Diving Palau on a Live Aboard

We have a 6 hour layover in Narita, Japan and thought we would blog while we can.Live aboard rules are extremely simple:
If you are dry, dive.
If you are wet, eat.
When you are too full to eat and to tired to dive, sleep.
Our schedule pretty much went like this:
6:15 a.m. - We get up. We have a piece of toast and maybe some hot-chocolate that Chettra makes for us. Change into our swimsuits, and gear up into our wet suits, our.
7:00 a.m. - Get a briefing on our first dive. (In a briefing the dive master tells you about the area where you will be diving, what your max depth will be, how the reef is laid out, what kind of fish you can expect to see and when you will come back up.)
7:15 a.m. - Jump off the back of back of the boat and we are in the water blowing bubbles
8:30 a.m. ish - Breakfast
10:00 a.m. - Geared up, briefing, another dive
11:30 a.m. - Lunch
1:00 p.m. - Geared up, briefing, another dive
2:00 p.m. - Snack and fruit shake
3:00 p.m. - Geared up, briefing, another dive
6:30 p.m. - Night Dive
8:00 p.m. - Dinner

For those of you counting, that would be 5 dives a day possible. For those who are moderately enthusiastic about diving, this would not be your cup of tea. You will get "dived out". Of the 30 potential dives Tammy and Suzi did them all and I did 29... I know... I know... I wussed out on a night dive.

Also for those of you counting, almost every dive went nearly a full hour of bottom time with depths as much as 105 feet. We spent 5 hours a day under the water. This is an amazing amount of SCUBA time.

Now this may get a little boring, but for those interested here are some of the logistics about diving:
The air we breathe is typically about 21% oxygen with 78% nitrogen and 1% other inert gases. When people dive using a regular air tank, they breath air.

When people dive and are exposed to increased pressure as they descend (not work stress but depth pressure) nitrogen builds up in the diver’s system and it dissolves into the body liquids and tissues. When a diver ascends slowly and as they spend time on the surface. these gasses are exhaled through the lungs. This is called "offgassing"

Stop yawning we are getting to the good part... However, (HUGE "however") if a diver comes up too fast (which decreases the pressure quickly) the nitrogen gas is forced to come out of the blood quickly, bubbles form in the body and are unable to leave through the lungs.. This can cause symptoms of the bends or Decompression Sickness (DCS) or embolisms. It is like opening a can of soda, the bubbles form once the pressure is quickly released as the can is opened. The gas comes out of the soda solution. This is essentially what happens in a diver’s blood if they ascend too quickly. Depending on where those nitrogen bubbles go in the body determines how much damage they can do.

It was called the "Bends" because it was so painful it would make folks bend over in pain... okay I lied. I just made up why it was called the "bends". I don't know why it is called the "bends". The first one who reads this and comments back and explains why (the real reason), I'll buy you lunch. (Suzi and Tammy are not included in the contest.)

When people get DCS they are typically taken to a hyperbaric chamber which is essentially a big metal tank. They go inside and the pressure in the tank is increased (just like they were diving) making the nitrogen gases/bubble dissolve into the fluids and tissues again. Then the pressure is slowly released to allow the gasses to escape normally through the lungs..

When divers come up slowly and do what is called a safety stop for 3 minutes at 15 - 20 feet, it allows the body to eliminate the gases normally. However, (Don't ya just hate what "however" can do to a story?) The more time you spend in the water diving and the deeper you go down the more nitrogen you accumulate and the longer you have to wait to allow for “offgassing” till you can go back in the water to dive again.

However, (Don't cry this is a good however), you can change your gas mix (no, not THAT gas mix) in your tank to have more oxygen and this is called…enriched air. So, instead of breathing 21% you can increase it up it to 32% (or more) and lower the amount of nitrogen you take in. This increases your bottom time and decreases your time out of the water because you are dealing with less nitrogen to begin with.

Now there is a lot of math involved in this with "tables" and "graphs" and "algeaorithms" and lots of annoying numbers and equations for people who wear pencil protectors and get beat up at recess.... no offense Tammy. So, I have a computer that beeps at me when I am going up too fast, or going down too deep or peeing in my wet-suit. I lied.... thank heavens it doesn't beep when I pee in my wet suit.

We dove with a 32% enriched air so we could stay down longer. Every day Tammy would try to explain to us what the computers were telling us and why we needed to wait 2 hours and 10 minutes before we could dive again. Every day Suzi and I would look at her with blank stares and nod our heads like we understood... We never did and just waited for the computer to beep.

Gear list:
BCD - Buoyancy Control Device - This is a vest that holds your air tank. You can blow air into it so when you jump in the water with you heavy air tank you don't sink. When you want to go down you push a button on the end of a hose to let the air out. If you go really deep the pressure goes up and you can put some air into the BCD to make you more floaty.
Regulator - This attaches to your tank and feeds air to your mouth piece and your BCD. The mouth piece on your regulator looks a little like the mouth guard football players wear. It is soft and rubbery and fits between your lips and teeth
Wetsuit - This is usually made of neoprene... a rubbery foam stuff that is stretchy. It helps keep you warm and protects you from tuff like jelly-fish stings. Suzi and Tammy wear a 5-4-3 suit. That means in the areas prone to get the most cold they have 5mm of neoprene and areas like their legs and arms that are moving a lot they have 3mm of neoprene. Suzi gets cold in Moab in July so that's no surprise. If Tammy would pee in her suit she wouldn't need it to be so thick.
Mask & Snorkel
Fins
DSB - Diving Signal Buoy is clipped to the BCD - This is usually a bright orange tube that when you inflate it, it is about 4 - 5 feet tall. If a diver ever gets separated from the boat they can use this so the boat can see the diver over the waves.
Underwater Flashlight - For night dives and looking in dark places on the reef. Also clipped to the BCD
Class dismissed


P.S. – If you see words like “tissue” and “off-gassing”, Tammy wrote that and tried to correct words like “agleaorithims” but I wouldn’t let her. Tammy is very smart and Suzi and I don’t understand her a lot of the time because she uses words with lots of letters, but we nod our heads up and down whenever she’s talking because we know she’s right…Suzi is shaking her head “no” and said I lied.