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Comment by socialist_coder | Hacker News Reader

> they let uncertified divers scuba at.

Who is "they"? There is not some scuba sheriff who magically appears and stops you from going as deep as you want. Get some gear, swim out, and dive. How deep you go is 100% up to you.

Also, dive computers make the whole thing very safe by tracking exactly how long and how deep you can stay without needing any lengthy nitrogen releasing safety stops. As a recreational diver with a bit of experience, you can feel very confident going down to 160 feet (maybe even 200?) as long as you listen to your dive computer.

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You can't rent tanks or get your own tanks filled without some sort of certification.

You can, however, buy your own compressor.

They're not cheap, but they're also not all that expensive.

You just need a PADI Open Water certification or equivalent to rent tanks or get air fills. You don't need to be some fancy technical cave diver. The most basic license will suffice.

Those who have that certification are not "uncertified divers".

You aren't supposed to be able to dive at all without a certification. So the term "uncertified divers" makes zero sense.

So, if you're "uncertified" and you somehow managed to get yourself a filled air tank, then my point still stands: you can go down to however deep you want.

And the basic open water certification is not much more than a rubber stamp. Anyone can get it as long as they pay their $100 to PADI or whoever else.

How do you think people go about getting a certification? Uncertified people have to be able to dive with an instructor or there would be a chicken and egg problem becoming certified.

That's ignoring nitrogen narcosis and other very dangerous concerns...

It's not ignoring it at all. Your dive computer tells you exactly how long you can stay at your current depth with no problems ("no decompression time").

You can see tables of the no decompression time: http://elearning.padi.com/company0/tools/RDP_Table%20Met.pdf

The calculations are quite confusing do to manually, but your computer does them great, and in realtime, and for your exact depth & time. So, like I said, as long as you follow your computer, the risk for nitrogen narcosis or any other problems is very very small.

You are confusing nitrogen narcosis with the bends.

You're right, I apologize.

But I still argue the point: the depths that you will suffer seriously from nitrogen narcosis are beyond how deep you could even go on 1 tank + no decompression time.

Once you get to 160 ft you only have a few minutes at that depth, so realistically you couldn't even go deep enough where nitrogen narcosis would be a big problem.

So I still stand by my statement: if you have only 1 tank, and follow your dive computer's guidance, your risk of anything bad happening to you on a dive is slim to none.

"And follow your computer's guidance" is the key part. Hard to be sure you'll do that when N2 drunk ;)

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