Recreational DIR Diving: Good or Bad Is DIR really “doing it right” for recreational divers? About a two years ago, some of my dive instructor buddies were at a very popular California dive site. As they were gearing up for a dive, chaos erupted just outside the entry point. A diver was missing. Very quickly, […]
Preventing Diver Fatalities Diver Fatalities Happen But, DAN research clearly shows the majority of diver deaths could be prevented. As a diving instructor, the worst thing imaginable is the thought of a fatal incident involving a student. I obsess over diving safety, not only during the dive but before and after as well. I try […]
In-water recompression: Good idea? Bad idea? What is it anyway? A few weeks ago I came across the following article: Take Me Back Down: One Diver’s “Over The Counter” Remedy For DCIs If you have any deep diving training at all, chances are the topic of in-water recompression has come up at least once. The concept […]
Monterey Divers: Please help keep the Pacific Grove Hyperbaric Chamber in business I dive in and around Monterey fairly frequently. I have for decades and I love it there. As divers, we always have in the back of our minds, that there exists the possibility of getting bent. But, since diving injuries are rare, we tend […]
My first set of scuba tanks was a pair of “tiny doubles” (1800psi 38’s, or so I’m told). I suspect they are actually 45’s, and, when filled 10% over, 50’s. They were manufactured by ScubaPro in 1972, but I got them used about 10 years after that. I was really excited to get them because […]
Don’t believe everything you read on scuba diving message boards I hate to be negative, but some of the most ridiculous things I have ever read about diving come from diving message boards. This is especially true at the technical level. For example, I read a lengthy thread a few nights ago where someone posted a […]
I just came across a blog by a diver in Australia (Read it here). He’s an interesting guy, with obviously a lot of experience. Initially, I stumbled across it trying to find out how much actual diving experience Dave Shaw had prior to losing his life in a South African cave. Turns out, not a […]
Should no-decompression diving be renamed no-stop diving? Earlier, I was semi-involved in a discussion about terminology regarding no-decompression diving, or diving within the no decompression limits (NDL) that define sport or recreational diving. I suggested that every dive is a decompression dive. I’m not the first to make that assertion. The theory goes like this. […]
Dive planning I recently came across John Chatterton’s blog. You might know him as the host of Deep Sea Detectives. For the last several weeks, I’ve been thinking about dive planning and how to convince my recreational students how valuable it is to follow an established dive plan. Then, I read this post by Chatterton: […]
Online dive logs In the early days of dive computers, uploading dive data to a personal computer wasn’t even on the radar. My first dive computer was an Oceanic Datamax Sport, a solid computer that was compact, easy to read and simple to operate. It would store quite a few dives, but didn’t provide a […]
