Boost Oxygen?

Back in the late 1970's we were diving 10 miles off Panama city Florida and we had a girl run out of oxygen and her dive buddy shared her oxygen to the surface and both got the bends.The dive boat capt called emergency services and we met the coast guard 1/2 way to beach.
That was something I kept in my head and checked oxygen often from that point on!
Both girls stayed in the chamber for several hours and was taken to hospital for observation.I talked to them a few days later and they were ok.
Scary stuff!
Cohunt must have seen some wild stuff.Some divers off the Louisiana coast at an oil platform saw groupers as big as a volkswagon car.

338 dude said:

That makes sense to me. I guess I overlooked that part . when I heard about oxygen toxicity was when I became a certified diver at the age of 15 so it's been a while.

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15 is good, iirc that used to be the minimum age/break point for full " open water diver"/"junior open water" certification, I got you beat though ;-) -- myself and father had to go through a process signing multiple waivers and he had to get certified along side me to get scuba certified at the age of 12--- they have since lowered the minimum age to 10 now iirc

The "fun stuff" was calculating "partial pressures", bottom times, and finding the "in water" and "in chamber" decompression charts/times of tri-mix and heli-ox ---- we used math and charts back then--- now it's pretty much all done by computers and can be quickly calculated and even changed "on the fly"

BUT , I've gotten way off track from "boost o2 at altitude"--- sorry

When I was in college, many moons ago, I worked in the x-ray dept of a large hospital. Every Monday morning all the x-ray techs would head straight for the oxygen ports in the procedure rooms for an O2 blast. They claimed that he helped chase their hangovers away. There may just be more applications for those little cans than I thought. LOL

Old Rooster said:

Back in the late 1970's we were diving 10 miles off Panama city Florida and we had a girl run out of oxygen and her dive buddy shared her oxygen to the surface and both got the bends.The dive boat capt called emergency services and we met the coast guard 1/2 way to beach.
That was something I kept in my head and checked oxygen often from that point on!
Both girls stayed in the chamber for several hours and was taken to hospital for observation.I talked to them a few days later and they were ok.
Scary stuff!
Cohunt must have seen some wild stuff.Some divers off the Louisiana coast at an oil platform saw groupers as big as a volkswagon car.

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Was it O2 or just compressed air in your dive tanks.

I didn't ask the boat capt as it was his company supplied tanks but I expect it was oxygen.

Old Rooster said:

Back in the late 1970's we were diving 10 miles off Panama city Florida and we had a girl run out of oxygen and her dive buddy shared her oxygen to the surface and both got the bends.The dive boat capt called emergency services and we met the coast guard 1/2 way to beach.
That was something I kept in my head and checked oxygen often from that point on!
Both girls stayed in the chamber for several hours and was taken to hospital for observation.I talked to them a few days later and they were ok.
Scary stuff!
Cohunt must have seen some wild stuff.Some divers off the Louisiana coast at an oil platform saw groupers as big as a volkswagon car.

Click to expand...

"The bends" is from surfacing too quickly, air/nitrogen gets into your blood stream in gaseous form and can cease blood to flow in your veins or to your brain-- if it comes out through your skin it is called " subcutaneous bends"-- commonly known in the dive industry as " rice crispies" cause if you push the bubbles under your skin they " snap, crackle, pop"

--- "nitrogen narcosis" is fun for a while-- makes you feel/act drunk , it's from over absorption of nitrogen ( usually occurring deeper than 100') into your blood that affects cognitive reasoning

Trimix adds helium to the air breathing mix to lower the nitrogen and oxygen levels, it helps lower the chances of oxygen toxicity and nitrogen narcosis-- when you go real deep or stay real long (hours/days/weeks) under pressure that is called saturation diving ( you must stay under pressure " storage depth" - live in a large steel chamber)-- the whole job and then have days of decompression before you can come out of the pressure.

Heliox is a trip, depending on the depth ( partial pressure) you can literally breath tiny amounts of oxygen and still survive due to the increased partial pressures of o2---- the helium is basically an inert gas that gets rid of all the bad things that nitrogen can do while under pressure -- you generally want to maintain .4- 1.2 Atm of O2 partial pressure-- so at 300feet depth you can live/work on anywhere from just 4% to 12% of Oxygen ( you guys made me pull out my books/charts again to figure this out, manual is almost 3" thick)


We also got into CO2 scrubbers in the chambers and rebreathers--- they use filters to remove the exhaled CO2 from your breath and slowly trickle small amounts of O2 back Into your breathing mixture to replace the O2 your body had used

Old Rooster said:

I didn't ask the boat capt as it was his company supplied tanks but I expect it was oxygen.

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Doubt it, most likely just air-- breathing O2 is "medical grade" and costs quite a bit more than scuba "air" --- I don't know any form of underwater diving that exclusively uses pure o2 other than the " closed circuit oxygen UBA" that only the elite navy combat divers use

"The bends" can happen with any breathing mixture--it happens simply from surfacing too quickly and the dissolved gas you are breathing forms bubbles I'm the blood or body .

