WHILE I WAS GONE, I did a rebreather dive as part of an article I’m working on for Popular Mechanics. I’ve been diving with the folks at DiveTech for years, and they set me up with a familiarization course — the full rebreather certification course takes 6 rather rigorous days. The warning label suggests why that’s the case.
I don’t want to give away the article, but although I found the rebreather dive interesting — you don’t make bubbles, which means fish are less scared of you, and you can stay down for three or four hours — I don’t think I’m ready to take the, er, plunge and do the full certification course. But from comparing the unit I used (two years old) to one of the newest cutting-edge units, I can say that the technology in this area is on a steep learning curve, and that might well make it a lot easier, safer and more user-friendly in the near future. Right now, the need to continuously monitor your oxygen levels via triply-redundant analyzers (one of which had to be replaced during the gear-up because it wasn’t working right — see the gauges strapped to my arm in the photo below), and a variety of other necessary tasks makes this more trouble than I’m really willing to go to, especially with the cost of equipment running around ten grand. Happily, lots of tech-diving enthusiasts are driving the market here, and that should fix things. Thank you, early adopters!
You’ll note, though, that the folks at DiveTech seem to be managing to stay calm about everything. I think that’s easier when you live on a tropical island . . . .
