Tec 50 Knowledge Review

1. Your limits as a Tec 50 diver are

2. In responding to an unresponsive diver during a decompression dive at depth your

priority is to get the victim to the surface. First wait until convulsions end, hold regulator
in and begin ascent after making victim neutrally buoyant and if necessary towing to find
a suitable ascent/exit point. During ascent try to maintain a neutral airway to allow
excess air to vent from victims lungs. Don't drop victims weights until at the surface. If
you owe little deco and have surface support probability of victim survival is high and
risk to self is low. If you owe lots of deco and don’t have surface support probability of
victim survival is low and risk to self is high. If you owe a deco stop you must judge the
risk of a DCS in bringing the victim out and missing it.

3. Long hose gas sharing in the decompression phase of a technical dive may be
necessary to close the gap between when a victim loses his gas supply and reaches
another independent gas supply or the surface. Considerations and options include:
- The depth at which the victim switches to the first deco gas.
- whether the victim will need long hose gas sharing for air breaks
- being ready to provide assistance at the surface after completing decompression

4. Better me than thee philosophy: you shouldn’t take unreasonable risks yourself to help a
victim because you can’t help someone if you’re in trouble yourself.

5. You plan for ‘specific’ mistakes and emergencies by emphasizing good diving technique
and adequate planning so that you should never face them - but you should still know
what to do just in case. Skilled tec divers learn to look at each dive and plan for
reasonably foreseeable mistakes and emergencies to that dive.

6. You may want to tec dive in a pool or shallow water

- to refresh your skills
- to extend your skills to specific situations
- to invent mission specific skills

7. The most common mistake in mission planning, and the most common reason missions
fail, is trying to accomplish more than is reasonable in a single dive. Missions must be
simple and realistic.

8. - calculating a reasonable sample rate as 1m is too much to cover

- Deciding upon a methodology for collecting and labeling the various samples and where
they were found.
- Determine who will lead and who will support including responsibility
- Arrange for surface support
- Arrange for practice to take place
Tec 50 Knowledge Review
- Practice in swimming pool first to be sure you can collect and bag the samples
- Survey a sample of the dive site for exits and, dangerous objects etc
- It would be impossible to do this in dive, in fact it would probably be more like a week!

Tec 50 Knowledge Review Two

1. - Decompression Sickness (DCS) : is the condition in which inert gas (nitrogen) forms
bubbles in the tissues and the bloodstream as it comes out of solution due to high
supersaturation following a rapid ascent.
- Arterial Gas Embolism (AGE) is the condition where air bubbles enter the bloodstream
through a lung rupture,
- Decompression Illness (DCI) is the field term for both AGE and DCI together. First aid
and emergency management for both is identical so it’s NOT important to distinguish
between the two.

2. Signs and symptoms of DCI are:

- pain in the joints or mid-limb
- undue fatigue
- inability to urinate
- blurred vision
- itchy skin rash
- tingling in the extremities
- swelling
- vertigo
- hearing or speech impairment
- paralysis
- numbness
- unconsciousness
- bloody froth from mouth
- loss of co-ordination
- personality change
- respiratory / cardiac arrest
Symptoms can be immediate (usually when AGE related) or delayed (when DCS related).

3. Keep patient laying down, monitor ABCD’s, admin CPR if nec, administer emergency
oxygen to a breathing patient via a demand system at 100%, alert EMS / DAN, maintain
hydration
4. Field Neurological Examination
- have patient follow finger with both eyes, they should track together.
- Ask patient to use both hands to squeeze yours - weakness on one side suggests a
problem
- ask patient to close both eyes, stretch out the arms and then bend at the elbow to touch
their nose with the fingertips. Inability to do this with either/both hands suggests a
problem.
- patient should be able to stand on one foot
- snap fingers on either side of patients head. Ask if there’s any significant difference in
loudness; If so, this could suggest nerve damage
Tec 50 Knowledge Review
5. Diver accident insurance benefits decompression by reducing delays associated with
questions about payments.

6. Breathing pure oxygen helps oxygenate tissues suffering from restricted blood flow due
to bubble formation. This helps protect these tissues until the patient receives
decompression. On the other hand the oxygen window speeds dissolved nitrogen out of
the body faster, minimizing and slowing further bubble growth to further reduce and
worsening symptoms. The longer the oxygen window is open the better.

