a q u a C 0 R P S F 0 R U M

Is Deep Air Dead

by Jim Kelly a Illustration by Jason

'We're here at a technical diving conference. Technical diving was invented so that we wouldn't have to use air at 240 feet.

Thus spake hyperbaric physiologist and mixed-gas guru Dr. Bill Hamilton at last year's tek conference, driving home his final point during a panel discussion on deep air diving. His statement sank into the audience I with nary a ripple-an odd thing when you think about it, because in essence, Hamilton was telling his listeners that the subject they had come to hear about was modern diving equivalent of the Hindenburg. Deep air, he was saying, was outmoded, dangerous as hell, and ultimately not a whole lot of use to anybody in these more enlightened latter days

The view of deep air put forth by Hamilton at tek one that has taken on the force of orthodoxy in recent years, as the development and popularization of helium-based mixed-gas diving have enabled unprecedented numbers of new divers to enter the deep realms. Where once extreme depths were limited to those possessing some vague, semi-mystical quality that made them "good on deep air," today's gas mixtures have opened the abyss to divers unable or unwilling to fight nitrogen narcosis and uninterested in challenging the deadly odds of oxygen toxicity. Within this ever-growing group, deep air is seen-with good reason-as a relic of diving's Dark Ages. To hear some tell it, the use of 21 percent 02 below 210 f/64 m is well on its way to extinction.

That's certainly the impression one gets from many industry leaders, the tiny fraction of the media devoted to technical diving, and the crosstalk on Internet tech-diving discussion groups. But a little digging reveals a different state of affairs. Out in the real world, not everybody has access to trimix or the training to use it. Many are unwilling to put up with the logistical complexities, extended decompression times, and additional expense required in helium based diving. Some divers-among them spear fishermen, wreckers, and even cavers-simply see no reason to change techniques that they've been using successfully for years.

To steal a phrase from Mark Twain, it would seem that rumors of the death of deep air have been greatly exaggerated. The scope of that exaggeration is difficult to determine. While technical diving as a whole has gained legitimacy in recent years, deep air has become more and more an undercover specialty and its practitioners, never a particularly open bunch, in any case-have retreated farther into the closet. But one thing is sure.

While the decision to accept the twin demons of narcosis and oxygen toxicity may have fallen out of favor with the mainstream of technical diving, there's no shortage of divers still going deep on air. And no matter how much their choice of gases may disturb their more technically progressive brethren, most aren't planning to change anytime soon.

That's the position you'd hear if you talked to someone such as New Jersey wrecker Gary Gentile (see stories on the Lusitania expeditions, 9/Wreckers, 10/Imaging). Gentile, for close to 20 years one of the most prominent members of the East Coast wreck diving community makes no secret of his preference for air on dives that he considers within his individual tolerance level: 275 f/84 m under ideal conditions.

"I always try to do air in place of mixed gas because it logistically simpler," Gentile says. "When you save on logistics even though you incur more of a narcosis level you save on the other end in having less chance of failure, because you've got a very simple system, just air You don't need to carry different decompression mixes like various nitroxes and oxygen for decompression."

His successful use of air, as Gentile sees it, depends in a large part on his experience and understanding of his own personal limits. Echoing a sentiment shared by others who go deep on air, he voices a certain skepticism about what he views as arbitrary limits on oxygen exposure-particularly when considered in light of an experienced individuels awareness of his or her own body's vulnerabilities. "1.6 atm is no God-given number," he says. "It's a limit within which no one should be vulnerable to toxicity. It's a matter of individual tolerance. Most wreck dives, where we're talking 20, 25 minutes of bottom time, diving to two atm is no big thing... Doctors like to, claim that your body can change, that you can do a dive one week and then the next have a problem. I kind of disagree with all of these doctors who have theories which are only ever tested on paper or in laboratories or chambers, and not out in the field. They don't really have a full sense of reality in that respect."