Embolisms are the worst disorder and must have immediate medical help as death can occur quickly-- an embolism can even occur when snorkeling/ free diving with non pressurized air if not careful of ascent rates

You are the man!I wish I had done more diving.
We used an air mix once and dove to 110 -120 ft off Louisiana coast.I never saw fish as bog as a Volkswagon but we did spear some good size Grouper and Snapper as well as some other fish I can't remember the name of right now.The professional divers were diving at close to 300 ft to check for gas leaks in pipelines so other divers could repair or replace them.Their boat broke down where we were diving.As a mechanic I got their boat going so they could get to their 300 ft deep job site.
Water in their diesel fuel clogged the fuel lines.The boat was 110 ft long so it was close to being a ship I guess.
Edit to add:When diving over 80 ft we would stop every 25 ft depth and wait 3 minutes and then up to the surface slowly.
Our diving instructor was a navy diver many years before and knew the right was to get to the top without getting the bends.

Old Rooster said:

You are the man!I wish I had done more diving.
We used an air mix once and dove to 110 -120 ft off Louisiana coast.I never saw fish as bog as a Volkswagon but we did spear some good size Grouper and Snapper as well as some other fish I can't remember the name of right now.The professional divers were diving at close to 300 ft to check for gas leaks in pipelines so other divers could repair or replace them.Their boat broke down where we were diving.As a mechanic I got their boat going so they could get to their 300 ft deep job site.
Water in their diesel fuel clogged the fuel lines.The boat was 110 ft long so it was close to being a ship I guess.
Edit to add:When diving over 80 ft we would stop every 25 ft depth and wait 3 minutes and then up to the surface slowly.
Our diving instructor was a navy diver many years before and knew the right was to get to the top without getting the bends.

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Rule of thumb on ascent rate is to never go faster than your bubbles-- scuba "safety stops" are smart--- in surface supplied diving we often did in water decompression, then once on the surface had no more than 5 ( preferably 3) minutes to get in the deco chamber and "pressed back down" for the full table decompression over hours.

The big $ was in sat diving but it is real hard on your body

For fun---A few pics from back in the day when I used comercial and mark5 heavy gear

Oh yeah, can totally tell that's you

adk hunter said:

Oh yeah, can totally tell that's you

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What, you can't see my face?
That was in a training tank -- how can you tell? No gloves on, always wore gloves working offshore. Also most of the time the water visibility was horrible

Fun times back then, rowdy guys, not many rules, did lots of stupid stuff to " get the job done", lots of women with no names --- lost a few co-workers over the years back then though. Im not in that line of work anymore.

Worked with a lot of ex- navy seals, udt divers, sub-mariners, etc---- those guys are hard core-- was a job for me- a way of life for them!!

I am a NASDS certified scuba diver. I spent almost all of my underwater time at < 30ft. The amazing world of marine/tropical fishes are typically less than 20ft.

A lot of guys like to dive on deep wrecks or just do "bounce dives" trying to set personal records. That stuff never really interested me. Swimming the coral reefs was where it was at. Today, a nice lake kayak trip is about all I can muster up.

Varmint Hunter said:

I am a NASDS certified scuba diver. I spent almost all of my underwater time at < 30ft. The amazing world of marine/tropical fishes are typically less than 20ft.

A lot of guys like to dive on deep wrecks or just do "bounce dives" trying to set personal records. That stuff never really interested me. Swimming the coral reefs was where it was at. Today, a nice lake kayak trip is about all I can muster up.

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Yup, fish/corral need sun and food--- none of that down deep, it's pretty much a barren wasteland down deep-- best stuff is usually 80 feet and above-- if your air supply is big enough, you can stay all day at 30' or less , fresh crab/ lobster is the bomb- I love almost all seafood

Wrecks are fun to explore sometimes though, I like wall dives too, even night dives are fun- different world at night with the phosphorescent organisms


Somehow I've turned the "boost oxygen" post into an underwater world-- sorry

Old Rooster said:

You are the man!I wish I had done more diving.
We used an air mix once and dove to 110 -120 ft off Louisiana coast.I never saw fish as bog as a Volkswagon but we did spear some good size Grouper and Snapper as well as some other fish I can't remember the name of right now.The professional divers were diving at close to 300 ft to check for gas leaks in pipelines so other divers could repair or replace them.Their boat broke down where we were diving.As a mechanic I got their boat going so they could get to their 300 ft deep job site.
Water in their diesel fuel clogged the fuel lines.The boat was 110 ft long so it was close to being a ship I guess.
Edit to add:When diving over 80 ft we would stop every 25 ft depth and wait 3 minutes and then up to the surface slowly.
Our diving instructor was a navy diver many years before and knew the right was to get to the top without getting the bends.

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Were you diving then with twin 72's?