Those who have dived with me know how highly I value scooters (DPVs) as tools to enhance both the fun the safety of technical diving. The Suex XJ-S I purchased a couple years ago continues to be one of my favorite pieces of kit.
Yet as with any powerful tool, improper use can get you in trouble in new and possibly unanticipated ways. Here’s my take on the matter for Alert DIver.
Coming back safely from an ocean dive is more than a question of personal dive skills and a prudent approach to decompression. After surfacing, there is one more step: getting picked up by a boat. It sucks when that doesn’t happen.
From basics like DSMBs and good coordination with the crew all the way to personal locator beacons and other electronic communication devices, here is my review of ways and means to make sure you will be back home in time for dinner.
The third part of my series on CO2 has been published by Alert Diver (EU)!
In the first part, I shared a personal close-call story and gave a brief overview of the carbon dioxide metabolism in the human body.
In the second part, we examined the mechanics of carbon dioxide generation and elimination, the complications introduced by depth and dive equipment, as well as the deeply unpleasant and potentially devastating effects of hypercapnia.
In the third and final part, I’m talking about ways and means at our disposal to prevent the kind of problems we spent the first two parts seeking to understand, avoid common mistakes, and become better and safer divers overall.
You can read it here: https://alertdiver.eu/en_US/articles/carbon-dioxide-the-dreaded-enemy-part-3/
Inspired by a talk by Mauritius Valente Bell at RF4 in Malta, my latest piece for Alert Diver deals with diving in mixed teams of open and closed-circuit divers.
While Mauritius’ presentation focused mainly on the perspective of rebreather divers, my piece is addressed to an audience of experienced recreational and open-circuit technical divers. Check it out to learn how the dark side ticks.
Shore diving in Taiwan is pretty special and something that is close to my heart. I’m glad I got to write about it for the Alert Diver blog.
Being able to predict how long your gas supply lasts is an essential prerequisite for dive planning. I wrote a brief explainer for Alert Diver Magazine.
Everybody agrees that planning your gas reserves is an essential part of dive safety. At the same time, hardly anybody teaches it. That’s because it involves numbers and a bit of logical thinking – two things that recreational training agencies avoid like the plague. Instead, they’d rather talk about how snorkels come in different colors.
Now, some responsible instructors, including quite a few a know personally, go above and beyond and teach proper gas planning anyway, maybe in an AOW course or a Deep Diving specialty. However, if you want to take a class that actually requires systematic gas planning as part of its curriculum, you basically have to learn tec diving.
While I’m the last person to dissuade anyone from taking a tec diving class, I still don’t think that recreational divers deserve to be left in the dark like this. And if you want to know how I teach gas planning at the recreational level, then you can read my article in Alert Diver.
Tim Blömeke 