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I dove Conch Republic out of Tavernier a few years back, they were pretty solid. The only problem we had was everyone forgot what the recall signal was, so the captain was all but yanking people out of the water as a waterspout approached the dive boat 
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Feb 11, 2017 06:28
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lord1234 posted:Do you mind telling us about your hit? What were your symptoms? What kind of chamber ride(s) did you take? What chamber did you go to? How long from onset to treatment? There is a big discussion going on at some of the tech scuba forums(CaveDiver, TDS) about in water recompression, and the lack of chambers(in Fl) for divers) This is not my first hit. In every instance the symptoms have been distinctive and very upsetting. The first (September 2015) was the most immediately troubling. I almost passed out on the way back from the dive. September 2015. Justified hit. 18m dive. Blue corner, Palau. 32% O2. Glorious site, rough seas. I overexerted myself trying to angle for better pics while tethered to the reef. Overly sharp ascent from 18m, 3 minute safety stop at 5m cut short by 1 minute (was worried I would run out of air). With hindsight, I should have tried running out of air at 5m instead. Or relying on my buddy. Anything would have been better than the feeling of deep... wrongness I experienced about 20 seconds after surfacing. It's like nothing else. Not seasickness, not animal stings. Pins and needles in my limbs, numbness in patches. Nausea, blurred vision, migraine, popping joints, itchiness, compulsive yawning. I had pure oxygen once the zodiac reached the main boat (Aggressor Palau). Symptoms receded within 2 or 3 hours. Drank huge amounts of water. Dive crew tried to convince me I was imagining it/suffering from seasickness - pointed out I didn't have any rashes, that i was in good physical shape, that they do 'no deco' diving and the safety stop is just a precaution. After a while I started to believe them. Fairly passive fucked around with this message at 07:38 on Feb 11, 2017 |
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Feb 11, 2017 07:31
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Wow. 18m and 32%O2 seems practically impossible to get bent from. How long was the dive? The tables tell me you need to stay there 90min to get into deco range, and I doubt you were down nearly that long. Definitely seems like you have some sort of predisposition to it.
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Feb 11, 2017 08:37
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Yeah even with a rapid ascent (and that sounded controlled at least) you wouldn't expect a noticeable bend on that profile. Definitely get checked for a PFO because that doesn't sound like a normal reaction and it may be a sign of some underlying condition. Are you predisposed to skin bends too? Edit: talked to my medic girlfriend, your symptoms match with having too much CO2, hypoxia, which also isn't a normal reaction. Go see a doctor, preferably one who knows something about diving. MrNemo fucked around with this message at 13:55 on Feb 11, 2017 |
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Feb 11, 2017 13:50
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Getting bent at 18 meters is nearly impossible. I'm betting big bucks that you have a PFO. I've done ascents from 60 feet with zero side effects and zero safety stop after a 60-minute dive without any side effects. I do not subscribe to the gue method of minimum decompression. However given your symptoms and the fact that you have been bent more than once the likelihood of a PFO is quite high. I actually have a PFO myself, but due to the expense to get it fixed in the US which is around $35,000 I am waiting to get bent so that insurance will pay for it. And yes I do Tech and Cave Dives. All of my buddies are aware of the PFO and I do not hide it from anyone
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Feb 11, 2017 15:33
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I completed 18 dives in the previous 4 days. Slowly building up my nitrogen levels. Checked my records- misremembered several very important details: this is the dive. The most unsafe dive profile I've ever done. I'm usually boringly cautious but I'd been getting complacent and arrogant (that early deep plunge was to look at a big shark) and nature punished me appropriately. 
Fairly passive fucked around with this message at 17:03 on Feb 11, 2017 |
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Feb 11, 2017 16:40
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Fairly passive posted:I completed 18 dives in the previous 4 days. Slowly building up my nitrogen levels. This dive is completely within reason IMO. You did a decent safety stop and your average depth(despite a max depth of 32m) was 17.5m. I would recommend fixing your buoyancy at your safety stop a bit, but mine, and the rest of the threads recommendations still stand. Go get a PFO test. This is something you would see a cardiologist for, not a regular doctor.
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Feb 11, 2017 21:45
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Also like I said before, your described symptoms before are also in line with a bad case of hypoxia, if there was no visible bend symptoms it could be that it's something other than DCS. Whether it is or not it's definitely far and above what I'd expect of a healthy diver without any other underlying issue. You might be super unlucky but you should get yourself checked out by a doctor.
