who asked not to be identified, 
declared, "Natural selection is a slow process."

  The consensus on limits and acceptable practices for diving on air is 
near universal. The maximum operating depth for air is between 180 f/55 m 
and 220 f/68 m, based on a working PO2 between 1.4 atm and 1.6 atm. As 
President of TDI, Bret Gilliam ironically said: "I have yet to see 
anybody that's got any degree of credibility stand up and say,'lt's okay 
to go to 300 feet on air.' That'd be absolutely,
bloody stupid.

  Field experience suggests that maintaining PO2s below 1.4-1.5 atm 
during the working phase of the dive is optimal, allowing for oxygen 
levels to a maximum of 1.6 atm during resting decompression
  Experts further agree that it is prudent to have an appropriately 
redundant breathing system--minimally first and second stage 
redundancy--when diving in open water beyond about 60 f/18 m. In 
extremely deep dives and in an overhead environment, it is a requirement. 
Like the rule of thirds, redundancy is a defining tenet of tech diving.

THE INCIDENT
  The dive originated with Gilliam and Odom. Says Gilliam, "Odom and I do 
a lot of deep air diving and we had the opportunity on a really unique 
wall. The only thing available was a couple of eighties. But the 
breathing rate that Odom and I have is so remarkably low compared to 
everyone else. We did a dive to 441 feet [135 meters] and we used about 
1100 psi of gas."

  The pair agreed to keep all divers, including some who were using 
trimix, above them at all times. "We didn't want them to get away from 
us... We were a hundred feet or more deeper than the guys on trimix. And 
used half, maybe a third of the gas they did."

  The other participants--who included Mitch Skaggs and Jesse Armantrout, 
as well as Bob Raimo--said that they were not pressured in any way, and 
only attempted  the deep air dives because they were in the company of 
top industry professionals such as Gilliam and Odom. "Joe did not go 
around the boat,'Hey, we're going to do some deep diving. Who's 
interested?"' said Raimo. "It was a very private conversation."

  Gilliam rationalizes the dives by boasting of his conservative gas 
consumption."I breathe half of the gas volume that other people do that 
are half my size and half my age:' said Gilliam. "I can't explain that. 
Part of it is being relaxed in the water, getting into some kind of 
rhythm that works for you, but I see a lot of these other people that are 
hopelessly overburdened with equipment that they don't seem to realize 
what it does to their performance in the water. Odom and I spent quite a 
bit of time down there between 375 and 400 and change. We had time to 
stop and smell the roses. It's no big deal to us. We were kinda surprised 
when we came back up that everybody was making such a big thing about 
it."'

  Gilliam is not concerned about oxygen on deep dives like this, and 
cited that divers push 3 atms of oxygen in chamber as a matter of 
routine. He also said that at rest, the chances of an oxygen toxicity 
problem in a relatively short duration are minimal, and more friendly  
than decompression.

  Yet the accepted standards are not  malleable, said an industry 
insider. "The  1.45 atm limit is not there for everyone  except Bret 
Gilliam and Joe Odom:' he  said. "The limit is there for all divers.

    Gilliam believes that experience and   understanding of the risks is 
what counts.   "I've been doing this for twenty years," he   said. "I 
have never, ever had even the   slightest symptoms of 02 problems, and I  
 don't expect that I will. But I have also   made a career of 
understanding the   underlining physiology to the point where,   believe 
me, every hair and follicle is tuned   to the expectation that I'm going 
to have a problem.

  Diving so deep without a redundant system seems to be a non-issue with 
the pair. "Both of us were diving thirds:' said Odom. "From a rules 
standpoint, hell, we're diving thirds. Anybody got a problem with diving 
thirds? I mean, shit, leave me alone.