Gentile's confidence in his own abilities is tempered by hard-won experience. Dives in what he calls "the mudhole," the silt-fogged twilight zone near the mouth of the Hudson River, convinced him that however high his tolerance for narcosis, deep air was not an option in dark water He says he first used mix on a dive to the Ostfriedland, in 280 f/86 m, because he knew he would encounter poor visibility.) And he draws his personal deep air line at 275 f/84 m because he's taken air deeper-290 f/89 m, on the battleship Washington-and found that narcosis prevented any useful activity. "I didn't have any problems, what I had was an inability to recognize what I was looking at," Gentile says. "By that I mean that the wreck I was diving looked like I was seeing a television screen that was full of snow. You know how when you want to watch Channel 3 and you turn on Channel 4 and you still get reception but you get all that snow in there? That's what I saw."

'To deep air dive is to be stupid. It's foolish. It just makes no sense. Deep air diving is absolutely bullshit, man. -Billy Deans

Largely self-taught, seasoned by thousands of dives and acutely sensitive to the parameters of his own performance envelope, Gentile is one of the most prominent representatives of a quiet multitude of highly experienced deep air divers. And while his abilities and achievements make calling him typical a bit ridiculous, certain parallels can be drawn between him and others who swear by air

'There are a lot of people \~ho do air dives to between 200 and 300 feet (61/92 m) who don't give a rip about chest-beating or showing off or records," says ichthyologist Richard Pyle of Honolulu~ Bishop Museum, who regularly exceeded 300 f/92 m on air before gaining access to mixed gas and the CisLunar rebreather he currently uses. "I know a lot of fishermen who have made thousands and thousands of air dives to such depths in the line of their work, and continue to do so. I wouldn't do it myself anymore, but since most of these guys have way more deep air diving experience than I do-more than virtually all tech divers do-I don't think any of us are in a position to say they're wrong. To call them stupid would be like me going to the US Navy and telling them how to do rebreather dives. They're out of our league, we aren't qualified to pass judgment."

Like Gentile, Pyle points out that the additional complexity and expense of helium based diving make air more attractive for deep divers willing to accept its risks. And he brings up an additional concern: the impossibility of obtaining helium for open-circuit scuba in many parts of the world. For those who want to go deep in remote locations, air may well be the only gas option available. Its one Pyle himself chose to exercise as recently as 1993, when he went to 280 f/86 m during a collecting trip to the Solomon Islands. If the acquisition of a Cis-Lunar rebreather hadn't given him a technological advantage far beyond the reach of the average diver, he thinks he would probably still be going deep on air when working in remote locations "In two weeks I'll be diving in Papua New Guinea," he says. 'There's no way I can take enough helium for even one open-circuit trimix dive. If I didn't have the rebreather, I might be very tempted to do some deep air bounce dives to see what!s there." The South Pacific isn't the only place where helium~ scarcity has kept divers going deep on air Another rebreather diver with roots in deep air, North Carolina - based wrecker Rod Farb, makes the point that trimix is hard to come by almost anywhere ut helium-rich North America. 'The majority of the people doing deep diving outside the United States use air," says Farb. Trimix is very difficult to deal with in Europe, both from a legal point of view and also just from a logistical standpoint. Its just extraordinarily expensive."

Best known for his extensive work at 240 f/74 m on the USS Monitor (much of it done with air before he obtained his Bio-Marine CCR 155), Farb cites as an example his recent experience with French divers filming the Confederate raider Alabama for National Geographic, 200 f/61 m down in the dark, frigid, tide-ripped English Channel. 'These guys have been doing deep air in their own back yards," Farb says. "I mean, they don't seek out 200-foot wrecks, if they're gonna do any diving in their own back yards, that's how deep it is. And they're trained to do that. They've done it. These guys that I worked with-three of them were commercial divers-have done saturation dives to 700 feet [215 meters] and they know the score on mixed gas. They also know that in France its illegal in scuba tanks, and that using surface-supplied air on the Alabama is a pain because it jacks up the cost enormously and because of the currents. So you had to kind of work around it, and 200 feet in my opinion is certainly within the limits of air"

