Quote: (Originally Posted by
dive2dive2000)
Dr Mike,
On an open water dive (no over head)at what depth do you plan on CCR vs OC. When taking my CCR class I was taught that if at all possible forget about OC diving and get your hrs in. For me that meant giving up on deep dives and cave dives for a season or two. Your thoughts would be appreciated. I am taking strictly about newbies. I personally believe the right tool for the right job, but if you are a new ccr diver only dive ccr and only dive dives 130 or less.
Hi,
Reef diving I do on OC. Its cheaper, easier, less hassle, easier to travel and safer. But that's probably only 1% of my diving
For everything else I pretty much only dive CCR regardless of depth - but as previously mentioned this is mainly to keep my skills/reactions up. But this is not as contradictory as it sounds seeing as practically all my dives are overheads in one way or another and the shallow dives make up a very small % of my diving.
I do not see it as a problem for newbies to dive their units at any depth to gain experience
before they venture deeper/overhead nor do I think experienced overhead divers should swap to OC on the occasional shallow OW dives if they are
mainly doing overhead dives.
The only point I'm making is that there are many divers who have no intention/desire to do anything overhead or deep or if they do its a very very small% of their diving. For
those divers I believe diving ccr adds unnecessary risk.
As an example (I seem to have to spell things out very carefully here so some can understand what is obvious to me - although I think Mark did a good job)
IMO A diver who doesn't (or doesnt plan on) dive caves doesn't penetrate or limited penetration of wrecks or doesn't dive where there is any risk of entanglement and only ever does OW sea lake or quarry dives to depths no greater than 60m can not justify using a CCR for safety reasons - although as pointed out earlier by crazyduck? one doesn't need to justify ones choice of dive gear to anyone - its ok to dive it just because you like too - but at least be honest as to why. I suspect that the above dive type description in reality counts for a very large % if not the majority of CCR users. it is those divers that I am talking about here.