West Midlands Region SAA

Sunday 17th March saw 17 divers from the West Midlands region travel up to the North West Recompression Unit on the Wirral, to experience a 50 mtr Dry dive. For many including, me it was their first dry dive but a few had done one before.

The session started with a presentation by the chamber staff detailing the work that they do. I was amazed to learn that the majority of their work was not dealing with DCI incidents, but dealing with a whole host of things including burns victims, skin grafts that won't 'take', sports injuries to name a few. The presentation then reminded us of the causes and signs/symptoms of DCI, a topic that we can never really know enough about if we are honest. Treatment of DCI was then covered and we then went down to the chamber for the 'dive'. The group was split into two and while the first group were issued with balloons and made themselves comfortable, the other group watched outside as the 'driver' prepared the chamber for the descent. Then with the sound of rushing air the first group made their way to 10 metres, once there and after an 'OK' check their descent continued to 50 metres. All the time watched by the second group outside on the monitors which gave us both visual and audio. As you would expect peoples voices at that pressure change quite a bit and to hear people talking with a constant 'donald duck' voice never ceases to amuse me. The amount of laughter that came from the chamber was also amazing. After about 10 minutes bottom time it was time to come back to the surface and again with the sound of rushing air, the divers were returned to the surface. The whole process was then repeated for the second group with the first group having the pleasure at laughing at us as we descended to 50 metres.
I can honestly say that I throughly enjoyed myself and I would like to thank the guys at the North West Emergency Recompression Unit for a great time and also to Steve Wallis for his efforts in organising the trip.

Click above image for photo of Group 1 (thanks to Vikki Barnfield, Reel Divers for the photo)	Click above image for photo of Group 2 (thanks to Andy Heslop, Icicle Divers for the photo)

Thanks to all who came.