New NAUI safety stops

[SmithDiving]

First let me say I won’t try to explain any deco. theory here, (You’ll have to come & take the NAUI Master Diver course).
Some divers have been doing deep stops since at least the late 80’s. I suspect that a lot of divers actually had been doing them for decades prior to that without realizing it. When divers spearfish in deep water they tend to create an inadvertent deep stop where they catch their fish. This is actually what got Richard Pyle thinking about the idea of deep stops.
The NAUI Technical Diving Workshop this winter was entitled “Deep Stops and Modern Decompression Strategies”. The workshop was co-chaired by Tim O’Leary, Director of Technical Diving Operations for NAUI and Bruce Wienke from Los Alamos National Laboratory. The workshop was attended by more than 100 people representing numerous training agencies and diving specialties. I thought about attending this year, but as I have attended several presentations in the past by Dr. Wienke, I knew I would be lost in a very short time, (these guys are scary smart).
The new NAUI recommendation for deep stops is as stated in the earlier replies – For dives deeper than 40’, halve the depth of the dive and make a 1 minute stop at the halfway point to the surface, then stop at 15’ for 2 minutes. As a rule on any “Smith Diving” class dives we have been doing 3 minute precautionary stops at 15’ on any dive in excess of 30’. We will now be changing that practice to reflect the new deep stop requirements. We have had some debate about this regarding dives in the 45-60’ range (you may end up doing a stop at 22’ and then again at 15’). But, as with all things NAUI, better safe than sorry. We are very grateful that there are leaders out there doing the kind of work that helps keep us all safe and continues to reduce the risk of DCS. I am including a link to a great article by Richard Pyle, one of the Workshop contributors. It was first published in DeepTech and again later in The Cave Diving Group Newsletter.
Richard Pyle's article references some very good information, including another article by Dr. Bruce Wienke which is really complex but is worth the effort. Here’s the link:

Deco theory is one of the most interesting aspects of diving physiology and we will have lots of fun with this “new” practice in our future classes.