🚀 go-pugleaf

>>>>> On Tue, 17 Nov 92 19:36:10 GMT, mayne@phi.cs.fsu.edu (William Mayne) said:

	William> Has anyone here experienced breathing difficulty due to increased gas
	William> density? I don't doubt that it can happen at extreme depths, though
		 :
	William> deeper than 130 feet on air. I have remembered to pay attention, too.
	William> At what depth does this happen?

I've heard that you notice the higher density at large depths (say 200
meters ~600ft) but I can't remember where I heard it... :-/

	William> Then either your idea of what constitutes "some
	William> detail" is different than mine or your PADI course
	William> was much better than mine. When I took open water
	William> narcosis was covered in a few sentences and the other
	William> topics mentioned even less, if at all. On the other
	William> hand if you stay within PADI limits it is easy to
	William> argue that such knowledge isn't very important.

Jeez, I can see why the CMAS people are looking down on the PADI
certificate.  You actually dive to 130 feet without any knowledge of
N2-narcosis? 

	William> I don't think that decompression is the only or even
	William> the main reason to be cautious about going deep. I
	William> doubt that most people could do a successful free
	William> ascent from 130 feet in case of total air loss,
	William> starting without a fresh breath. At least it would be
	William> risky. Also air supply goes quickly at depth and I'm
	William> told that some people actually don't have it together
	William> well enough to monitor their time, depth, and air
	William> supply.

One is advised not to go deeper than 20m on the first CMAS
certificate (**) and 30m on the second (***)  When you go deeper, you
lose much bottom time, and besides there's not a lot down there anyway
(except wrecks of course, but then again, you shouldn't really be
messing about with those unless you know that you know what you're doing)


--
 = Ketil Malde                     In real life:  ketil@ii.uib.no =
 = Nuke the whales!                    Honk if you love unicorns! =