Farb sets his own limit for air at Monitor, which he leads dives on every summer and says he's done "a hundred and some odd times on air" For the year-and-a-half he's been using his rebreather, keeping he partial pressure of oxygen between 1.0 and 1.3 atm at 240 f/74 m to enable him to take full advantage of the rebreather's greater endurance while minimizing his oxygen exposures . Although he has, like Pyle, moved on to a more advanced technology, Farb says that if need be-if helium is unavailable still do missions between 170 f/52 m and 50 f/77 m on air 1 don't want come across as promoting deep air," he says. "I say that everybody should be given the facts and everyone should know their own abilities. And then when you look at the accessibility of helium and so forth, you just have to make a decision. You have to ask yourself: Will I just pass up the dive if there~ no helium or will I do it on air? I think these are the choices that a lot of people around the world make, and I think, frankly, the majority of divers are using air right now. Overwhelmingly so. I'm sure that'll change, but it will take time." 42 aquaCORPS Journal 13

That change can't come any too soon for Billy Deans. The Key West tech-dive operator and IANTD vice president has an unequivocal answer to the question of what a diver forced to choose between waiting for helium or making a deep dive on air should do. "You just wait," Deans says flatly "Absolutely, you wait." As one of the leaders of the new wave in technical diving, Deans is as thorough an adherent to the true faith of trimix as you are likely to find anywhere. And like a prophet chastising the wayward, he has no intention of watering down his message. "To deep air dive is to be stupid. It's foolish. It just makes no sense," he says. "Deep air diving is absolutely bullshit, man. I tell you, the thing that really bothers me the most is that we're now starting to gain momentum as all legitimized type of diving. We were first called cowboys, and now we work With NOAA and the Navy and we've got the emerging respect of some of these different communities. [But] we've got these guys out there doing this extreme deep air diving, which really is being irresponsible to the dive community."

Part of what vexes Deans and other training-agency honchos about deep air seems a concern with image: the fear that deep air accidents will be identified in the public mind with technical diving. (Some have even suggested-sounding more than a little like the recreational diving establishment talking about early technical divers-that the perceived recklessness of deep air divers might draw unwanted attention from government regulators.) Partly, too, there is a concern that inexperienced divers will die trying to cut corners, or following in the footsteps of the famous. (Deans draws a distinction between the exploits of Gary Gentile-whom he describes as "extremely responsible" and last summers controversial 400 f/123 m bounce dives by Bret Gilliam, president of rival TDI and a former deep air record holder) But a big part of the conflict over the continued use of deep air has a more fundamental basis. In a way, it is an argument over the nature of technical diving itself-over the question of whether by definition tech diving requires the use of special gas mixtures to lower narcosis levels and oxygen exposures. "I define technical diving as oxygen exposure management," Deans, says, putting one in mind of Bill Hamilton~ comments at tek. "Down here I like 190, 200 feet max. It depends on the dive, but if it!s like a sightseeing dive, what you really have to worry about is the physiological limitation. And at 190 to 200 feet you're at a partial pressure of 1.4, 1.45 atm. I think below that you're just really starting to ask for problems."

Factor nitrogen narcosis into the equation-as well you might, if you're unusually susceptible, go a bit deeper, attempt to exert yourself, or have to deal with added stresses like temperature and low visibility-and your potential problems can multiply tenfold. Deans talks about diving deep on gas with other divers on air, divers who believed themselves well-adapted to the effects of narcosis, and being amazed at their apparent inebriation. "Its like being at a party when you're sober and looking at all the drunks," he says. While critics of deep air and deep air veterans alike point to CNS oxygen toxicity as the gut level scariest aspect of the use of air below 218 f/67 m ("Narcosis you can feel coming on," Gary Gentile says. "Toxicity can hit you bang!"), narcosis, with its potential for inducing fatal errors, looms as equally dangerous. The two exist in a kind of deadly symbiosis, and it~ easy to see why the promise of virtually eliminating their effects should become one of the central pillars of mainstream technical diving, one worthy of many sacrifices. The problem for the power structure then turns into one familiar to any student of religious history: how to handle dissent, disagreement, and downright craziness without tearing the hell out of the community. On the issue of deep air~ relationship with technical diving, the strain is already causing discomfort for those closest to the fault line.

