Rebreather's

I have to agree with Graham, even though I have never tried a rebreather. (I would love to though).

I compare it to flying a plane - rebreathers should only be used by those who do it very frequently. I stopped flying when I realised I was just not doing it frequently enough to be totally adept and at the top of my game. Fortunately if you have an accident diving it's usually only the one person who gets hurt, not a planeful of people.

Anything that increases the complexity of an activity, will result in more accidents in the general population performing the activity. We all know what KISS really stands for. Having said all that I plan to try a semi-closed system later this year when I will be diving a lot more.

I’m amazed at the negative perception that rebreathers in general have, particularly by those that haven’t dived them. I recently bought an Inspo/Vision and have to admit that before opening my eyes and doing the training, I too held a unjustified negative perception (at least unjustified in my perspective as I was not informed enough to hold a valid opinion either way).

Yes it is costly, more complex that OC and not for everyone, but neither is scuba diving in general or driving a car. More specifically, when compared the complexity of twins+stages on a deeper dive, the benefits come to the forefront.

It reminds me of when nitrox was introduced to the scuba market years ago. It was touted as a killer gas, expensive, complex, and not something for the recreational market. To a certain extent (at least in Aust.), you can still see the same attitude now towards anything greater that EAN40 or diving past 40m. The owners of PADI only dive centres say it is bad and that is that, and this perceptions spreads to the people they teach.

To answer the thread question, I went with the Inspo/Vision because of:

• Trusted Instructor & Product Support

• Integrated Electronics

• Widespread Adoption

The downsides are definitely the travel size/weight, cylinder limitations and bulk underwater.

I think that certain PADI training people should be shot for the way they teach. Come on it nuts -- the way some people are taught to react when they go into their first 3 minute deco is crazy. I have seen divers shoot towards the surface mid water, in order to get to their deco stop instead of following the reef slowly, ascending slowly. What they are by doign this is more harm than doing their bit of deco. I don't think I need to go into the factors involved with this, though it goes to show that certain divers need to understand the basic principals much more before they go looking into a much more complex system, which does need to be monitored much mroe than open curcuit.

The fact is that the death rate with rebreathers is fairly shocking for the amount of them out there!

Having said all this, I too am looking into rebreathers at the moment so this thread is of great interest to me.

I have so many requests these days from people who want to dive on them over here. Hey, as long as they can offord to pay all the overweight on all their flights brign it along. Right now they are difficult, though I will be looking into accommodating divers wanting to brign rebreathers very soon...

I have an engineering background, I'm generally very technically minded, I can service my own equipment and makes repairs to just about anything, I know my kit like the back of hand, have made 4436 actual logged dives with many more shorter none logged dives and have huge respect for the ocean, it's power and what it can do to me if I disrepect it. I reckon I should qualify for someone who should be allowed to use rebreathers.

Hello Peter. I'm new to Wetpixel and read your post and the replies with interest. I have found that rebreathers are a definite advantage for underwater photography for all the reasons stated in other posts... less "fish-ass" shots and greater dive duration. Diving a rebreather, an 8Gig card is a well-used commodity!

Each rebreather presently on the market have their own pro's and con's but for me, one of the most important selling points would be proper lab testing. I have found that many of the units presently shipping do not have, or will not release (?) data related to scrubber and breathing efficiencies under varying conditions. Anesthesiology machine manufacturers could never get away with this, but the diving community seems to be immune to these requirements. If you are thinking about buying a rebreather, make sure the manufacturer has done such testing, and the testing was done by a reputable (known) testing lab. "We do our own testing" or "We have thousands of units in the field" would be inappropriate responses, and I have heard them both all to often!

I believe electronic monitoring of gas mix with visual or audible alarms if they go off set point is an extremely important component of CCR's used by photographers. We are constantly distracted by our mission of "getting that cover shot (hopefully!) and time can disappear quickly without our brain registering it. I am not promoting a "fire and forget" CCR diving technique... gas mix must be monitored constantly. However, electronic monitoring can cover our butts if this happens (even though it never should in a perfect world).

Finally, anybody who pushes his or her scrubber beyond manufacturers stated duration must be considered brain damaged. Unless you want to be a lab rat in an uncontrolled experiment in a hostile environment, you will gladly dump partially used scrubber in the wastebasket rather than suffer the downside, which never has a happy ending. Remember, we're talking about $12 worth of soda lime versus possible death.

Safe diving!

Matthew

I have come to think of rebreathers v OC rather like helicopters as opposed to cars. If you have ever used a JetRanger you will appreciate that it is a far superior form of transport to a car. However, would you want everyone you know who drives a car let loose with a helicopter? ('been using CCR since 1992. APD CCR diver No0000004.)

Well, I was on the boat when we lost somebody using one diving wrecks north of the Netherlands. That impressed the hell out of me. He was found 3 weeks later.

I afterwards talked a bit about it on BOOT dusseldorf to Max Hahn, and only months later learned he had died too.

I am only lucky I cant afford one anyway....