Breathing directly off cyl valve-useful?

[Sarah]

Our publisher told me that when he was originally certified by NASDS, removing the 1st stage, and breathing directly off the cylinder valve was a skill all were trained to do.

Do you think this drill is some rediculous practice with no benefit, or is this in some way valuable?

[Papa Bear]

I learned it back in 1972 when I was certified NAUI, PADI, & LA County. It can be useful in an accent during a catastrophic equipment failure and it does show you that you can survive if you don't panic! I would rather see it practiced without taking off the reg underwater with a spare tank though!

[acelockco]

I don't know how usefull it really is, how practical, or how necessary if you practice proper diving techniques including the buddy system or other proper methods.

It does sound like a cool thing to try, and like Papa Bear stated, if you can learn that, you should be well past the panic issue. I also have to agree that it would be much better to practice with a spare cylinder because taking off your 1st stage while submerged will cause water to enter your 1st stage. Of course you know that this would require servicing at the minimum.

[Tigerbeach]

I, too, learned this; we put a tank on the bottom of the pool and free dove down to practice. ( just crack the valve slowly, and slurp the air in...)
After a bit of practice, we were taught how to blow perfect air rings after breathing from the tank valve, too!

[rubber chicken]

Sorry, but I voted no to this. I'm sure that this is a fantastic party trick but I can't think of a single real world circumstance where this would be of any practical value.
In the event of a catastrophic 1st stage failure, if you've the time and the air to, remove Scuba unit, close your tank valve, purge your regulator, remove your 1st stage and then start breathing off your cylinder valve, then you've got enough time and air to make it to the surface. If you havn't, then you should be diving with enough redundancy to deal with the failure.

Just my 2 bobs worth.

[BamaCaveDiver]

I doubt that it is as useful today as it was back in the 60's and 70's when the market saw both upstream and downstream regualtor designs, but I still consider it one of the more important skills that I have learned over the years and practice it every now and then. Today it has taken on somewhat of a different twist as we have learned to swap a functioning reg from an empty cylinder to a full cylinder (yes, swapping regs underwater does mean that you will need to do a rebuild beofre the next use.) The whole idea is to be capable of accessing all breathable gas supplies without panicing. As for doing an emergency ascent in OW, I would much rather be able to make a nice, slow, controlled ascent and include safety stops as well as any deco stops that I may have incurred during my dive

[rubber chicken]

Well, to be fair, swapping regs over is a different kettle of fish from breathing directly off a cylinder valve.
Yes, we would all prefer to do a proper safe ascent, but at the fertiliser/fan interface when the only other choice is breathing water then a CESA or even dropping weights are perfectly viable alternative. As to deco commitments, Ok I don't do deco dives yet, but AIUI, redundancy, gas management and proper buddy procedures are all there to help you ,long before you get to the party trick stage. If you have managed to fall far enough down the incident pit that stripping your reg of a cylinder and breathing directly from the valve is the best idea you've got then I would suggest that you seriously reconsider the sort of diving that you're doing.


Again, just my 2 pfennigs worth. YMMV

Dive safe