"I'm into the mixed gas, too, but I feel that to push mixed gas, they say, 'Don't dive air,"' says Hal Watts, president of the Orlando based Professional Scuba Association and himself a deep air record holder (390 f/I 20 m in 1967 and the still unbroken 4 15 ffw/ 13 1 mfw cave deep air mark, set in 1970). "Certain instructors, agencies, trainers, what have you, are wanting so much to push the newness of this nitrox and trimix that they're clown playing deep air just to promote more of that and saying, well, it~ safer" As a tech diving pioneer and mixed-gas instructor who also for years has specialized in deep air training (and at age 60 still goes to 300 f/92 m on air), Watts is in a unique position; he has a foot in both the old and new worlds, and something to say about each of them. On the m subject of helium, he seems of two minds, one welcoming and the other skeptical. "I've only been in the chamber once for treatment and that was on heliox diving, in 1970 hen I got a really bad hit of the bends," he says, making the point that helium-based diving demands far more precision than air. "When we do our training, we have you learn gas switching skills on air. Your depth can change so much because you I re so concerned with hooking up and deploying that lift bag that we've had people drop 30 feet or go up 30 feet, And that helium is an unforgiving gas." On CNS oxygen toxicity, Watts counsels against what he sees as exaggerations of danger, preferring to concentrate his training efforts on narcosis control. "02 toxicity is such a big talked-about scary thing nowadays, but I only know of two people that have personally experienced it-myself, and I've talked to Tom Mount about it," he comments. "But that was over 350 feet deep in a working situation. Oxygen toxicity, I think it~ almost like the hype on staying away from deep air I think its something that somebody grabbed hold of and they're running with it. Ninety-nine point nine percent of divers will never be deep enough long enough to ever worry about it. Because its a pressure-dose-time-depth relationship. -

As for deep air records, that most controversial of subjects, Watts refrains from condemnation. Although his promotional material mentions that PSA has trained five world record deep air divers, Watts no longer takes students below 300 f/92 m. ("This has got so far out of sight as to depths that they've gone beyond safety limits, and its beyond me," he says.) But he offers some insight into the mentality of those seeking the esoteric distinction of a world deep air record-divers like 27 year old Nick Comoglio, who drowned last July off Pompano Beach, Florida, while practicing to surpass Dan Manions 1994 525 f/ 16 1 m dive. "If it wasn't air, it'd be unrealistic," Watts says. "It'd be Sheck Exley. I mean, Sheck held the record at 881 [feet, 271 meters], wasn't satisfied with it, and now he~ gone. As far as the motivation, its just an internal thing within a person. A lot of people high-altitude skydive. A lot of people climb mountains. We don't know why, we just do It" You want to go to 400 feet on air, you've got the right attitude, the training, the equipment, hey, you should be able to do it...

I don't know this fellow that drowned down there. He might have been a good diver, might have had the best equipment, might have had a good attitude. People trying to talk him out of it doesn't mean that he had the wrong attitude. I mean, it just wasn't his day And when its not your day..." The truth is, of course, that it can't always be your day. And the ability to determine when it isn't-to sense when the deep-air dice have been loaded against you-is a mighty thin thread to hang your life on. IANTD president Tom Mount, once a 400-foot deep air diver who now limits himself to 200 f/61 m, calls it "screwing with your physiology ... gambling at being perfect every day" NSS-CDS chairman Joe Odom shades the issue a little: he says he has confidence in the 11 autopilot" that experience and diving skill have given him, and defends his ability to make warm-water deep air dives with briefly high P02 exposures when he's "out in the Bahamas playing," but he draws the line at taking deep air into an overhead environment. "As stupid as I may be, or people may think that I am," he says, "Joe does not do deep cave dives on air. Not with any penetration." And Dr. Dan Manion, current holder of the deep air record, has a simple three-word answer ready for those who ask him about extreme deep air diving: "Don't do it."

