Posts by theshred

Hey guys, just thought I'd mention that I just spied a picture of me wearing some of Dan's gear in an issue of "California Diver." It's the March/Aprill 2011 issue of the magazine, and it has an article on freediving that happens to have a picture of me from the FII course I took. Not that it mentions it in the magazine, but I have the Speardiver Bluewater wetsuit on and I'm using a pair of Speardiver C90 fins as well. While this picture has already made it into two issues of Miami Sports, I was pretty shocked to see it in California Diver today, so I thought I'd share.

Hello Everyone,
Just thought I'd let those of you know that Miami sports magazine has had a couple of articles on Freediving in the November 2010 and December/Jan 2011 issues, both of which have pictures of me wearing a Pursuit Wetsuit and Fins :D, along with other divers from the FII Level 2 class back in October.

Here are some pictures of the magazines:

I took the FII Level 2 course in October, and had a great time. I can do a more thorough review when I get back home this weekend, but I will say now that I definitely recommend them. Martin and Niki were both great instructors, and are amazing divers.

You can't really tell, but I'm on the right here using the C90's in H Dessault footpockets. I was the safety diver for this particular dive, during the FII Level 2 course in Pompano Beach last month. I'm also using a Speardiver 3mm Bluewater wetsuit here.

Quote from seaweed

As a matter of fact I've been researching what happens.

Hyperoxia= Oxygen excess

partial pressure of oxygen exceeds 360 mm Hg

At
23ft – the process of receiving O2 and releasing CO2 is hindered
50 ft – this process stops so that cells cannot accept oxygen despite of its abundance

Symptoms

at first – discomfort, nausea, spasms of lips and eyelids, disturbances in eyesight, sleepiness;
later – stiffness of muscles, convulsions (similar to the epileptic ones), blackout, death

So it won't matter how much oxygen is in your lungs your body won't be able to use it.

However I found very little info on how long exposure factors in and if the damage is cumulative or recedes after each dive.

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Just thought I'd add some info based on my understanding of Hyperoxia (Oxygen Toxicity) from my scuba diving background, where it is an important factor.

First off, this science is still evolving, and there's a lot that isn't yet truly understood. It is pretty commonly accepted that once the partial pressure of oxygen reaches 1.6 atmospheres, the prevalence of symptoms as a result of Hyperoxia increases. This is at about 20 feet. Thus, most scuba diving agencies recommend staying within 1.4 atm ppO2. With that said, there are plenty of divers that have gone well beyond 1.6 atm without symptoms, and some that have had OxTox problems before 1.6 atm. Just as an example, in the Navy Dive Manual, there are still guidelines for dive times for excursions to up to I believe 50 ft (haven't read it in a while) one pure oxygen rebreathers. That's a ppO2 of about 2.5. I'm sure there are technical divers that have temporarily had ppO2's much higher than that due to mistakes in bottle switching, and I'm sure some of them came out okay.

Basically, the point there is that it's possible to dive symptom free with significantly higher ppO2's than the recommended limit, but there's a bit of chance involved and it typically involves more risk than the civilian diving world really wants to deal with, as there's no real need to.

With that said, one of the recent findings I remember reading was discussing the differences in the prevalence of symptoms between breathing a leaner mix (less O2) deeper vs. a richer mix shallower if both have the same ppO2. I want to say that they found symptoms more likely with the richer mix, but I don't remember it well enough to say for sure.

Next thing to say--I've read no definitive information on how the subject affects freedivers. I mean, Herbert Nitsch has dove to 700 feet. That's a ppO2 of about 4.6, and yet he suffered no convulsions on the dive. Until they figure out the physiology between hyperoxia and freediving with air in your lungs, I doubt they'll really understand it with pure O2, as not many people really do that.

Note: This is all about CNS Oxygen toxicity. Pulmonary Oxygen toxicity is another thing, to do with breathing high ppO2's for long periods of time. As far as I know, the CNS damage is typically not considered cumulative, but there aren't very many people that regularly have Oxygen toxicity problems, so it's hard to say.

