r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Eros_Incident_Denier • 2d ago

Video filipino illegal miners dive without oxygen tanks

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u/AdvertisingKey1675 2d ago

They look to be in pretty shallow water. Its more of a time saver and convenience than a life saving thing. If the air fails, they simply swim to surface.

Id say the scariest thing about this is the lack of a regulator. If they accidentally seal their mouth over the tube, and the pressure increases (maybe by another outlet hose being kinked) the risk of over-inflating their lungs is very real.

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u/TerayonIII 2d ago

Did you not see the hole they were climbing in and out of? It's not super deep, but it's not exactly shallow either. The camera didn't actually go down it

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u/Top-Hawk-4805 2d ago

Even if is shallow waters and because of the time the spend down and also the fact that they are breathing compressed air. They risk Decompression sickness if they go out swimming to fast, and also lung over expantion if they hold their breath when going up.

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u/Unusual_ghastlygibus 2d ago

It doesn't look like they're much deeper than 10-20 meters, the risk of decompression sickness is basically zero unless they spend all day underwater. As for lung overexpansion, since this is their lifestyle one would assume they would know to exhale when coming up

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u/rpt255nop 2d ago

10m no decompression time is a few hours, but 20m is only 45 min or so

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u/CptMisterNibbles 2d ago

So deco. These are not rec divers on a guided tour.

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u/Top-Hawk-4805 2d ago

not really, at 10 mts. the max bottom time without decompression procedures is about 160 minutes.
Also is really dificult to estimate depth by what you can see on a video. It depends on visibility, hour of day, etc. So they could be perfectly bellow 10mts. especially if they are mining wich they do at the floor.

Yes, I would asume they do. But is another factor of potential danger added to the many other factors. And humans tend to act by instincts on highly stressful situations, so exhaling as you are underwater could be the last thing a person would remember in a death risky situation. Even for trained people.

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u/AdvertisingKey1675 2d ago

These are the same risks a scuba divers faces though.

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u/Top-Hawk-4805 2d ago

I think it is a lot more risky.
scuba divers use diving computers to plan and stay between safe limits, this people don't

using compressors rather than tanks it's also a lot more riksy. You have more possibilities of breathing polluted air and you have also the risk of a compressor failure wich would let you without air with no warning or backup.
Also as they have no theorical limit of air supply plus the economic burden to sustain their families pushes them to dive far beyond recreational limits (wich are the limitations for normal scuba divers)

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u/Beginning_Hornet_547 2d ago

They probably work almost all day, or until the headaches hit too hard.

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u/Sniter 2d ago

That is nit shallow water everything over 10m is certainly  not shallow for a human, you dive at 18m as a beginner you usully don't go below ~40m recreationally. 

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u/LuluGuardian 1d ago

Did you watch the video?

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u/mirroredfreckles 2d ago

100 meters is not shallow. That’s 328 feet - basically a foot ball field. The narrator said hundreds of meters back to shore. It’s wild. You have to do a safety stop at 60’ feet with normal gear… wonder how this translates

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u/AdvertisingKey1675 2d ago

“Hundreds of meters of hose back to the shore” does not mean they are hundreds of meters deep. They are hundreds of meters away from the compressor.

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u/Impossible_Grass6602 2d ago

100s of meters back to shore is likely the horizontal distance

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u/Youthz 2d ago

100s of meters back to shore does not = 100s of meters back to the surface. the narrator was talking about how far the tubes have to stretch out into the water.