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Feb 12, 2017 01:28
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To continue... on the (multiple) flights back from Palau I noticed that the itching, tingling and numbness in my hands and lower legs reached a peak when in the air, and reduced a bit on the ground. For four days I attempted to struggle through work while suffering from a weird brain fog, terrible fatigue and aching joints. Symptoms would fade in and out at odd moments. On the fourth day my left leg suddenly went completely numb below the knee and half my vision disappeared. I managed to get a friend to drive me to hospital and after some explanation was transfered to a facilty with a pressure chamber. Once in the chamber and at a simulated depth >15m the symptoms disappeared entirely. As the session ended the symptoms reappeared a little. Two further sessions eliminated things entirely. That was 2015. I've now had three brushes with deco. I'm not diving again until I identify the cause. If it's PFO (seems probable) I'll get it fixed.
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Feb 12, 2017 18:09
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Fairly passive posted:To continue... on the (multiple) flights back from Palau I noticed that the itching, tingling and numbness in my hands and lower legs reached a peak when in the air, and reduced a bit on the ground.  Good luck to you.
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Feb 12, 2017 19:03
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Jesus christ that sounds loving terrifying.
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Feb 12, 2017 21:51
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I think there are a lot of small factors involved in that first (and biggest) hit that individually wouldn't mean much but added together were enough to push me over the edge. 1) I'd gotten annoyed with the hassle of wearing a proper wetsuit and had taken to wearing a super thin stinger suit instead. 2) I'd decided to take some time out each day to do pull ups and push ups on parts of the boat. 3) My swimming style is really inefficient and I usually exert myself a lot. 4) I'm a bit of a gym rat and I usually use a vasodilator when training. Does this mean I'm at greater risk when I'm not using it? 5) I'm prone to flatulence. Someone told me this is apparently a risk factor for the bends. Dunno why. 6) Unusually low body fat / high muscle mass compared to other divers. I know they say high body fat is a risk but maybe this is as well? 7) Drinking coke zero? Fairly passive fucked around with this message at 09:35 on Feb 13, 2017 |
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Feb 13, 2017 07:48
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Fairly passive posted:I think there are a lot of small factors involved in that first (and biggest) hit that individually wouldn't mean much but added together were enough to push me over the edge. Awesome troll dude. lord1234 fucked around with this message at 11:56 on Feb 13, 2017 |
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Feb 13, 2017 11:28
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lord1234 posted:Awesome troll dude. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4745042/
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Feb 13, 2017 14:15
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That's almost brand new as far as research goes (Feb of last year). I'd love it if they could do the same trial on people, but that runs into the obvious ethical concerns so this may be as definitive as the science will ever get.
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Feb 13, 2017 15:35
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My mum's side of the family suffers from horrible migraines with auras (possible PFO) and my dad's side has excessive flatulence with painful trapped wind. In true goon fashion I inherited both. Throw these together with some shoddy dive practices and other physiological quirks and you have an outlier who can get bent on what should be a pretty safe dive. I guess the tables can't cover absolutely everyone in all circumstances.
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Feb 13, 2017 16:51
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DeadlyMuffin posted:That video is awesome! Where was it taken? Caribbean somewhere? Well thanks! This was in Key Largo, I can't remember the site exactly but definitely somewhere in the marine sanctuary.
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Feb 13, 2017 18:38
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The Vikings posted:Going to be in Miami for work at the end of March and I'm thinking about staying an extra day to do a couple of dives. Any recommendations on good sites and operators on the northern keys? How are the conditions that time of year (my local diving is California)? Awesome! I would definitely recommend diving in Key Largo (first key you hit driving from anywhere) vs. going farther south. There is decent diving from Tavernier, Islamorada, etc. but Key Largo has the biggest marine protected area and most accessible wrecks as well as a LOT more choice in operators. If you want a small boat then your best choice is probably the OG dive operator Quiescence as they take a max of 6 divers per boat: http://www.quiescence.com Most of the other operators here use larger boats and will take 20 or so people if they can... they are all pretty good because there are so many here that a crappy one will quickly go out of business once the word gets out. One thing to watch out for is that everyone also sells snorkeling tours, so if you are with one of the smaller single boat operators it can severely limit the sites you might go to if you have snorkelers on board (you stand a good chance of going to the very boring Christ of the Abyss statue in this case) Personally I would recommend diving with Rainbow Reef: http://www.rainbowreef.us for a few reasons:
No matter who you go with check out Rainbow's dive condition reports to see what's going on out there leading up to your trip! http://www.rainbowreef.us/key-largo-diving-weather-report/ Conditions are generally really good but are very dependent on the winds. Everyone here pretty much uses windfinder and the NOAA station on Molasses Reef to try to gauge conditions: http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=MLRF1 I would guess that the water temps will be in the mid-upper 70s by then. If you go to one of the wrecks, you can expect a pretty short dive because they are 70-100 ft. and a total square profile as they are all well away from the reef systems so there's no going shallow toward the end. Most wreck dives are followed by a (shallow) reef dive but sometimes when conditions are good and people want to you can double dip the wreck. If you do reef dives you can expect 15-40 ft. depending on the sites with most averaging 25 or so. Some people that dive here for the first time get freaked out by the short (~15 min) surface intervals on the reef dives but I have come to love them especially when the wind is blowing and it feels warmer in the water! We dive with Rainbow every weekend when the weather is good and we don't have anyone in town, so if you are here on a weekend maybe we'll see you on the boat. If you want to know anything else just ask here or PM me, that goes for anyone that may want to come dive in Key Largo! 
