Dave Talks About Rebreathers – Part 4, Training and Why

Q: I have and always will promote relaying on ones training and skills. I myself solo dive, as I did this last Sunday. My reasons are my own, and many times I get looks from instructors with their classes.

A: No training agency sanctions solo diving with a rebreather.  All training is done with an emphasis on buddy teams. You are taught to brief open circuit buddies on rescue procedures specific to rebreather divers.
That said, you are responsible for yourself. Accident avoidance is the best strategy. As I said before most accidents can be traced back to events or actions of a rebreather diver on the surface. Buddies should be there for random chance events such as a shark biting your leg not for your failure set your unit up correctly and monitoring during the dive. Units setup properly simply work as designed 99.999% of the time. Paying attention during the dive allows one to recognize problems and take action before an accident occurs.
As a note, to break the chain of events leading to an accident due to unit or diver failure, you simply bailout to open circuit and abort the dive. All rebreather divers carry bailout bottles and are trained to use them.
Q: Why use a rebreather?
A: Rebreathers by there nature do two things very well. First is gas logistics. With a rebreather you can stay down 5 plus hours with two 20cf2 bottles at any depth. The second and much more important to fish people is no bubbles. Your interaction with the critters of the sea is much different. With a rebreather you are one of them now. Not some big noisy thing to be avoided. That is why photographers are beginning to use them. I have sat a cleaning station and had my hand cleaned by little shrimp. Swam in a school of marlin having to push them out of the way. Way cool and at 40 feet of less.
A rebreather is a tool that is used in order to accomplish a result. Just like your regulators. Think of it as such.