  "What does an 80 have to do with it?" Odom added. "We had air, we went 
down; we had air, we came up.
  Bob Raimo opted for redundancy. "I was very uncomfortable diving with 
single 80s, so I juryrigged some telephone wire to an 80 stage bottle:' 
he said. "I wanted to at least have a back-up bottle...This single 80 
stuff-boy, you have one regulator failure... It's not like getting a flat 
on the highway. You don't have a spare.

RISK ACCEPTANCE
  The practice of deep air diving has fallen in and out of public favor 
over the years. Today, with the availability of mixed gas, extreme deep 
air diving is again in disrepute, and is generally considered unnecessary 
and dangerous.
  "in the old days, you had to be in the closet:' Joe Odom said, "because 
you didn't want anybody to know about it. Then deep air was accepted. Now 
we have to go back into the closet a little. Because of gases, people are 
chastising the deep air people, saying you don't need to do that.

  Hal Watts, whose training divers to 300 feet is also controversial, is 
quick to point out that a dive beyond 300--particularly one below 400 
feet--is beyond the safety limits on air.

  However, divers continue to dive deep on air, and a small number 
attempt the questionable practice of setting deep air "records. A 
27-year-old diver training to exceed Dan Manion's air dive to 513 f/158 
m-the deepest recorded-- recently died off the coast of Ft. Lauderdale 
[see Incident Reports p47]. Reportedly, members of the tech diving 
community--including Gilliam, Mitch Skaggs and IANTD's Tom 
Mount--discouraged the young diver from attempting the depth.

  "You can talk about the sanity of solo diving," said Joe Odom. "But it 
all comes down to risk acceptance. How can we train the new guys for the 
emergencies? We can't. The fact remains that some of us have survived 
incidents that we shouldn't have survived. And we've got very strong 
survival instincts as a result."

  Gilliam says of inexperienced divers who go beyond their limit: 
"Unfortunately, it's nobody's fault but their own. If you look back six 
years ago, there was no aquaCORPS, there was no Watersport publishing 
library...the only way you could get information was if you were in 
somebody's clique. Now there's this whole explosion of information out 
there.

  Odom has a theory about younger divers. "We have a whole generation of 
technobabies--and I use that in a semi-derogatory form--that are diving:' 
he said. "These are the people who sit in front of their computer and are 
able to hit a carriage return and get instant gratification. We've got 
people who believe they can sit in front of a computer terminal and learn 
how to become a deep air diver. They don't even know what they feel yet. 
That's what years of diving are about."

  Bob Raimo, who is an experienced mix diver but who had little deep air 
exposure, said that he learned more on this onealmost fatal--dive than he 
had on a hundred other dives. "I've taken my experience and learned this 
from it:' he said. "You don't dive deep on air. That's mix. I can teach 
people that from experience now. I can tell them: 'Look, I got lucky, and 
luck is never part of my dive plan."'

  Even with his near-death experience, Raimo won't rule out diving deep 
on air again. "l'm not going to tell you that I'II never do it again 
because the experience has not scared the thrill out of me in diving," he 
said. "However, if I want to be a respected figurehead in the technical 
community, then I can't do deep air diving. So, from that point of view, 
my answer is no.

  "It was a scary learning experience that I wish never to happen to me 
or anybody else again:' he added. "I can say this, if I ever decide to do 
a deep air dive like that again, I'II be ready for it. I've been there. 
I've heard the wah-wah.

INDIVIDUALS VERSUS RESPONSIBILITY
  Few people dispute each individual's right to dive as he or she 
pleases. The libertarian streak among divers is profound. There is, on 
the other hand, a deep division in the tech diving community about 
whether leaders have an added responsibility, and if they are sending the 
wrong signal to less experienced divers. The debate over the Tapson-led 
Lusitania expedition [see NlO/lmagingl symbolizes this colloquy, although 
in the Lusey situation, the participants were not training instructors.

  Where do technical divers draw the line between individual freedom and 
collective responsibility?
   Lamar Hires of the NSS-CDS summed up the conundrum: "it's a gray area 
and one that we always come back and fight with.

