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Marc, In France there is a prohibition against Frenchmen being in the water when greater than 12 volts AC is being applied. The rule came into being regarding safety in swimming pools. But, believe it or not it applies to the ocean as well. When I was in France doing the work on the CSS Alabama in the English Channel, we used two 1200 watt HMI lights to like the wreck. They were surface supplied with 120 volts AC by cable. Because of the rule, only my American assistant and I could be in the water when the lights were lit. The French divers sat on the boat. My assistant and I took two lights and 800 feet of cable, two tripods and rope, three cameras and two Subatec lights down. We set the lights up on tripods and tied them to the wreck, pointed them and my assistant took a Subatec and served as a model while I shot two cameras worth of film of one subject and the model. We did this all in 15 minutes from the surface to beginning of ascent. We killed the lights and let the French guys recover everything. We did this once a day for several days. I returned each of the next two years with portable HMI's that do not fall under the rule and finished the job the results of which are published in the Dec. 94 issue of National Geographic. Here is what would happen if the French divers were in the water with the lights on. Say, someone on the boat not diving broke his leg or had a heart attack completely unrelated to the dives, and had to be treated on the boat and it was discovered that the French divers were violating the law about the ac current in the water. The victim's national insurance (socialized medicine) would be null and void. The same would be true for any dive accident. Yes, the French could have dived and nothing happened and no one would be the wiser. No electricity police would check. But none of the divers and especially the commercial divers wanted to take the risk nor would take the risk. The same would apply to the prohibition against using helium in scuba bottles on a commercial operation. It is prohibited and must be surface supplied. Rod On Fri, 6 Oct 1995, Marc Dufour wrote: > At 03:15 PM 10/5/95 BST, A.Appleyard wrote: > > > When computerized rebreathers are finally developed and on sale, how useful > ... > >passed a work diving law, and I read in a newspaper that working biologists > >had to fight #@%$ hard in Parliament to be allowed to continue using scuba > >without air lines and lifelines. > ... > >practically using mixture rebreathers without lines, systematically ignoring > >the law until the law is repealed or changed [1]. I suspect that the only > ... > >from scuba, only from lines, don't deserve to be respected when practical > >conditions advise the opposite. (How much of this is a fear that helium gas > >supplying companies will lose profit if methods that use less heliox per > >heliox dive become common?) What is the state of the law about work divers > >breathing nitrox from scuba or from a lifeline? > > How such a law (like the french prohibition, for example) can be enforced > anyways? Does everybody who goes out at sea has to log a diveplan to a > central authority? Or does every outgoing diveship gets inspected on it's > way by a patrol boat from the local DISSE (* Directorate of Inspection of > Subaqueous Surface Endeavour)??? > > It's fine to pass laws, but if those laws are clearly unenforcable or > whatever, this is getting ridiculous. > > -- > Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@terra.net'. > Send subscription/archive requests to `techdiver-request@terra.net'. >
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