Multiple Shallow Dives Back to Back?

[Mafnet]

Hello everyone at DB. Haven't put up a post since I was strictly a free diver. Since then I've taken up SCUBA very seriously.

I find myself in a weird predicament that none of my NAUI or NITROX literature covers. I'm doing a dive trip this weekend and am unfortunately unable to bring a full dive rig. The dives are all going to be relatively shallow averaging about 24 ft and really no deeper than 30 ft at any time. They are going to be back to back prob 5-10 mins in between and quite a few of them, 30 or so over 24 hrs. My issue is not worry of lung expansion injury but in the realm of embolisms and getting bent. I know there is minimal sit time between the dives and thats my worry. I also know that NITROX will help with this but I'm beginning to question if it a moot point.

Thanks Everyone!
It's great to be back.

 

[WTTriggerfish]

I am not a diving doctor or a tech diver, but it seems to me that if you're staying above 33 feet your max bottom time should be waaay longer than the time all of those dives would take if you were doing a long continuous dive. I suspect the likelihood of you having a problem is extremely low. This is hardly peer reviewed data, but I used to work as an exhibit diver at an aquarium and we often did frequent repetitive dives in the depth range you're talking about for many days at a time. Our max depth was about 24 feet, and unfortunately the divers in the exhibit tended to be very liberal about ascent rates. When we were feeding a lot of the time we'd pop up from the bottom many times to get another piece of fish or whatever equipment we needed and the ascent rate was pretty damn fast. I did that for about five years and I never saw anyone have a decompression injury*. We were also diving on air not nitrox, which I suppose should reduce the likelihood of you developing a problem but I actually think you'd be fine on regular air.

May I ask what you're doing? This sounds like research to me and that's always exciting to hear about if so.

*One time and one time only we had a diver have a problem after getting out of the water, but she was an instructor and probably had significant residual nitrogen time from a weekend of deep diving. Also DCS was never confirmed and the general opinion of the staff was that she had hypothermia, which depending on where you are and what you're wearing is probably a much greater concern than DCS. The other thing I'd watch out for is barotrauma to your sinuses, I had a couple of days where I sorta pushed it and can confirm that you can get a nasty headache even though you're not going very deep.

 

[Chris_C_NZ]

standard dive tables will tell you whether or not you need to spend more time offgassing between dives etc. PADI sells them. Use them as there is no point asking us!

 

[WTTriggerfish]

Eh Idunno, it IS a pretty unusual situation. We all know repetitive and especially bounce dives can cause more problems than more moderate profiles, probably because any bubbles that are forming shrink and migrate somewhere they won't fit when they expand right? I might have been nervous about this myself except that I saw people do it all the time with no ill result. I actually think it might be really interesting to get aquarium divers to wear a computer for a week or so and do one of those ultrasound tests that can see if they have silent bubbles at regular intervals. I think a lot of people in the industry could use the results actually. I was just an intern though nobody was going to listen to me... I wish the OP would return, as I am curious what prompted this dive plan. Hey isn't this going to be pretty expensive if he actually does a LOT of nitrox dives? I assume he can't mix the stuff on site.