Pelagian Diver Controlled CCR
Posted By Mark Ellyatt on 30 November 2006
Rebreathers, particularly Closed Circuit Rebreathers (CCR) take a lot of concentration and unprecedented amounts of attention to detail compared with traditional scuba. Watching CCR divers underwater it's a wonder what they actually get to see considering that 50% of the dive is spent staring at up to three LCD displays waiting for them to potentially read you your last rites. Similar to frying bacon with your shirt off - CCR's can have some disastrous consequences if you don't keep on top of things and/or if taken to extremes. I've taught different types of rebreathers since 1996 and while I appreciate that customers might want the choice between regular scuba and CCR in a vain attempt to emulate an Action Man or simply look 'cooler' there should be at least some kind of 'Stewards Enquiry' started to try and stem the needless loss of life that complacency or ineptitude with a rebreather tends to reward, lets not even start with 'ready meal' all-in-a-weekend training courses and 1 hour crossover instructor specials that plague the scuba business. Some of these units have been implicated in almost 40 deaths but the waiting list in months for buying them keeps growing. The average wait in months for a popular unit is almost the square root of the number of people killed while wearing one (6!). It's not all doom and gloom though, CCR's used sensibly and within manufacturer and training guidelines can be both a fun and also eerily silent way to explore the deep.
Now that the CE marking system on products means little more than Chinese Export - where better to buy a closed circuit rebreather unit than one designed and manufactured on Koh Samui in Thailand? Home to thousands of Lady Boy conversion/snipping clinics and the virtual Cambridge University for macaque monkeys entering coconut picking careers the world over, Samui sits in the Gulf of Thailand, an hours flight south of Bangkok, the Nations capital. Thailand may seem a surprising birthplace for advanced, life supporting, underwater apparatus and maybe rightly so - considering its a country that builds new roads around telephone poles, but such things as Laptops and cameras, plus all manner of other high end electrical equipment are produced by pre-pubescent hands in the Land of Smiles, so why not Boxes of Death as rebreathers units are affectionately / ironically known?
While not a huge fan of Closed Circuit Rebreather equipment in the hands of amateurs with just a couple of weekends training, I'm none the less open minded when it comes to companies trying to improve safety and build-quality in these potentially very dangerous forms of scuba. Electronics and water don't mix too well, a bit like Baileys liqueur and Coca-cola, but of course mixed slowly a modicum of success is achievable, especially if a level of intoxication is already in place. Rebreather units that rely heavily on electronics, sensor regulation, and a heavy sprinkling of marketing hype and user complacency usually mean tragic newspaper headlines - However, CCR units relying on constant user input and manual/semi constant oxygen addition have a seemingly attractive in-built level of user longevity.
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