Dan, that's a very interesting question. I don't have any specific numbers for the two, but it seems that amongst spearfishing you hear about more free diver deaths, and not many of the scuba deaths I've read about have involved spearfishing. However, an important thing to keep in mind is the number of people that practice scuba vs. freediving spearfishing, and the frequency with which both groups are in the water. I'd think it would be a hard comparison to truly make at that point, as with scuba diving, generally making 1-3 dives in a day is pretty common, whereas with freediving, it seems more common to spend extended periods of time in the water, of course with greater up and down motion than scuba. You may find for instance that freediving spearfishing has more deaths than scuba spearfishing, but also has more practitioners, who tend to be in the water more frequently, and for longer periods of time. There's also a big difference between scuba diving with a speargun to 60 feet and doing bounce dives of 150'+, which doesn't seem particular uncommon on rigs around the gulf, although that may be a misconception of mine based on various things I've read. There's also a big difference (I would think) between relatively shallow and much deeper spearfishing while freediving. All in all, in my opinion, such a question doesn't really yield that useful of an answer, as there are so many variables to consider (# of deaths, # of practitioners, amount of time spent in the water, # of dives, frequency of trips, typically hunting alone or with one or more buddies, average amount of experience of divers spearfishing, etc). Without factoring in such details, a mere statistic of which has more deaths can't really be used to argue for or against the safety of one or the other (not that this is necessarily your goal).

Anyways, I'm curious about the answer as it is, and I'd love to see some more in depth analysis. I think I just felt like mentioning some other things to consider after seeing similar issues arise when people have tried to use similar statistics when arguing between open circuit and closed circuit scuba safety, and between the safety of different types of closed circuit rebreathers. For example, people would argue that mccrs are safer than eccrs with statistics saying that mccrs had less deaths associated with them, but ignoring the fact that there were FAR more eccrs in use at the time.

With that said, best of luck with the question, and if I happen to find any statistics, I'll let you all know.

At first I thought you were referring to Blue Water Seafood in San Diego, but from what I can tell it has no connection to Blue Water Grill. Anyways, may I ask what's wrong with the Blue Water Grill?

Thanks guys. I meant to have pictures and such, but the camera was amongst things already moved to the new house, so I didn't bring it with me.

Don, I may or may not know of the spot you're talking about. Mark pointed out a couple spots that he really likes for YT and WSB.

Dan, I believe the Coronado Islands are around an hour or so ride from the boat ramp.

Edit: Forgot to mention, lots of good sized bat rays swimming around out there too.

So yesterday was my first real day out spearfishing. The water was from about 55-58 degrees, and visibility averaged about 20 feet, but varied from 10-25 depending on time and location. It was a little choppy, but nothing too bad, and for the most part the currents werent too bad (the exception was one that picked up at the end of the day, where in 20-25 minutes I made about 150 yards of progress towards the boat. Thankfully the guys that had been spearfishing on the other side of the boat got to itpretty easily, hopped in, and came and picked me up. Otherwise I think I would have stopped and swam around the island in the other direction, which would have most likely put me in the boat sooner.).

Anyways, we headed to the Coronados out of Shelter Island, and stopped at the North Island. We did a nice warm up of 3 laps of a chunk of the island seaparated by a little Keyhole swim through (the current picked up later on the sheltered side of the island here). We did some warmup freediving in about 20 feet of water. I think my longest dive in there was about 1:07, but I felt I could have done about 1:30 without too much problem. I will say, I was surprised a few times while laying on the bottom to luck up and see 2 or 3 sea lions swimming circles around me about two feet away. From our warm up swim to the end of the day, there were sea lions everywhere, and they seemed to be enjoying themselves doing loops and circles around us. After getting all warmed up, we looked around and checked a few spots before settlin on a calm one for some shooting practice (learning to load and such--it was my first day afterall). Finally, we headed back over to the keyhole for some spearing to finish the day. For me, my deepest dive on the day was to 39' while spearfishing. As with the breath hold, I think I could have gone deeper, but saw no need to really push it on my first day. In the end, Connor and I both shot a Black Perch each (yeah, I know, not some super cool gamefish. There were lots of them though, and while spearing, they were the only fish I saw that seemed large enough to be worth shooting, except for one or two calicos, but they were both too far away and to the side for me to get the gun around on them.), Mark got a Calico, and Mike got a Sheephead. No one was too concerned with their fish so I took em all home and filleted them. Like spearfishing, my filleting skills will improve with time and practice, but other than one or two, they all came out in pretty good shape. I suppose I know what I'm havin for dinner tonight :D.

