DIVE TABLE AND DIVE KOMPUTER

Your body absorbs nitrogen during a dive: after the dive, your body can tolerate a certain level excess nitrogen without developing decompression sickness. The question is, how do you know what that level is, and then stay within it?

To answer this question, physiologist and another scientists created mathematical decompression models that track the theoretical nitrogen you have in you have in your body before , during and after diving. For practical field use, these models are expressed by dive tables and in dive computers, which as you read earlier, you use primarily to determine your maximum allowable time at given depths.

The fact that you derive your dive time limits your tabled m a model explains why you need to dive conservatively and avoid the maximum limits Your table or computer provides. Theoretical models can't account for variations front one individual to the next, so it's prudent to stay well within the limits a table or computer predicts. This is especially true if any of the factors that contribute to decompression sickness (vigorous exercise, cold, age, etc.) apply to you or the dive situation. You want to stay well within limits, AM take extra precautions to avoid the secondary contributed is, you can't change your age, but you can keep yourself' from becoming dehydrated.

So, because people differ in their susceptibility to decompression sickness, no dive table or computer can guarantee that decompression sickness will never occur, even though you dive within the table or computer limits. It is always wisest to plan dives well within table and computer limit, especially if any contributing factors apply.

As a recreational diver, you'll be learning no decompression diving. No decompression diving means that you ll plan your dives and dive so that you can always ascend directly to the surface without stopping, yet without significant risk of decompression sickness. This is also called (somewhat more accurately) no stop diving ,because you don't have to make ( to make a stop (though you usually will - more about that in Section Five). As a recreational diver, you always plan your dives as no decompression dives.

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