Why Dive a Rebreather?

 

The future of Diving?

Imagine a twin set of 2 x 3 litre cylinders that gives you the same dive time as a twin set of 50 litres and weighs less than twin 10’s. That heated the air as you breathed and kept it moist. That changed the gas composition in real time to give you the perfect Oxygen level for decompression and didn’t produce any noisy bubbles to scare the fish away while doing it and finally cost the same as a twin set air fill to refill with a Helium mix. Sounds like a divers dream doesn’t it, well dream no more, these systems have existed for several years and are regularly used by divers

What I have just described is a rebreather. In fact rebreathers have been around for hundreds of years and are a much older design than the open circuit SCUBA equipment familiar to us all. They all use a CO2 scrubber material to filter out the exhaled Carbon Dioxide while recirculating your gas in a loop and adding fresh breathable gas in some way

Erika-Leigh Haley - Buddy Inspiration Mixed Gas Instructor and Sunset Divers Operations Manager going for a fun dive in the warm waters of Grand Cayman.    V.    Harry in Red Sea-Egypt Which would you prefer?

 

Rebreathers offer several advantages over open circuit scuba as I've pointed out above. However it's not all pro's

Positive

Negative
Much longer gas duration Initial cost
Lighter than twin set More complex than OC
Warm gas More failure points
Moist gas Extra training required
Cheap to refill and run More maintenance
Quieter Negativity from some others
More bailout options than OC  
Less decompression  
Longer No Stop dives  
Greater depth potential  

With time, the available units are becoming more sophisticated, answering the complexity and maintenance concerns and at the same time reducing the failure points.

Rebreathers are not for everyone though. They require a commitment to use. You must look after them properly and carry out ALL predive checks. They are not like OC which you can just sling on and jump in. If you are lapse in your current OC buddy checks then they are NOT for you. Also they require you to go back to stage 1 in training. Much of your OC skills must be relearnt and changed and this means for a while you will be back to simple and shallow dives. You may be an OC guru, on tri-mix and happy at 80m, but this counts for nothing with rebreathers, you'll be back at 10m dives for a while. In fact it may be easier for a complete novice to learn rebreathing than an experienced OC diver. There have been fatalities on rebreathers as people have pushed them selves to fast, thinking (I can do that on OC).

Rebreathers can bite, and if they do, they can bite VERY hard. They do require a commitment to dive them and an understanding of the risks involved.