  Hall Watts, however, is definite opinion. "Everyone should follow 
guidelines, whether they're leaders industry or John Q. Diver," he said. 
"it's 'Monkey see, monkey do~ Leaders should do things more safely to set 
an example.
  Bob Raimo acknowledged the problem. 'We're clearly not practicing what 
we preach. And I have mixed feelings about that," he said. "i've always 
been an adventurous individual--which is why I like diving--and I like to 
satisfy that thrill, that sense of adventure. And I think for a lot of 
people, diving deep on air is that sense of adventure, that thrill. Yes, 
there's a grave risk, but if O"e is willing to accept that risk, then one 
should be allowed to do that. But if people want to be figureheads and 
leaders in this business, they need to be promoting the right thing. The 
problem is, do we take away someone's individuality, the right to do 
something stupid? And I don't know.
 Joe Odom addressed the dilemma in a somewhat different manner. "The fact 
that Some people want to go beyond 1.6 IP02] is their personal choice:' 
he said. "But I don't think anybody in good conscience will train 
(someone] to go beyond 1.6 unless there's medical evidence to suggest 
otherwise. Are we creating a climate of'Do as I say, not as I do?' Well, 
of course, but that's the way it's been since day one.

Odom, who is also a flight instructor, likens himself a test pilot. 
"Everybody thinks they're reckless daredevils," he said, "and that's not 
the case. They have a program of pushing the envelope a little bit each 
time, analyzing the data, and saying,'The next time, this is what we'll 
do.' Only until you're comfortable within that range can you--with any 
degree of intelligence--go forward.

  Gilliam believes that his experience will benefit others. "Since I'm 
using 70% less gas and carrying 70% less gas than you are, you might to 
at least want to learn something from it." he said. "Experience is a word 
everybody ought to look up in the dictionary. You don't get It simply by 
sewing patches on your fuckin'dive jacket. You gotta go out there and get 
wet. We're doing things with half the effort and half the gear that some 
of the other fellows are doing, and it's not that we're any better 
divers. I think that it's just that we're a little bit smarter and can 
apply lessons learned over the years of experience.

 THE PROBLEM IS  WIDESPREAD
  Industry politics and competition being what it is--cutthroat--many 
people would like to single out Gilliam and TDI for abuse, but 
unfortunately, the problem of responsibility appears to be more 
widespread. Bob Raimo said, "I've seen IANTD do bonehead things, too. Tom 
Mount lists me as a rebreather instructor, and that was before I became a 
rebreather instructor trainer with Rob Palmer. What the fuck did I know 
about rebreathers?! You know what my experience was on rebreathers when 
he listed me? Zero. The only thing I knew about rebreathers was what read 
in aquaCORPS Journal, for crissakes. I wonder how many nitrox instructors 
are out there that don't know anything about nitrox. And I know they're 
out there.


  Joe Odom asked me. "How deep are you gonna go? We want to go deep.
  I said I'II go as deep as I feel comfortable with. I don't care how 
deep you guys go. When I say that's enough for me, I stop, and I come up, 
irrelevant to what you guys are doing. I said I'm not here to set any 
personal records, or industry records. I'm here to have a good time.

  They all dove single 80s. I was very uncomfortable diving with single 
80s, so I juryrigged some telephone wire to an 80 stage bottle because I 
refused to 40 deep on a single 80. 1 wanted to at least
have a back-up bottle.

  On the first day I dove deep I was completely in control, I was 
completely capable of helping somebody else...which is my measurement of 
my comfort level. If I feel that I cannot help somebody else, I'm in over 
my head. I don't like being able to just take care of ,,~ I like to take 
care of someone else if there's a problem. If I can't. I have no business 
being there. And I did not feel that way at 300 plus feet. I felt fine. I 
mean, I was narked, but I checked my guages  and stopped at 250 feet on 
the way up in case somebody needed air. 

