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AU>ANS-    And rightly so. An industry has no right to dictate to us.
AU>        The dive industry exists to serve the diver, the diver does
AU>        not exist to consume what the industry produces.

Paul, though I don't agree with your stance on mix vs. air completely,
I do like your closing statement!

Here's a question:
   Why is it that the cavers are pro-mix to the point of
   condemning deep air diving and the wreck divers think
   the cavers have been sucking helium for too long?

Now before you think I'm trying to start wreck/cave fights,
it does appear to me that the arguments pro and con deep air
ride along this line. Or perhaps it's ocean divers vs cavers?

Here's an air divers perspective. I'll dive the Andrea Doria
again this year. Max depth is 240, I usually get to about
235 fsw in the morning dive and 210 or 220 in the afternoon (we
do 2 dives a day for 2 days). I'll wear twin aluminum 80's with a
40 cu ft 50/50 pony stuck between them. I'll have an O2 rig on the 
surface, BUT I can do my entire dive and deco with what's on my
back (using the rule of thirds). My rig is designed for low drag, 
snag proof diving. All of the wrecks up here are covered in monofilament 
and nets so the less gear you have dangling off of you the better off 
you are. Now 65 miles south of Nantucket the North Atlantic can get a
bit nasty, I've had swing bottles beat me half to death before
and can't see why someone would expose themselves to that. Other
benefits of mix, you're colder, you have to hang longer. Okay,
so your head might be a bit clearer than mine, not much and not
enough of a benefit for me to run right over and start throwing
my money away - mix training and gas ain't cheap. Some people say
that air is unsafe to those depths, but they'll use the same PPO2
for their deco that I use for my dive, remember that's after those
OTU's have built up, and no one can supply any hard data on what is
and what isn't safe. I can see how in a cave you're doing a couple
of hundred or even thousands of feet of penetration, you really want
a clear head to find your way home. For my 20 minutes on the bottom I
might go in 60', it's been a progressive penetration and all I have
to do is get outside the hull, tie off my deco line and blow a bag
and I'm on my way to the surface. Yes I'll run a line and maybe even
lay out some strobes. I've been diving for 15 years, the last 6 deep
on air. I like the simplicity (maybe it's got something to do with
that IQ thing) of being unencumbered by things like buddies (or teams), 
complicated dive plans (travel mix, bottom mix, 1st deco mix, intermediate
deco mix, surface deco), my narcosis tolerance has always been very high,
so I can't see what the big deal is on diving the "perfect gas". Perfect
is AIR, we were built for it, I don't hear anyone advocating .21 as the
preferred PPO2. In ten years the kids diving deep are going to think
we were all crazy for not diving with a variable PPO2 rebreather
that pumped in just enough helium (or whatever inert gas they'll
preach as being safe then) to keep your head clear. 

That said, I'm probably going to have to dive mix once this year just so
I can say I've done it and perhaps not be so ignorant of what is available.
And one day I'll even stick my head inside a cave - I still can't
figure out why you guys swim in holes in the ground (I can't figure out
why Rich plays with fish at 300 fsw either).

MRWConsult@ex*.co*             /\/\/
---
 � DeLuxe� 1.25 #11829 � Silly Humans . . .

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