Why on earth would you have someone doing surface protocol when they are not on the surface? That would defeat the whole purpose - to dive as deep as possible and return to the surface on one breath of air.
No-Limits diving won't go away in a hurry. People like Herbert are going to continue to innovate, find new and safer systems, and continue to change the limits we place on the human organism.
Sure people have died in this event, but what use is a life if we are not willing to risk losing it in search of our dreams?
I'll have to agree with that. Maybe I'd be ok with something like come to the surface, flick an ok and immediately hit 10m on o2 - so a shorter SP for no limits.
But o2 decomression on ascent? So what when depth goes beyond 300 and even that is too risky? Move it to -20m? then -30m? And surely CW records will hit the kinds of depths soon where this would also be needed? Besides, because of the way that SWB works, allowing a diver to end the dive at -10m would give an enormous performance benefit hypoxia wise.
There is an absolute limit even in no limits. Sure we live now in a time that new world records are made almost monthly, but of course that will not last forever. There has to be a limit and then records will happen less frequently and eventually maybe not at all. But when that happens, the right solution is not to allow more relaxed rules to go deeper - then we just accept the situation. They don't allow 100m sprinters to go down hill just so new records would be made, much less stop at 90m. The most talented and dedicated athletes can train their entire career as hard as humanly possible - and never reach the world record. You know what? Tough luck, but that's just how it is. World records are not to be taken for granted, like we've used to. When the sport truly matures, it'll become less and less about records and more and more about who will succeed in an individual competition against others. There are still a lot of things to be explored in this event. Herbert show's the right idea by re-thiniking some of the most accepted and basic premises. You don't need to fill a balloon, you can go fast, you can do deco stop on ascent on apnea and you can lessen DCS and narcosis risks by exhaling some of you air while not going on FRC (in fact this part of it is pure genious even if it may be considered to be a little in the "gray area" - he is basically making an FRC dive, but with the o2 and equalisation reserves of a full lung dive - also saving the o2 rich air for ascent, where it is most critical). The accidents we've seen have been mostly equipment failures, exceptionally tragically bad luck, technical shortcomings...In fact I think Benjamin is the only case where something unexpected happened physiologically and even in his case he'd been makeing several deep dives on the same day?
No limits has always been a "logistic discipline", but in the future, this will be just amplified. You simply cannot just dip a weighed lift bag at the end of a 200m cable and expect to be safe. With luck, yes, but with bad luck...The counterweight was already a huge improvement and worked well for hundreds or even thousands of dives. Tragically, that has now been shown to have it's shortcomings as well. Now you have back ups and backups of backups. Maybe in the future a minisub will accompany, or even take the athelete down - like someone mentioned (yeah, sounds crazy now, but wait and see). It already comes down to resourcing a lot and in the future even more. Events will cost hundreds of thousands, even millions to organize because of the organisation needed.
From surface to surface, on one breath of air. That has to be the premise - otherwise it's all pointless. Not two breaths, not "almost to the surface" or "almost from the surface"...Wheather or not the current SP is perfect and serves it's purpose can be debated. But if divers cannot make it safely from surface to surface on one breath of air, then perhaps it's time to stop to think about if deeper dives are really the wise thing to do?
But back to topic, I think Herbert and the crew have got the right idea about this, I think he'll succeed even if it does make me a bit nervous that things are still being built and tested just days before the attempt. He's clearly aware of the most common reasons of failure and accidents and has countered many of these points. Sure his system is not perfect either - nothing is - but it is as good as the current knowledge allows - or at least significantly better. Good luck to him!
I'm sure there will be serious accidents in freediving, even fatal ones - it is a dangerous activity when taken to extremes. But hopefully we learn and improve every time.
:wave