As for gear I used:
Dan's fins were awesome, but you all knew that already. While my feet with 3 mil socks fit the pockets pretty well, I think a pair of fin keepers might help just a bit. Anyone have a recommendation for what size fin keepers to go with a 42-44 (9-11) fin pocket for a guy with size 10 feet? Dan's weight belt worked great too. I can only guess that everything else he makes is of equal quality.
My omer socks--They worked well enough, but I can't really brag about their quality, they leaked a bit through the seams. Not bad, but not amazinf either.
I still like my mask, and I realized that my snorkel is pretty much a rebranded Cressi Corsica.
Used a Cressi Tecnica 5mm wetsuit, which was fine temperature wise. and worked well enough. I'm more impressed with Dan's suits quality and fit though.
Aeris F.10 was really easy to use and has a perfect display. Unfortunately I seem to be one of many plagued by the Low Battery signal.
Used a Cressi Geronimo Pro 95 with 2 bands, which shot right where I wanted it to. No complaints here, but I have no other experience to compare it to so Perhaps that will change in time.

Anywaye, even though conditions werent great and it didnt feel like the peak of summer, I enjoyed myself, and I have some fish to cook for dinner tonight.

I know they're in Mexico, but I consider them a Southern California dive site, so here goes report #1.

(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")

Lunker, in that case you'll be glad to know that they're relatively uncommon, typically found in deep water (generally 160-660 feet, though they've been found from the surface to 5150 fsw), and not too large, with a maximum known length of 6.6 ft (2m)...Then again, there's speculation that either much larger ones or a giant relative may be responsible for some of the legends of sea serpents throughout history..

Primero, mi espanol no es muy bien. Lo siento por su mano y el perro. Espero que su mano sane rapido. Puedes pescar con un mano roto, o necesitas esperar?

(No se como usar los acentos en este teclado. Puedo teclear mas bien a mi casa).

I hate to double post in a thread, but I just had an unfortunate turn of events. The FII course I'm signed up for was just cencelled to do a family emergency for the instructor. Anyways, I'm now looking a bit at if there are any other times I might be able to head out and take the course (looking maybe at the one in early september). No trip to Dan's place for me this month though :(.

What wetsuit thickness are all you other SoCal guys using down here? The one time I went I used a 5mm and it was fine, but I know some divers around here use 7. I'm leaning towards a 5 for diving down here around San Diego. If I can't find some other time to make the trip to FL, I'll have to start looking for a thicker wetsuit, gloves, and probably a knife or two.

I think I might be able to match or top that, I'll have to see if I still have a picture on my phone when I get home.

I just thought I'd pop in here to throw one positive vote in for the Mystic. For me, it's the most comfortable mask I've tried on, and it fits me very well. While the field of view isn't as good as my Atomic Frameless, I find it a bit more comfortable, so I've been using it for scuba diving, and I'll be using it for freediving soon, as it's signlificantly lower volume.

haha, maybe you should design one

Got two new pieces of gear to mention even though they aren't from Dan:
A pair of Omer Socks (not sure the specific name, but the ones that have a seal at the top to seal with the inside of a wetsuit leg.
A Spearo Backpack made by Precision Dive Products (here). It looks like it should hold all of my gear well, and make traveling from my room to the classroom/pool easier. I may even be able to put everything I need to take in there and carry it on, eliminating the need to check any baggage for my flights.

I don't have any personal pictures of my knives, but my three main knives that I use for stuff are:

For Scuba Diving, a UK Remora:

For a general working knife, an Ontario Knife Company OKC3S Marine Bayonet, which I got for the nice price of $0.00. Unfortunately I don't have an M16 to mount it on...

And finally, a Victorianox Swiss Champ. This has been a great tool for me, and I've done tons with it. I use it a lot for working on my guitars. The one I have was a gift from my parents that they surprised me with on the last day we were in Switzerland, after we had previously visited their factory.

My room is a few blocks from the classroom. I'll look into the buses bit later today.

I just checked the FII website. Training ends at 5:00 PM, and its held at their classroom at 2621 North Riverside drive, Pompano Beach, FL, and the Pompano Beach Aquatics Center at 820 NE 18th Ave, pompano Beach, FL. Even if it is just your house, it might be fun to meet the man behind the magic and check out some of your other gear.