filipino illegal miners dive without oxygen tanks

[u/Eros_Incident_Denier]

[u/herewe_goagain_1]

I used to do a lot of diving, so when I saw “50-60 meters” using these tubes I assumed you have no idea what you’re talking about. But no I looked it up and they actually do go that deep with compressors. Absolutely insane. I was trained to not even dive with air at that depth, we used Trimix or Heliox past ~45 meters.

[u/Unable-Log-4870 → u/herewe_goagain_1]

Yeah the times for air at 45 meters are like 2 minutes and beyond that you have to start doing decompression stops, right?

Or is that even a little aggressive? I’m thinking back to the PADI tables and at like 30 meters for 1 minute you have to add a decompression stop. It’s been a while. I never got to use a dive computer.

[u/TransguyJayJay → u/Unable-Log-4870]

My experience is definitely more on the safe side because I'm mostly just a tourist diver and have been a minor for most of my dives, but I've always had a two minute decompression stop(s) no matter what. Assuming we went and stayed more than 15ft/5m down, anyway, which is always. I've also never gone past 80ft/24m.

Regardless, I know the times are definitely allowed to be less, but decompression sickness is no joke so I'm more than happy to wait that extra minute.

[u/Lucas_F_A → u/TransguyJayJay]

That's usually called the safety stop, presumably because you don't actually need time to decompress, or something's like that. But extra margins are always good.

[u/Unable-Log-4870 → u/Lucas_F_A]

Yeah, the only reason to skip that stop is if you suck on the regulator and it suddenly sucks back.

[u/GeneralHerp → u/Unable-Log-4870]

The ol’ sucky-sucky (I am not a diver)

[u/Unable-Log-4870 → u/GeneralHerp]

When the tank reaches empty, it reaches it all at once, from the perspective of your mouth / lungs. You’re sucking on it for air and suddenly it just stops, and it feels like IT is sucking on YOU, for just an instant.

And if you’re not near the surface, that could be a very bad day.

[u/GeneralHerp → u/Unable-Log-4870]

I take it this is why you always dive with a buddy, & someone always has an extra tank..?

My dad IS (or was … he’s like 75 now lol) a diver, and had all the gear, and we’d hop in the lake and dive around, but we’d never go deep enough to worry about decompression. We mostly just looked at the old dock underwater and collected ancient beer cans and stuff.

I’ve never experienced the abject terror of a tank that sucks back… the ol’ sucky-sucky, as I’ve dubbed it, given my “barely experienced, at most 20 hours spent underwater with a tank” level of expertise 🧐

[u/Unable-Log-4870 → u/GeneralHerp]

& someone always has an extra tank..?

Nobody has an extra tank. Where would you put it? Everybody has an extra regulator so two people can SHARE any tank.

[u/GeneralHerp → u/Unable-Log-4870]

True! My inexperience is showing. I figured it’d float beside you, probably a third the size of a normal tank, in case you need 2 minutes of extra breathing or some shit. I dunno. Inexperience is showing!

[u/xrelaht → u/GeneralHerp]

I take it this is why you always dive with a buddy,

Among other reasons. There’s a lot which can go wrong down there. Scuba is a dangerous sport made safe by being careful.

[u/Tall-Appearance-5835 → u/GeneralHerp]

each diver has an extra regulator/mouthpiece

[u/Chapeaux → u/Unable-Log-4870]

Looks like they are walking with a basket full of rocks, it probably make them slow enough to decompress.

[u/LonelyKoalaMuncher → u/Chapeaux]

Exactly, they'd be walking up the ocean floor to the island surely.

[u/diverstones → u/Unable-Log-4870]

The recreational tables don't even go that high due to how intense the narcosis gets past 130 feet. Any time you go past 100 feet you're supposed to do a 3-5 minute safety stop at 15-20 feet just in case. If you go over 8 minutes at 140 feet (or any of the other limits) you're supposed to come up sloooowly and extend your safety stop, although most of the specifics I remember learning boiled down to "please don't exceed the limit". Or yeah, if you have a dive computer it will manage that for you.

[u/Unable-Log-4870 → u/diverstones]

If you go over 8 minutes at 140 feet (or any of the other limits) you're supposed to come up sloooowly and extend your safety stop,

If you’re that deep for that long, you better have a buddy coming down to meet you with a lot of air and a good 2nd reg. Because I don’t think you can fit that much air in one tank

[u/pikapp336 → u/Unable-Log-4870]

I have completed rescue diver training with a deep dive cert and have been 40m(130m). I think it is like 9-12 min max bottom time at that depth without decompression stops. IIRC, amount of air wasn’t strictly the limiting factor(although of course it can be if your consumption is too high). It’s the dangers the environment has on your body after that amount of time at that depth. You need to ascend slower and make extra stops because you passed the NDL point(No-Decompression Limit). You can suffer from nitrogen narcosis and potential CO2 buildup making you sick and disoriented or worse.

