Long Time no Write

To be expected when you are a diver I suppose. I spent much of last summer diving and had a real ball. It included trips to places I've not visited for many years, one I've waited to dive for 30 years and new dives in new places. A great summer. Add to that the inflatable trailer getting trashed by a pothole and having to source and convert a replacement, an Instructor Foundation Course in Aberdeen, a Chartwork and Positioning Course in Perth and the Forth, an Open Water Instructor Course at Arrochar, The First Class Diver Exam at Cumbrae, two First Class Diver Prep weekends, an Advanced Instructor Course at Cumbrae and I'm still trying to go diving for fun. Well it is all fun isn't it.

I've also become the First Class Coach for Scotland within BSAC so that is taking some time. And this blog entry is dedicated to that. Quite a few divers in Scotland are looking at taking the First Class exam in the near future so more power to them.

Before Christmas, to keep all of them occupied, I set a question. Some replied with answers. Hopefully all of them thought about it. It comes from an article I saw many years ago now that made me think. Here is the question:

"In the late 80's early 90's (I'm getting vague with age) a couple of researchers took a vein, filled it with blood, put it in a chamber and pushed it down to 120 metres for a few hours to ensure full saturation. They then opened the stoppers and let it come to atmospheric pressure in less than a second. They wanted to see if the vein exploded in a bloody froth. What actually happened? "

From what I can remember of the article nothing happened. This surprised the researchers as they expected the bubbling in the vein at least. Further work showed the blood was saturated with gas but it didn't come out due to no seeds being there for bubbles to start on.

Since then the research seems to have got more intense and I've ended up reading a lot of articles about this and cavitation in the blood. Well worth researching to find out more.

I've found a document on line that discusses bubble formation and bubble seeding (they use fancy words).

And there is a good article in this magazine online www.techdivingmag.com/download005.asp talking about cavitation amongst other things

So some studying for those of you looking to sit first class or wanting to improve your knowledge.

Practical
Every dive put up a delayed SMB at the end. Why? Because you can and you need to be perfect at it. So go diving.

This is a great exercise in task loading and should be easy to master with practice. Go to it. And get diving. I was out last weekend and will be out next weekend at Oban. Reckon I'll get into Loch Creran while I'm there too.