[PSUBS-MAILIST] US Navy Diving Manual

["Sean T. Stevenson"<sts@telus.net>]

With the recent discussion on this list in regard to the US Navy Diving Manual,
I feel it necessary to point out that, while this manual is an excellent reference
on diving history and logistics, it is perhaps not the best source for information
on mixed gas diving, decompression procedure or diving physiology in general.


The US Navy dive tables are widely regarded (by anyone other than the US Navy)
as being somewhat archaic, and not reflecting current thinking on the subject
(the original USN air tables were derived empirically from USN test subjects).
 I encourage anyone who may be interested in further information on these subjects
to read "The Physiology and Medicine of Diving - 4th Edition", as well as either
of the two books written by Dr. Bruce Weinke, a researcher of decompression
mechanics at Los Alamos (RGBM, VPM).

US Navy Special Warfare has been conducting research into mixed gas decompression
techniques in conjunction with the florida cave diving group, the Woodville
Karst Plain Project.  This organization has been developing decompression schedules
for deep and long mixed gas dives (saturation, in some cases) over the past
ten years or so which seem to radically contradict the schedules produced by
the common algorithms.  Some of this information originates with oil field
divers, and these companies tend to keep their information proprietary, so
the infiltration to the rest of the industry has been slow.  To my knowledge,
the USN manual does not discuss the new models.

The two volumes of the USN manual are definite "must have's" in the library,
but do consider that there are other, perhaps more current sources of information.


-Sean
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