Deep air
Grrrrr… The opinions of a few divers who were out in Egypt when I was (on a different boat) are really making me cross.
It’s one thing deciding to dive to 60 meters on a single tank of air, but quite another having a public p1ssing contest about it - justifying if not seeking to glorify their actions in a way which will act as peer pressure on other, less experienced divers to follow in their footsteps is irresponsible behaviour.
Deep air is, arguably, divable at this depth and the warmer waters and good vis of the Red Sea certainly make it easier than at home - perhaps encouraging a false sense of security. But doing it with no redundancy is not big and it’s not clever.
Having a buddy is not redundancy in this context. Regardless of narcosis and the delayed reaction times we would expect to see from someone diving air at these depths, the minimum gas required to get 2 divers up from 60 meters in an emergency is 210 bar in a single 12 - so it is clear that there was absolutely no gas planning on their part. With a decompression overhead, on a 60 meter dive, if one o ring had gone, or one regulator had freeflowed using the buddy system on a single tank would have resulted in two bent (if not dead) divers.
I’m staggered that otherwise responsible divers have been carried away by an agency point scoring match to put themselves in a position where they could end up bent or dead. I don’t want to be in a position where I can say I told you so, I want everyone to come back safe.
So why say it here - rather than to the divers directly? Well in part it is cowardice, I so don’t want another ruck. It’s also part apathy, they know all the arguments, their own agencies do not support such behaviour, so why should I care - if they are that hell bent on behaving like this, what business is it of mine?
But most importantly of all, there is simply no point. Some people are so anti DIR that they will put themselves out to try to prove it wrong - however misguided this is. There is no agency in the world which advocates diving air on a single cylinder to 60 meters - yet it turns into a DIR ruck.
So why did they do it. Simple, like many divers before them, because they wanted to do the dive, had no choice as to how to do it, but decided to go anyway with what they had. They survived. Good. But that fact proves nothing.
Clare - dived and enjoyed the Elphinstone Arch - on trimix.
