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On Thu, 5 Oct 1995, Roderick Farb wrote: > I neglected to say that the dives (200 feet, dark and 49 degrees F) in > France on the CSS Alabama were all done on air. Because some of the divers > on the project are commercial divers working for MELOX, COGEMA and COMEX > insurance regs. prohibit the use of helium in scuba tanks. So all > several hundred diver-dives made in the past nine years have been done > on air. Without incident. Their outstanding work has been published in > numerous scholarly journals in France and the US. Suffice it to say that you can dive 200 feet on air. Professionals as in this case do it not because they want to, but rather because legally there is no other way. The problem that I see is that people who do not have the proper approach to these kinds of dives tend to pay the ULTIMATE price, their life. A little out of shape, a little too much exertion, a little under hydrated and wham bam thank you mam! When I first became interested in a cave dive that required a QUICK drop to 250 with an excursion at 200 I asked people that I considered knowledgable about diving about deep air. I asked why did so many people seemed to do it with impunity? The response I got was that yes they did do it and you read about it, but did you read all about the many ones that didn't live through it. Something about "natural selection" at work. With the recent spate of deaths at medium depths due to wrong gas selection I think that the quote that might be appropriate would be "high PPO2s can be hazardous to your health". Seriously, if the divers in question could have used trimix do you think they would have used air? Safe Diving r.b.
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