We love our dive computers! Love them. They’re either our own personal dive companion, dive buddy (and let’s face it they don’t drift off and do their own thing) or simply prove to the novices that we have dived before!
We love them.
But what happens when they go wrong? What happens when they malfunction and start showing gibberish? This is exactly what happened to Dive Bunny X on a recent trip to the Canaries.
Over to Master Bunny Amanda who tells us:
“Firstly they don’t go wrong. Either the battery dies or the computer floods, either way it simply dies. RIP little computer bunnie buddy. If your computer fails on a dive then just let your buddy know and start your ascent. If your computer starts offering you info that makes no sense then you have probably strayed into deco territory.”
We asked Amanda to look at the offending computer and she confirmed that Bunny X had overstayed her welcome in the deep. Not something that we would promote but, what if you do stay too low for too long, then what do you do?
Understanding your computer
“It’s something to be avoided but it’s also something to understand." explains Amanda, "Your computer will flip from keeping you within your non decompression diving to telling you how to manage your decompression obligation. What I’m looking at here is that the diver was confused when the display changed to show a minimum depth rather than a time and also a ‘ceiling’ – so she had gone over her non decompression limit and the computer was telling her how long she needed to stay at depth to sort this out.”
Amanda said it’s really easy if you know what the display is telling you. She added:
“You can work through your instruction manual to start to understand what you are seeing and what you need to do. Alternatively we offer a course that keeps divers within their NDL but gives them a computer that shows the info for when they get into deco."
