NEW Underwater Sport Or No?

[ricki]

A contrasting opinion in some ways from an experienced scooter free diver:

Originally Posted by fdog

The Cuda system is not really heavy. We have taken our Cudas around the world (quite literally) with only two checked bags (that includes scooters, complete scuba gear, clothes, everything).

I am reasonably sure that there is a bit of performance difference between the Dive-X offering (Cuda with a saddle) and the scooters you've mentioned (SeaDoo, Tekna, Apollo w/saddle).





Although I would agree that scooter freediving gives one a safer dive, my experience is that this is only if all things are equal: depth, dive time, breathe up.

The nature of scooter freediving makes it very easy to get deep and stay there for awhile. Your mind is occupied by all the things whizzing past, so, it's easy to get distracted. This makes it a perfect setup for deep water blackout; and to make things worse, buddy contact can become problematic, too, as a buddy on the surface is noticabally slower than the one submerged. All these conspire to make scooter freediving actually more dangerous, IMHO.

Thus, whenever I work with a freediver who is starting use of a scooter, I emphasise the hazards. I kind of made up the "rule of halves": don't scooter deeper than half your performance depth or longer than half your static (this is a work in progress). I limit myself to 20 meters and 2:15, and in fact I have the alarms on my D4 set to those specs.

Scooter freediving is an awesome enhancement to what is already an intoxicating sport. Enjoy!


All the best, James

From: http://www.divematrix.com/showthread...8909#post88909