Posted by tleemay on March 19, 2001 at 17:05:35:
In Reply to: what on Earth is the Wah-wahs??? posted by RaiderKarl on March 19, 2001 at 16:02:50:
"i have no idea what your talking about. sorry,
Dude! never read anything about any wahwahs in any
scuba manual or scientific journal in my lifetime."
No worries, at least you asked for clarification
and appear to be open to it, which is more than I
can say for most who would have considered
responding. Kudos to you.
There's more to life's experiences than reading
a SCUBA manual or reading ascientific journal.
Agencies don't teach it, it isn't a scientific
thing that's readily studied. The "wah-wahs" was
first mentioned in a post that was floating
around the national techdiver list back in 1996.
I just tried to search the Aquanaut archive for
it, but the archives are aparrently dead.
You are deep, and you are at the brink of becoming
narc'd, but you don't readily know it. The blood
is flowing through your circulatory system at a
higher pressure and rate. All that blood is trying to
get to all the tissues to maintain the exchange
of red for blue.
As that blood rushes through your head, you begin
to hear a "whooshing" in and out noise in your
ears, or as it has been best described, a wah-wah
sound as the blood pumps through your inner ear
to each heart chamber function. "Wah-wah.. wah-wah..
wah-wah". You think you are hearing some kind
of surface noise, perhaps from a boat motor idling,
or even some kind of animal noise no one else has
ever heard before.
What you are "hearing" is the blood being forced
through your head, trying to maintain the blood
flow due to the increased pressure. The comfort
level, or lack of, contributes to the circulatory
system in-effectiveness of pumping enough blood, so
your body works even harder.
I read another divers recount of a time when he
passed out at depth. He suffered the "white out"
effect most report and the lack of spacial
acknowlegment (how long, how deep) until it was
too late. He said he first started feeling the
effects of N2 narcosis when the wah-wahs started.
He eventually passed out and was assisted to the
surface with his buddy.
"How could I have been narc'd?" he asked after
he and his buddy's his modified Navy Table 6A
Chamber ride for 12 hrs. "It was only 122 feet".
The diver I mentined in the original 'Wah-wah"
thread spinoff has bragged in the past that he
never feels narc'd or hears the "wah-wahs" until
he's beyond 160 or so.
Again, I ask; how safe is that?