Manion learned that lesson the hard way last August, when a DO hit left him a paraplegic. Ironically and significantly, his injury (from which he has since recovered, although he still suffers some residual numbness and But there is a big difference between training and what I may choose to do in my own personal diving. As a function of training, I never conduct any diving beyond the recognized general population exposures. For compressed air, this means a maximum of 220 f/68 m. In fact, both IANTID and TDI recommend keeping training at 200 f/61 m since this allows a certain factor for error should it be needed. On the other hand, I make my living as a professional diver and photo journalist. My clients have included the US Navy various scientific groups, commercial companies, and a host of publishers for book and magazine projects. I also perform a variety of consulting and testing roles for equipment manufacturers and specialized support OEMs. Often my work involves extremely deep exposures and its up to me to make the call on the best method of getting me and my cameras to a 'job site." In many cases, I get the job because, quite literally, no one else can do it. I have to be a mobile swimmer and maintain the ability to handle cumbersome, bulky camera systems in extreme depths around subject matter that can include such diverse assignments as high speed military submarines, deep submersibles, sharks and whales. In many situations, compressed air allows me more flexibility in my gear package and a friendlier decompression than trimix. But what works for me, will not work for others and I am constantly afraid that less qualified and less experienced divers will attempt to dive beyond their abilities and hurt themselves.

That's why over the years in all my published works I have leaned in favor of more conservative exposures as a guideline for the average diver It's not to say that I will apply those same limits to my professional work. And there lies the most important distinction in a lot of this discussion. I'm a professional who gets paid extremely well for taking risks as an observer or photographer who can chronicle the underwater world where only a handful can even dream of visiting. I've been contracted in a lot of situations to do dives where submersibles were unavailable or impractical. In other assignments, I've been able to get in the right situation with a still or movie camera where a sub or surface supplied diver would never be able to maneuver And on other work with marine life, I've developed proprietary equipment and decompression profiles that no one else has. Because boiled down to its essence, diving is simply a means of getting me to my work place. It's incidental to me how I get there and support myself if I don't get the work done that the client has paid for And believe me, I've never had a contractor that was paying me several thousand dollars a day question my choice of diving gear if I came back with the results they wanted. The facts are that in many scenarios I can function better with a very minimalist gear package since I have a rather extraordinary low air consumption rate. My adaptive reflex to deep air diving after some 25 years of experience allows me to work comfortably in depths that reduce most others to incapacitation. But I am quite at home deep and the best evidence of that is the images I bring back and the detailed observational reports I can accurately produce. That's what separates the professional who makes his living plying a hazardous trade from the weekend diver (no matter what his "technical" experience). What I do outside the scope of training is my own personal decision and should not be held up to unreasonable scrutiny by critics. Because, to paraphrase Charles Barkely, "I'm not a role model" and I don't want to be.

The sensational article that was published in aquaCORPS' last issue was not something I intended to contribute to. I intended my remarks to be off the record and not for publication. Not because I had anything to hide but for fear that less qualified divers would seek to emulate dives by persons like myself or Joe Odom and get killed. We've already seen that happen and no matter how many times we tell people that reading a book or doing a few bounce dives is no substitute for full time involvement, a couple people disappear every year trying dives way beyond their ability. And that's the real tragedy.

