In a message dated 12/24/03 10:15:39 AM Pacific Standard Time, irox@ix.netcom.com writes:
You're happily exploring in your wet/dry ambient sub at 100feet, suddenly
your sub get's caught on fish nets/line/dredger cables/whatever, the
exit from the vehicle is resticted by the lines, before you can start on
freeing youself the cables/ropes/lines go tight and you are being hauled
to the surface faster than your decompresion chart says you should.
I agree. Even though I intend to operate mine at ambient-capable depths, decompression debt is what drove me to change from an ambient design to 1-atm. I realized that any hydrobatic ("seat of the pants") maneuvers that involved rapid changes in depth would represent an unacceptable risk of getting bent. Although the transition increased the cost of my projected build by quite a bit, whatever the additional cost turns out to be will still be well below the threshold of the value I place on my life. 1-atm = deathtrap? As others have said, each approach has it's own tradeoffs and dangers and any submersible, ambient or 1-atm, is only as safe or as deadly as you make it.
Warm Regards
Shawn