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15 stories for“dive cylinder”
The standard aluminium 80 is negatively buoyant full and positively buoyant empty, which is why safety stops go wrong at the end of a dive. Steel behaves differently, and the valve and testing rules differ too.
Sep 5, 2026
Divers who silt the bottom, burn through gas, struggle to hold a safety stop and finish cold usually share one cause. They are carrying too much lead, and every other symptom follows from it.
Sep 5, 2026
Two agencies now certify divers to dive alone, with redundant gas and a long list of prerequisites. The case for it rests on an uncomfortable observation about how often the buddy system already fails in practice.
Sep 5, 2026
Enriched air extends no-decompression limits at recreational depths by reducing the nitrogen you take on. It also imposes a hard ceiling on how deep you can take it, and the claim about post-dive fatigue has never held up.
Sep 5, 2026
Oxygen keeps divers alive, until pressure turns it toxic. Here is why central nervous system oxygen toxicity shapes every gas decision in technical diving.
Sep 10, 2024
In the late 1980s, teaching recreational divers to breathe enriched air was close to heresy. IANTD taught it anyway, then built the trimix and rebreather syllabi much of technical diving still runs on.
Aug 12, 2026
Most divers carry something sharp and have never once deployed it underwater. The gap between owning a cutting tool and being able to use one in the dark, with one hand, is where people die.
Aug 12, 2026
Almost every fatality report ends with drowning, which tells you nothing. Investigators use a four-part chain instead: trigger, disabling agent, disabling injury, cause of death. Here is how to read one.
Aug 12, 2026
Sami Paakkarinen, Jenni Westerlund and Patrik Grönqvist received Italian state honours for a recovery mission defined by preparation, restraint and humanity.
Jul 25, 2026
Malta, Chile, Norway, Scotland. Different species and different regulators, the same short list of causes: entanglement, working alone, depth creep, and a job nobody classified as commercial diving.
Aug 12, 2026
Redeemer Grima, 41, was working 30 metres down at a fish farm off St Paul's Islands when he drowned. His equipment was later found lodged in the mouth of a dead bluefin tuna.
Aug 12, 2026
The world's deepest pool holds 14 million litres at a constant 30C, with a sunken city at the bottom. What it removes from diving turns out to be the interesting part.
Aug 6, 2026
Egypt's most famous sinkhole is also its most argued-over dive site. What the Blue Hole actually is, and why so much depends on who is diving it.
May 20, 2024
Scuba has real hazards, but recreational diving within training and conditions is a managed-risk activity, not the extreme gamble suggested by rare accident headlines.
Jul 25, 2026
A woman and her partner, both long-serving members of the European technical community, did not survive an emergency ascent near Ueberlingen on 2 August. The cause is still unknown.
Aug 5, 2026