7. The steps you can take to broaden your abilities and limits within tec diving are:
- Gaining Experience within current qualifications
- Learn from those with experience
- Push your comfort zone gently
- respect the limits
- continue training
- Be patient

8. Patients

9. Trimix (TMx) is a blend of Oxygen, Helium and Nitrogen.

10. the advantages of trimix are

- Reduced narcosis
- Reduced gas density, as helium is lighter than O2 and N it’s easier to breath
- Reduced O2 exposure, as Helium is non narcotic and has low gas density
The disadvantages are:
- More deco required
- You cannot use an air or EANx schedule for TMx even if O2 content is the same.
- TMx always requires accelerated deco with higher O2 content gasses.
- You must plan separately for Helium

11. If Tec 50 instructor is a trimix instructor you may have option of using TMx on training
dive 4. This does not certify you or qualify you to dive TMx independently.
Tec 50 Knowledge Review

12.

Depth Stop Run Mix pO2 EAD

Des 44 - 2 26 - -
Lvl 44 38 40 26 1.37 40
Ascent 21 - 42 26 - -
Stop 21 00:42 43 26 0.79 19
Stop 18 02:00 45 26 0.71 16
Stop 15 05:00 50 26 0.64 13
Stop 12 05:00 55 26 0.56 10
Stop 9 05:00 60 80 1.50 0
Stop 6 02:00 62 80 1.26 0
Stop 5 16 78 80 1.19 0
Stop - - 78 80 - -

Dive # 1, VPM-B +2
Elevation = 0 m
CNS = 39%
OTU's = 101 Total Gas Used Gas Inc Reserve
Gas 26 = 4603 ltr. 4603
Gas 80 = 581 ltr. 581

No, not enough back gas.

18x2x170 =6120

Dept Stop Run Mix pO2 Vol Con SA OTU/ OTU CNS
v. C min s %/MIN
h
Fac
Tec 50 Knowledge Review
De 44 40 0.26 1.43 5.4 19 1.67 0.83%
s
Asc 0.26 1.04 2.6 19 1.07 0.42%
ent
Sto 12 3 0.26 2.2 16 0.14%
p
Sto 9 10 0.80 1.9 16 1.81 2.22%
p
Sto 6 17 0.80 1.6 16 1.45 0.55%
p
Sto 3 43 0.80 1.3 16 1.07 0.42%
p

Dive # 1,
Elevation = 0 m
CNS = 84%
OTU’s 158 TOT INC Twin Enough?
GAS RES 18’s
Gas 26 = 4652 ltr. 428 no
9
Gas 80 = 1634 ltr. 162 Yes
4
Tec 50 Knowledge Review

13.

Depth Stop Run Mix pO2 EAD

Des 50 - 2 21 - -
Lvl 50 22 25 21 1.23 50
Asc 30 - 27 21 - -
Stp 27 01:00 28 21 0.76 27
Stp 24 02:00 30 21 0.70 24
Stp 21 03:00 33 21 0.64 21
Stp 18 03:00 36 21 0.58 18
Stp 15 05:00 41 21 0.51 15
Stp 12 06:00 47 21 0.45 12
Stp 9 09:00 56 21 0.39 9
Stp 6 03:00 59 21 0.33 6
Stp 5 41 100 21 0.31 5
Sfc - - 100 21 - -

Dive # 1, VPM-B +2
Elevation = 0 m
CNS = 14%
OTU's = 38
Tec 50 Knowledge Review
Gas 21 = 5032 ltr.

- Total Gas required including reserve = 7548

- Total Gas A
- Total Gas available with twin 21s with 150 bar = 6300 litres
- This is not enough for the dive above - i.e. max gas used must not exceed 4200 litres
- Therefore you would need to leave bottom after 21 mins so that total runtime is 82 mins
and total gas used 4178 litres
- With a 7 litre x 195 bar x O2 we are looking at a further 1365 litres and a total of 7665
litres.
- If this O2 is used the original dive schedule could be used by switching to O2 during the
5m final stop.
- Based on dive on 21% OTU’s = 38 & CNS = 14% after the dive.
- Total OTUs for mission over 5 days = 2300 and Ave per day = 460
- Total used = 38 meaning 422 left over
- So for the second dive = 460 x 4 = 1840+422 left over = 2262 / 4 = 565 OTUs can be
used on the next dive.

Note after 3 hours CNS falls to 12%

OTUs 32