Posted by Clinton Bauder on April 13, 2000 at 13:04:49:
In Reply to: Re: Tech diving posted by SLANG on April 13, 2000 at 10:58:38:
I dunno about Southern California but tech diving clearly is worthwhile in the greater Monterey area. It's not for everyone but there is lots to see at 160 feet that you won't see at 100 feet like Vase Sponges, Gorgonians, Ratfish and other cool stuff.
When you are doing deco hangs in 48F water you quickly learn to appreciate having O2 or a rich Nitrox as a Deco gas rather than decompressing on air.
The advantages of Trimix up here seem less clear to me. My personal limit for narcosis seems to be about 160-170 feet. Objectively (based on skills performance and my ability to shoot video) I'm fine at that depth but clearly beginning to notice the narcosis. I wouldn't care to venture past that on air. While I would like to see stuff that's deeper I'm not anxious to incur a decompression penalty much longer than what I'm doing now. 70 minutes or so of total dive time is about my limit before I start getting really cold. I am taking a Trimix class this summer and I'll see how it goes but I've got a lot of exploring to do at 160-170 and I'm not sure the extra expense and logistical hassle of using Trimix for these dives is worth it. Check back in a few months.
"Hogarthian" gear with 1 piece harnesses, long hoses, cannister lights and stuff may not be designed for the kind of diving I do but it works well enough. I'm always playing with my rig and I haven't found an ideal setup yet. The 7 foot hose I have is a pain when I'm diving recreationally from a party boat (how long before somebody pulls it away from my rig and then drops a weight belt on my 2nd stage?) but I'm sure it would come in handy in an OOA situation. That and the light cannister get in the way if you want to hang stage bottles on both sides. GUE says to put them both on the left but that would seem to leave me unbalanced in the water (Possible solution: buy one of those huge, heavy Extreme Exposure lights? ;-)
Anyway while we don't have caves or all that many wrecks up here there are good reasons to use the techniques adopted by the wreck and cave communities on the East Coast.
Clinton