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Hi Thomas, I apreciate your constructive answer. I understand your point. I hope you will understand mine. Dahab has a nasty reputation. Just jump off the reef table and dive as deep as your conservation instinct allows you. 10-12 deaths a year. Many of them those young instructors you're talking about. ALL of them recreational divers, very short diving education, experience and of course equipment. There's now several ways to try and prevent the problem. The first one is to say: Do not dive below 30m. Close our eyes and think as hard as we can: Nobody should dive deeper than 30m on air. It has been tried. Sadly enough, it does not work. Nobody ever stopped me from doing what I wanted. 315 ft, I don't know if someone tried to stop you, but that day it didn't seem to work. An other method is to say: Yes, I know an endless list of people past the Arch on air. Yes, it is possible. The record shows though, far too many people died. A quick analysis demonstrates that most if not all of those fatalities are due to the usual lack of training, experience, knowledge, equipment and general diving awareness. There's a way to dramaticaly increase the chances of survival. It's called technical diving. As unbelievable as it might seem to you, we're hoping to save lives by promoting deep air diving instead of blinding ourselves. We're trying to offer a much safer alternative. We believe in education, not in forbidding. The Prohibition did'nt work. It actually made the drinking problem worse, by forcing people to hide and pretend they are not what they actually are. Note that the drug prohibition doesn't seem to work either. I'm writing to you from Egypt. A country in which Helium is barely available (we are the only center in Sinai offering it, among 100+ dive centers). And outrageously expensive. Most of my students are resident professional divers, making usually less than $1000 a month. But diving everyday, several times usually. How can I tell them: the only way is DIR, as you define it? And spending several hundred dollars each dive? Aside from all that, as far as I know nobody came with a satisfying explanation about Rob Palmer's death. You can attribute it to whatever you want. Endless discussions can follow. All that sounds sterile to me. Your comparison between narcosis and drunk driving is wrong. After years of heavy motorcycle racing I have been hit by a drunk driver, while I was waiting at the stoplight on my motorcycle. I'm now doing deep open-water diving, usually alone. My chances of being hit by a narced diver are pretty slim. I would certainly act differently if I was doing cave diving, wreck diving, or any kind of diving in which you rely on a team for your safety. Maybe all my thoughts have nothing to do on this list. Your problems seem to be different. Are they really? Your philosophy seems extremely safe. Only a lucky few can use it though. You probably could not use it when you went to 315ft. I'd just like to give a better chance of survival to the young instructor you probably were at that time (by de-strokifying him, maybe?). Aside from the irrealistic use of mixed-gas (in most of the world), and of drysuits (water temperature 30 degrees here in summer), I'm certain using some of your methods will improve the safety record around here. There's more subjects to be discussed. I'll put them on the table later on. Nice to meet you. Hugo. -----Original Message----- From: S I L E N T I M M E R S I O N <silent@cu*.ne*> To: Club Red <clubred@in*.co*> Date: Tuesday, May 18, 1999 2:23 PM Subject: Re: I do care Hugo, What I was checking for is if you are a deep air guy. I know too well that many instructors in your area like to breg about their personal depth records. The opinion about deep air on this list is VERY clear cut: Do not dive on air below 100ft. Now you might think, pfffffffff what crap that is... I can dive safely to 200ft or whatever your feeling about your comfort zone is. The limit we decided for though is a very safe limit. You must agree that there is minimal gas narcosis at this PO2 and PN2. We do not only take N2 into consideration when we talk about narcosis, also oxygen. So any dive below 100ft/30m we use mix and keep the END at 100ft/30m. Now the END we calculate using a different formula: (1-fHe)x(D+10)-10 This takes oxygen into the consideration. So, we dive any dive without any narcosis. This greatly enhances the dive pleasure aswell as the safety. I know you guys have a lot of 300ft deep air kings, young instructors that like to get the buzz that accompanies the deep air dive. Don't get me wrong Hugo, most on this list have done deep air, before this consensus was reached about two-three years ago. I too have a 315ft dive on air and a couple very close to that on my list. However, that time is years ago and it will never be part of my diving again. We believe that deep air diving is like putting a gun to your head and spinning the chamber with one bullet in it. Do you feel lucky? Rob Palmer was the last guy with brains that died, in your area, he was my instructor a year before his unfortunate deep air tragedy. Did my Draeger rebreather instr. trainer with him. Rob had numerous deep air dives, so why did he die this tim on air? And like him there are many more examples. Crap about adaption to N2 narcosis are bullshit, that is not only our finding but also backed up by studies that were done on the subject. Read Bennet&Elliot if you would like to know more about that. So basicly drunk driving and deep air are both very comparable exercises... :-) Not my game. The system you reffered to is called DIR and does not only work for cave diving in Florida, but also for places where you and I are diving. I am in Curaçao, the Dutch Caribbean. Very comparable with the Red Sea. Been in Eilat so I know. We use the DIr system all over the world, Florida caves, NW wreck diving, Curaçao reef diving, Swedish deep wreck diving, asia wreck diving, everywhere. The system does not change from it's basics wherever you go. The experience it is backed up with is scary... It is developed over 20 years, with the last refinements in the last 5 years. Used to be called "Hogarthian" now it is "Doing It Right". The main group that developed it is the WKPP, these cave divers have quite interesting records on their name. Longest penetration, 18000ft, 3hr bottom time, 8hr deco... Some dives up to 15hrs total time. All done with DIR gear and mentality. No accidents at all. So since you decided to say that you would like to know a little more, I decided to give you some info. Whatever you decide to do with it is your thing. You can ask any question you like about our methods, I will answer as good as possible. Could be interesting for you and for me. BTW the stroke thing is for guys not diving DIR, diving deep air and more of such stupidity. So whatever you want to be called is up to you I guess. :-) Looking forward to your reply, THOMAS -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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