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Feb 13, 2017 20:02
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We saw a shark scatter a school of fish on a night dive on whichever reef has the Buddha statue. Also had a ray come hang out with us, saw a sleeping sea turtle under a reef, had one particularly gutsy cuttlefish try and pick a fight with the biggest diver of our group (the most  thing I may ever see), along with the unidentified shark scattering the fish. The shallow reefs were the best, all the bottom time you'd want with short surface intervals and plenty of fish.
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Feb 13, 2017 20:10
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Key West dive trip starts on Monday. Yessssssssssss.
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Feb 18, 2017 21:54
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I got to dive in a full face mask Friday! Being able to breathe out of your nose and not have a reg stuck in your mouth is a fairly liberating and strange feeling. The extra air in the mask seemed to want to rotate me more vertical than I was used to, which was also a little weird. It was pretty fun though, and I get to conduct the dive shows at our aquarium using that mask and integrated comms starting next week
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Feb 19, 2017 07:07
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Did you have the radio communicator ? We had that when we dove the Denver aquarium and had to use their gear. It was loving great but is also stupid expensive. Still, being able to talk in the full face mask is amazing. Even if ours were listen only.
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Feb 20, 2017 03:54
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Icon Of Sin posted:I got to dive in a full face mask Friday! Being able to breathe out of your nose and not have a reg stuck in your mouth is a fairly liberating and strange feeling. The extra air in the mask seemed to want to rotate me more vertical than I was used to, which was also a little weird. It was pretty fun though, and I get to conduct the dive shows at our aquarium using that mask and integrated comms starting next week How do you handle sharing air, if it comes to that? Take off the whole thing?
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Feb 20, 2017 05:57
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DeadlyMuffin posted:How do you handle sharing air, if it comes to that? Take off the whole thing? None of our regs have an octo. Instead, we carry a tiny tank (like 9 cubic feet) that has an integrated reg/mouthpiece setup. The drill I had to do was ditch the full face mask, swap to the backup bottle, and be guided (maskless) to the surface. Fairly strange, though I think I could handle clearing the big one if I needed to now. let it mellow posted:Did you have the radio communicator ? We had that when we dove the Denver aquarium and had to use their gear. Ours is cable instead of radio. e: this is our spare air setup. It's fine for a tank whose max depth is 21 ft, but it still takes a good pull to get the air flowing. It's also only 3 cu ft, not 9 http://www.leisurepro.com/p-sx27y/s...LP-adType%5EPLA Icon Of Sin fucked around with this message at 06:57 on Feb 20, 2017 |
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Feb 20, 2017 06:17
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I received a complete babbys first scuba course as a gift for Xmas and finally got in the pool last night. The instructor operates under TDI/SDI and it ended up being a one on one session. The elearning for Open Water was a breeze. I'm a touch surprised at how fatigued my lower body is. The experience is very similar to learning how to skydive with being presented a wholly "this shouldn't be happening" activity. By the end of the night I could tell how much I had adapted: equalizing at first was very difficult but was able to reliably clear by the last exercise and bouancy control via air in chest volume, this was really an amazing feeling when it clicked.
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Feb 22, 2017 13:53
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Anyone been scuba diving in Cuba? I'm off to the Holguin area and was wondering about anyone's thoughts of the area?
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Feb 22, 2017 16:12
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Icon Of Sin posted:None of our regs have an octo. Instead, we carry a tiny tank (like 9 cubic feet) that has an integrated reg/mouthpiece setup. The drill I had to do was ditch the full face mask, swap to the backup bottle, and be guided (maskless) to the surface. Fairly strange, though I think I could handle clearing the big one if I needed to now. it's probably hard to lose.
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Feb 23, 2017 02:48
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Key West dive trip report: Vandenberg trip on Tuesday got scrubbed and we lost a day of diving due to the dive operator allowing a large tour group to gangle-gently caress their schedule and pushing individuals with specific reservations off the boat. They offered us dives this morning which were canceled due to lovely weather. Not happy, will not be recommending that operator. The wet side of the operation was absolutely superb, though. The captain and DMs were extremely thorough and helpful, without being intrusive. Reef dives were awesome: Got buzzed by a Carribean reef shark a couple times, saw tons of barracuda, found $12 cash and a Canadian student's ID card. Good times. Need to find a small dump bag for crap I find on the bottom. Plastic bags, ID cards, mask straps, etc.