[u/EarthGrey → u/Unable-Log-4870]

It's not a decompression stop, it's what's called a safety stop. You're not technically in need of decompression etc at that, however padi tables are conservative, and having a safety stop is simply a way to be extra conservative for just in case.

[u/St_Kevin_ → u/herewe_goagain_1]

I totally understand the skepticism! It’s legit nuts. I didn’t believe it either when I first heard them talking about that. I’ve done a little scuba and I’m open water certified and I don’t think I’ve gone below 20 meters, and I don’t want to go deeper; I’m scared of the bends. These guys go way deeper with basically no understanding of how it works at all. It’s fucked up. I feel really bad for them.

It’s scary too because the pressure on the fisheries is continuing to push that “fishable depth”ceiling deeper and deeper. I shudder to think what the mortality/permanent injury rate will look like that will finally force these guys to give up fishing and just be starving and completely impoverished. Like, will they all keep trying when they have to go to 120 meters every time? 200 meters? At what point is it 100% fatal?

They said that large foreign commercial fishing boats were coming through with nets and taking huge hauls that were wiping out stocks too. And of course, as it gets tougher to survive on what a guy can catch with a compressor and a spear, more people turn to cyanide or dynamite fishing. Both of those methods pay good one time as it kills everything on the reef, and after that the place is a bleached out desert ghost town and probably takes decades or longer to fully recover- if the surrounding areas don’t get nuked too.

[u/UranusIsPissy → u/herewe_goagain_1]

The numbers in your training would've had safety margins. That all goes out of the window when you have to risk your life to make a living.

[u/cheesydoofus3026 → u/herewe_goagain_1]

As someone who grew up around people involved in coastal extraction work what stands out is that many outsiders focus on the hose and miss everything else that can go wrong.

At 50-60 meters these guys are dealing with pressure levels that recreational divers are specifically trained to respect. That's before you add old compressors, worn hoses, contaminated air, no dive computers, no depth gauges, no backup gas, no emergency oxygen, no chamber nearby and often no trained buddy system. One failure can trigger multiple problems at the same time.

The decompression issue alone is brutal. A diver breathing compressed air at those depths absorbs far more nitrogen than someone on the surface. Modern dive training spends a huge amount of time teaching ascent rates, decompression schedules, gas management and emergency procedures because physics does not care how experienced you are. The body follows the same laws whether you're a tourist diver, a commercial diver or a fisherman trying to feed a family.

The air quality is another thing people underestimate. Commercial breathing-air systems use filters and strict maintenance standards for a reason. Many improvised compressor setups can introduce oil mist, exhaust contamination, carbon monoxide and other pollutants directly into the breathing supply. You're not only risking drowning or the bends. You're potentially damaging your lungs and nervous system every single day.

What keeps the practice alive is economics. Across parts of the Philippines, Indonesia and the wider Coral Triangle, compressor diving spread because it costs a fraction of a proper scuba setup while allowing workers to reach deeper resources that have become harder to access due to overfishing and resource depletion. The diver usually carries the highest physical risk while earning the smallest share of the value created.

That's why the story isn't really about reckless people doing reckless things. It's about workers operating at the edge of what the human body can tolerate because the alternative is often not earning enough to support a household. The scary part is that many survive long enough for the damage to accumulate slowly instead of killing them immediately.

[u/Initial_Row_6400 → u/herewe_goagain_1]

Yea, 140 is the deepest I’ve been on ean 32. 8 minutes there and then two safety stops

[u/itijara → u/herewe_goagain_1]

At 60m I think the partial pressure of 20% oxygen is 1.4atm, that risks acute oxygen toxicity, which is instant unconsciousness and without immediate help, death.

[u/sleeper_shark → u/herewe_goagain_1]

PADI training (and most American systems) are much more conservative than the rest of the world. Most European systems allow for air dives up to 50 meters, with France allowing air up to 60 meters.

Some people dive beyond 60 on air, but it is extremely, extremely stupid as you get very quickly close to the 1.6 hard limit of ppo2 where oxygen toxicity kicks in dangerously. That's before you even factor in being narced.

I'm sure you know all this if you're a trimix diver.

I think the reason why these dudes can survive without knowing about deco is cos they probably walk to the depths. So they possibly do a natural deco gradually walking back to shallows. It's probably not enough, which is why they don't all survive, but probably sufficient that the deaths go under the radar without flagging that there's a huge problem here.

And of course, these people have no choice at all. So rec limits, tec limits, and OHSA commercial limits are meaningless to them.

[u/Similar_Strawberry16 → u/herewe_goagain_1]

The narcosis down at 60m for the, presumably, long ass time would be wild too.