Posted by San Deigo Jeff on May 08, 2002 at 07:09:12:
In Reply to: This sounds like a tempest in a teapot posted by TDI_2 on May 07, 2002 at 14:40:55:
For those divers who believe that computers are safe and one never needs to understand or look at their dive tables, let me retell 2 incidents in my 23 years of military,commercial and recreational diving experience.
As a military diver with early computers,we found they were never accurate or consistant. We were required to wear 4 computers. Currently, the divers of my former group still must wear 2 computers. They are still considered unreliable, easy to break and offer varying degrees of safety factors.
As a dive instructor, I have seen every form of gear imaginable come over the railing on dive trips. I cannot count the number of times I have stood there checking in a diver only to find the divers computer has gone kaput. Invariably they look to their buddy and guess what? They either have no computer, their dive numbers or profiles don't match, or their computer doesn't work either. We then go back to the tables recreating the divers profile.
The tables are designed for non-smoking, physically fit people. That excludes a large portion of the diving community. When you include limited visibility, cold temperature, and diver aprehension as additional factors, dive tables are not all that conservative.