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Feb 23, 2017 03:58
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Bangkero posted:Anyone been scuba diving in Cuba? I'm off to the Holguin area and was wondering about anyone's thoughts of the area? The DAN winter magazine just did a spread on diving in Cuba. From what I've heard word of mouth, the diving is great, but food and accommodations on the island vary wildly. Let us know how it went! MrYenko posted:Need to find a small dump bag for crap I find on the bottom. Plastic bags, ID cards, mask straps, etc. I always collect garbage, whether diving, snorkeling, swimming, whatever. It just pisses me off to see it. Just about my only complaint about my new Knighthawk BC is that the pockets kind of suck. Everything else has been amazing about it, though! I love how I can put some weight on my back to adjust trim, and the integrated front pouches are great, too. Also, the inflator is super sensitive, allowing for fine control over buoyancy.
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Feb 23, 2017 14:44
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I really should sign up for a garbage collection dive. I'm thinking about finally buying regs. My LDS have helped me narrow it down to SP mk25/G260 (or S600) or Apeks DST/XTX50. I'm erring on the side of the Apeks as they are a bit cheaper (one plus of Brexit), environmentally sealed and come standard with flexi hoses. What is the gooncensus?
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Feb 27, 2017 01:21
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I'm considering buying regs as well. I was told ScubaPro mk2 (or something, can't really remember) were a good bet as they were the most commonly used throughout the world, and thus getting them serviced would be less of a headache.
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Feb 27, 2017 01:51
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They're both bullet proof regs with pretty international servicing options and easily available parts. I've got a set of Scubapro R295s with a mk17 and they're great regs. The Apeks are pretty much the gold standard of British diving and the XTX50s are an excellent choice. The Scubapros might have a slight edge in international support and parts if you travel a lot for diving. If I was in your place I'd probably go for the cheaper option unless there's an aesthetic preference for you just because there's not really any practical reasons to go for one over another.
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Feb 27, 2017 02:20
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MrNemo posted:They're both bullet proof regs with pretty international servicing options and easily available parts. I've got a set of Scubapro R295s with a mk17 and they're great regs. The Apeks are pretty much the gold standard of British diving and the XTX50s are an excellent choice. The Scubapros might have a slight edge in international support and parts if you travel a lot for diving. It's funny, aesthetically I like the look of the G260 the most but not if it means I have to pay $200 more for it. Any opinions on flexi hoses? I've never used them before.
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Feb 27, 2017 02:44
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Anyone have any recommendations for regs with easy breath draw when inverted?
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Feb 27, 2017 03:37
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My wife and I really like our hog / edge regulators. We have about 80 dives on them and are more than happy with them. We just sent them in for their first service and I have plans to take a course so I can self service them.
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Feb 27, 2017 03:56
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Red_Fred posted:It's funny, aesthetically I like the look of the G260 the most but not if it means I have to pay $200 more for it. I replaced my hoses with flexi abut 20 dives ago and it's actually really nice, especially if you travel. They coil tighter for transport, and it doesn't have that constant slight tug out of your mouth like standard hoses do.
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Feb 27, 2017 16:22
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Red_Fred posted:I really should sign up for a garbage collection dive. Oddly, I just got the SP Mk25evo/S600, and my girlfriend dives the Apeks DST/XTX50, so I can actually directly compare the two, since I've dived both. (Though the Apeks only once, and pretty shallow.) They're damned near identical in breath draw, which is to say they both breath extremely easy, and both have breathing effort adjustments. The S600 also has a pre-dive/dive selector, so you can keep whatever breathing setting you want, and still prevent freeflows without having to readjust. They're both really, really good regs, and light-years ahead of probably any rental regs you're likely to run into.
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Feb 27, 2017 16:43
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I'm going to buy a new regulator set next year, and I was considering the SP MK17 for a first stage, because it is fully sealed (I might want to do some ice diving in the future). I wonder how much different the pull is between the flagship MK25 and the MK17?
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Feb 27, 2017 16:55
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MrYenko posted:Oddly, I just got the SP Mk25evo/S600, and my girlfriend dives the Apeks DST/XTX50, so I can actually directly compare the two, since I've dived both. (Though the Apeks only once, and pretty shallow.) I would agree about the rentals except my shop rents Aqualung Legends which I understand are pretty much up there with the Apeks and SP I mentioned.  Think I'll just go with the Apeks, thanks everyone.
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Feb 27, 2017 21:24
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Squashy Nipples posted:I'm going to buy a new regulator set next year, and I was considering the SP MK17 for a first stage, because it is fully sealed (I might want to do some ice diving in the future). As far as I understand the only real difference is the house routing, which is a concern if you're using twins. I've got a pair mk17s and they're great. They breathe very well at 45m in the UK and they've worked well in 5C water. I don't know if the 25s are better but I couldn't see myself needing much more.
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Feb 28, 2017 03:13
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