Training works just fine within its limits. But I'm not about tell explorers like Jim Bowden or guys that want to dive the deepest wrecks that they can't pursue that calling. Because it's a personal decision that each diver makes for himself and its nobody else~ business. And the self-appointed soap box critics who hide behind anonymous quotes ought to stay in the shallow end of the pool where they belong. What works for me is individual, That's why I don't like diving deep with any but a handful of others. I can look after myself just fine but it really throws off my equilibrium to have to worry about another diver whom I just naturally expect to screw up. So please, leave me alone to do what I do. And I promise not to make fun of your day-glow wet suit or your wife's hairdo. Is it a deal? Bret Gilliam is the president of TDI, editor of Scuba Times Advanced Diver Journal, and a freelance writer/photographer. He can be contacted @ f 207-442-9042. CRITICS DON'T COUNT by Joe Odom Each diver has a view of what is important to him or her, what represents a limit, and what represents a threat to their way of thinking or even their life. Any attempt to alter their thought process often results in conflict. Where is the proof that a P02 of 1.6 atm represents safety? Does crossing this line immediately mean that there will be a physiological change? Or, do a myriad of other factors enter into the complex human equation to determine if an oxygen convulsion will take place? It is simply convenient to establish a limit for fledgling divers so that they don't become bored with huge volumes of conflicting data that belie the original intent of the limit. Interestingly, the USN Diving Manual describes incidents at oxygen pressures of just 1.3 atm [At least one commercial operators have logged oxtox hits below 1.6 atm-ed] . Will our technical divers be willing to give up the ground (depth) that they have so desired? Hardly The reality of deep air "spike" diving is such that the actual hazard is the nitrogen and not the oxygen. Numerous sources noted in a wide variety of medical texts and studies associated with hyperbaric exposures of oxygen frequently describe subjects being exposed to oxygen pressures well in excess of 2.0 atm and up to 3.7 plus atm. Reliability of today~ equipment enters into the equation, as do the actual dive conditions. I have tried to think of any first stage failures I have experienced-can't seem to remember any The only one I personally witnessed was a cave student back in the early '80s who insisted that his regs were the best made, he took great care of them, etc. They kinda let him down 'bout the Lips [A site at Ginnie Springs]. Seems he ignored the recall. Anyone who wants to contrive a scenario for failure can simply conjure one up, either based on actual possibilities or speculative ignorance. Since it~ made up, it~ easy to attack or defend depending on who shouts the loudest. Just some food for thought. Strong sentiments sometimes get in the way of rational thought and may be further clouded by confusion over rules vs. recommendations. Once, as I stood on the fantail of a boat, saying farewell to a fellow diver [who died.], I noted that the deep divers aboard nodded in agreement, while others just couldn't understand why it had happened. It just did- the result of the choice of an individual who had a belief in his ability.

Anytime there is a statement, observation or new idea, fifty percent of the people are for it and fifty percent are against it. The problem is that the fifty percent against it are so darn loud! Does a diver have the right to choose if he or she wants to "go deep?" I should hope so. Can extreme deep air diving be "safe?" I doubt it, for safe means without risk. The choice needs to be made in concert with the diver's desires and goals balanced against the wishes of the immediate family Maybe that is why so many explorers were single. I personally have no desire to establish the record for deep air diving. This is because I catch enough grief from my wife as it is, but I am truly happy at my own personal limits-which vary daily. I don't encourage anyone to do anything they don't want to do or are not willing to work and study hard for Many diving pontificators cannot read simple physics, chemistry, or biophysiology articles without missing the real point, and totally blow the entire work out of context. Others publish data or formulas with gross errors and total disregard to scientific reality. When Wes Skiles introduced me to structured cave diving, a significant amount of time was spent on the physiology of cave diving risk acceptance. It was widely known back then that all cave divers had a screw loose, we just had to figure a way to make sure it didn't back all the way out! There was a practicality to the step by step technique of exploring one~ limits. Today many just want to pay their money and get the card in the "minimum time." I have also noted that with any statement, observation, new idea, or old idea, fifty percent will say its showing off, fifty percent will say it~ the individual~ prerogative. The problem is that the fifty percent against it are so darn loud! A cave and technical diving instructor trainer, Joe Odom is the current chairman of the National Speleological Society's Cave Diving Section. He can be reached @ f. 2 0 5-7 7 3-8 5 15.