Posted by kelphead on June 16, 2001 at 12:59:57:
In Reply to: Re: 160' on nitrox? - Hope you're fireproof! posted by Joe R on June 14, 2001 at 22:35:39:
"That practice stopped after delevoping a roll of film that all the pics came out great but I didn't remember taking most of them...
obviously you can learn to function at that depth (lets face it taking photos underwater requires good judgement of distance and framing) but there is an impairment."
i've heard/read how other divers also don't remember
their dives, or parts of their dives, when diving
deep on air.
i wonder, though, if it's not more an issue of
memory loss rather than impaired fxn.
for example, it is very well known that when one
is involved in a physically traumatic incident,
it is not at all surprising if one suffers from
retrograde amnesia of the traumatic incident (and
perhaps any memory loss of just before that incident).
a common example would be something like a traffic
accident: a person is fully aware and functional at
the time before and during the accident; however,
once in a hospital bed, that same person may not
remember the accident at all or what occurred just
before then.
that doesn't mean that one is impaired during the
collision, but that one's memory after the fact
is affected.
...i wonder if some level of retrograde amnesia is
occurring to certain divers at certain depths when
breathing air. instead of physical trauma, however,
perhaps chemical trauma may produce the same or
similar amnesic results. this would not be an impossible
question to study, but i can see it would be
difficult and expensive (at least the way i
envision it).
so, perhaps the claim that one can 'learn to
function' or that one is 'not impaired' at depth
on air may be true after all, but that one can't
remember afterwards (ie, upon/after ascent) what
had actually taken place.
...just a thought...
kelphead.