    On the second day, I'm diving a Dive   Rite transpack with a travel 
wing, which   is only 30 Ibs. of lift, and I'm in an eighth  inch shorty. 
When we did the second   dive. we were out on this  cable--it's in 7.200 
feet of water, and over 21.000 feet long. The buoy is approximately 75 
feet in diameter. It's big. You could have a party for 100 people on top 
of this thing. There is no bottom reference.

  I made two big mistakes. I grabbed my weight belt from my rebreather 
instead of the weight belt for my single 80. So there's an extra eight 
pounds of lead on my belt, and I'm completely oblivious to it. Bret 
wasn't diving this day. Bret and Joe were saying that one of the things 
that you need to be able to do if you're going deep is you want to get 
down there fast, and get out of there fast. I said, well, I couldn't keep 
up with you guys. They asked how I came down? Well, I kinda floated down 
like I normally do. Joe said there's a lot of drag that way, you kinda 
have to go down head first. I'm like, I never go down head first. I said 
I'd go down head first and try and keep up with you guys. So I jump in 
the water and go behind Joe Odom. and I'm swimming upside down, straight 
down. I'm kicking to go down to keep up with Joe. I couldn't keep up with 
the sucker; the guy is quick.

  I never discussed with any of them how they do it. And none of us went 
to the Bahamas with any of this in mind. If I'd have known the week 
before, I'd have brought some clips and hooks and stainless steel tank 
bands. I'd have come ready to make real stage bottles, not use telephone 
wire.

  I have no concept of how deep I am...'cause I don't look at my depth 
gauge. If I know I'm going deep, Ijust try to stay in tune with my body. 
When I don't feel good, it's time to come up. And sometimes if you look 
at your gauge and you see a big number, it scares you: Oh. omigod. and 
all of a sudden, adrenaline, a little bit of CO2, and it makes you worse 
off than you are. So I like to go down, I'm comfortable. But what was 
uncomfortable initially was my descent. It was an abnormal descent for 
me. I'm used to floating down, now I'm swimming down. I'm exerting myself 
kicking trying to keep up with this sucker.

  At one point I'm saying, this is about my tolerance. I was really 
getting narked, I'm at the limit. If it gets worse than this, I won't be 
able to help anybody. And as I'm starting to think about this, I look at 
my depth gauge and it says 340 feet and Joe Odom turns around--he was 
below me, he was the lowest guy on the line, and I don't know who's 
behind me at this point, if anybody--and Joe looks at me and I give him a 
clear-as-day signal of "I'm stopping here." I take my arm and sweep it 
slowly back and forth saying I'm leveling off. Joe gives me the okay 
sign. I start inflating my BC. After Joe sees me inflating my BC-because 
I could see him watching me, making sure that I was okay--he then turned 
and continued going deeper, figuring I was okay. Which at that point I 
was. I don't know that if Joe had had a problem that I could have helped 
him going deeper, but anybody at my depth and shallower. I was okay.

  So, I'm inflating my BC and I'm going deeper and deeper...348 feet, 
350, my BC's full, 352, and I'm not feeling too happy. I went from 
feeling really good to feeling really narked. This is where I made what I 
believe to be the second and almost fatal mistake--I kicked. I used my 
legs, which is the normal diver reaction. At that point, I just wanted to 
stop. Not even to go up, just to stop.

  I took one or two kicks and I went from being completely in control and 
just about capable of helping someone, into a complete headspin. That one 
kick used so much 02 and generated so much CO2... And I was like, WHOA, 
man, I got really fucked up. And it happened again, and I went, WHOA 
man...and thank god for that cable. I just reached out with my right hand 
and--ka-chink---barehanded. This cable had fish hooks on it and was 
encrusted with all kinds of shit. But believe me, I was so numb, I didn't 
feel anything. I just grabbed on to this cable. I looked at my depth 
gauge again, and all the pixels were lit up on
my screen.

  I had no idea how deep I was. For all I knew I was at 500 feet. I knew 
I had
inflated my BC and my BC wasn't going up. I had about 1400 psi left my 
main cylinder, and I've got the stage bottle on me. So I decide I'm going 
to kick and I'm going to pull on this cable. I've got to reduce the 
pressure. I want to scream out of here and I'm gonna stop when my depth 
gauge says 100
feet. Now, mind you, I can't read it.

  By now, I'm assuming I'm pulling on the cable. Mitch Skaggs, who was at 
325, said later that I went by him, but  I never saw him. He could have 
been behind me when I passed him; it's easy to miss people going up and 
down. He said I had one hand up in the air, my eyes were rolled up in my 
head, and he thought I would wake up on the way up. That's how I felt: I 
needed to wake up.

  One thing that really scared me was this noise. When I couldn't read my 
gauges, I heard this noise-wah-wah-wah-wah-really loud. I didn't know 
what it was. When I heard the noise, I could not see my hand on the 
cable. All I could see was my gauge. I couldn't see anything 
else--everything surrounding the gauge was black. And I'm sure I started 
to breathe really heavy when I heard that noise...of course, more COZ 
build-up. I'm thinking: the next thing that's going to happen is that I'm 
gonna black out, and I said to myself, "You're not gonna black out. When 
this gauge says 100 feet, you're gonna stop and do deco." That's what I 
said to myself my entire ascent: "You can't black out, you've gotta do 
deco. You can't black out, you've gotta do deco." I kept kicking--at 
least I think I was kicking, I might not have been. This may have just 
been my thought process. I have to go on what other people say because I 
don't know.

  I had a very, very strong desire to live. I really believe staying 
focused on going to 100 feet to do deco saved me. I haven~ spoken to a 
lot of people about this, but at the worst point when I was really fucked 
up, I can understand how people give in to the euphoric feeling and die 
in deep water black-outs. Because as scared as I was, I felt fuckin' 
good. I don't know how you can say you feel good and think you're gonna 
die at the same time. But I can say this: I could have very easily said, 
"Oh, fuck this." And die.

  But I've got a two-year-old boy, I've got a wife. I thought about that 
when I starting to get that blacked-out feeling. I saw my son on that 
dive. I said, I'm not leaving the kid, what am I stupid? I'm going to 100 
feet and I'm doing deco.

  So, I think I'm pulling myself up this cable, and at about 175 feet, I 
can see blue in the background, everything's clearing up, I'm starting to 
see some divers again up above me at 130 feet, 150, and I can read my 
gauge, I can read my pressure gauge--I've got 1.000 psi. 175 feet, 150, 
140. I get to 100 feet, I dump the air out of my BC, and I say thank the 
fuckin' Lord. I do my "Hail Mary"s and "Our Father"s, I swim up to 40 
feet, I start my deco, I go over to the 60/40 mix,
and I do my deco.

  During my deco, Joe Odom swims over. I write on my slate: "Scared myself
today," and pass the slate over to him.  He writes down: "Were you in 
control7"
  I write: "I thought I was, but wasn't.

  So we get out of the water and I describe to him what happened on the 
dive. And he says that noise is very typical. If someone hasn't heard 
that noise, then he hasn't been that deep on air.
  That's called the "wah-wah." He says when you hear that noise, you've 
been
fucked up on air, you've been deep on air.

  I'm a damn good diver, but I don't do deep air diving. If it wasn't for 
all of my years of training, all of my years of acquiring knowledge, and 
general good diving skills, and the strong desire to live, I can 
understand how people just give in and die.

   I  probably learned more on that dive that I could do in a hundred
dives...about dive ability, about the physiological true effects of gases 
on one's body, why we shouldn't be diving deep on air. I learned an awful 
lot about my own ability, tolerance, and desire to live.

 -------------------------------------------------------------------
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