Gordon wrote:
"Evan Gatehouse" wrote in message
...

- going for prawns in BC is a bit more work because they like waters
400' deep

We eat well

Evan Gatehouse



The coonstripe (dock) shrimp are smaller but tastier (IMHO) than the deep
water spot shrimp and can be had much shallower.
The problem I see is hauling the pots around around. They take up a lot of
room.
Dungeness crab, on the other hand, can be scooped up with a fish net in
shallow waters.
Gordon


We go to a place in the Gulf Islands that are teeming with giant red
rock crab. These are some of the biggest rock crab that I have seen.
Kids we take sailing go wading in waist deep water and catch a dozen
in 1/2 an hour. The red rock crab has a very sturdy shell compared to
the Dungeness and isn't really commercially caught, but they are super
tasty.

Collapsible crab traps aint' that big. Be sure to get a round one.

Evan Gatehouse

Well, I guess experiences vary with the individual. My main
point was that if the poster (purple stars) was experiencing
pain trying to free-dive he should be very careful and learn
to equalize the pressure or he would get to learn about
barotrauma from a medical specialist ;-) The time I think
I hurt my ears I was in about 12 feet of water at Stingray
City in Grand Cayman. It was a long time ago, but the
tinnitus is with me still sigh.

PS - I agree with you that its much easier to equalize ascending
rather than descending.

Don W.

Dave wrote:
On Wed, 22 Feb 2006 23:35:10 GMT, Don W
said:


I am, however, trained as a technical diver and remember being
trained (and experiencing) that it is necessary to equalize both
descending and ascending.


I went through the NSDS training and spent several years as a diver,
including SCUBA, Jack Brown, regular hard hat and helium hard hat. Also
spent some time as diving officer and have many hours going both up and down
in a recompression chamber. Both my experience and training tell me that on
ascent the ears clear themselves well before experiencing pain, because the
pressure in the inner ear exceeds that in the throat, and absent something
extremely unusual (which I've never seen) that pressure gets relieved very
much as in my balloon illustration. On the way down, on the other hand, the
pressure buildup tends to close the Eustachian tubes at the entrance to the
throat because the intersection with the throat is very much like the
"duckbill" valve in a marine head. So if you don't know how to open up that
duckbill valve you get low pressure in the inner ear compared to the greater
external pressure on the ear drum.

If a diver's tubes are clogged, he knows it on the way down.


If one or both ears is blocked, and the
pressure difference is enough, a barotrauma or possibly a ruptured
eardrum is the result.

Also, think about it. If what you said is true then people would
not need to equalize during ascent on an airplane. As a pilot I
can tell you that people do very much need to equalize during ascent
in an unpressurized airplane and that if a person does not know how
to equalize a very painful experience is the result.


Again, on the ascent the clearing virtually always occurs automatically well
before the threshold of pain is reached. Whether he knows how to equalize or
not, his ears "pop" when the pressure differential between the throat and
the inner ear is sufficient, because he inner ear is like the inside of that
balloon. I suppose one could get some slight buildup on the ascent if he has
very inflamed tubes. But note that the aircraft situation is the reverse of
diving in that the external pressure is decreasing first, as you ascend, and
increasing as you descend, creating the possibility of having a problem on
the way down when there wasn't a problem on the way up.

Take your kids flying in a small plane sometime when they have a head
cold. Then see if they automatically equalize on the ascent ;-)

Don W wrote:
Well, I guess experiences vary with the individual. My main
point was that if the poster (purple stars) was experiencing
pain trying to free-dive he should be very careful and learn
to equalize the pressure or he would get to learn about
barotrauma from a medical specialist ;-) The time I think
I hurt my ears I was in about 12 feet of water at Stingray
City in Grand Cayman. It was a long time ago, but the
tinnitus is with me still sigh.

PS - I agree with you that its much easier to equalize ascending
rather than descending.

Don W.

hi folks, thanks for all the great advice and thoughts!

yes i never force it when it involves my ears. as soon as my ears
start to hurt i stop and don't go any further, i couldn't work through
the pain even if i wanted to because it kind of freaks me out. i
really don't know what the problem is. maybe if i say more about it
you folks will know and maybe have some thoughts or suggestions.

it started out i couldn't equalize at all. i could sort of move my jaw
and have my ears pop on their own, but it just never occured to me in
all my years being a human being on the earth to force air in when i
did it. i guess i was told somewhere along the line that doing that
was a bad thing, because i was very reluctant to do it. i felt i was
going to blow my eardrums out or something. if i was going up in an
airplane i would yawn and things to "pop" my ears, which sometimes
worked and sometimes didn't, but if anyone told me to hold my nose and
force air in i would decline .. and in my mind i'd be thinking .. what,
are you freaking crazy or something, you'll screw up your ears doing
that.

so when learning i started small. i would open the tubes by moving my
jaw and sort of breathing out, and i could hear the air in my ears
going over/into the tubes. then i put my fingers over my nostrils and
with a lot of practice started pushing air into my ears. but it really
freaked me out because i was still afraid i might hurt my ears. there
wasn't any pain though, just some pressure, so maybe it is ok to do
that.

i had some problem with my right ear opening easilly but not my left.
i started to fear something was wrong with one of the tubes. but after
much practice and moving my jaw around in all kinds of weird positions
i figured out over a period of weeks that it was actually just some
sort of habit i had all these years, sort of like cracking your
knuckles or something, that was the problem. it just so happens that
all these years, i had been opening the tubes on the right and could do
it easilly but just hadn't done the same thing on the left side. so
with some practice i got past that and both tubes open just fine now.

but i'm still unpracticed and reluctant about putting a lot of pressure
into my ears. i pre-equalize at the surface and that gets me maybe 5
or 6 feet down. maybe it's possible to force higher pressure into your
ears to start with ... i don't know, i've been very reluctant to try
it, it makes me uncomfortable. so instead i guess i've been trying to
go down a little ways and then try it at depth. but it's not much
different, even getting down towards 6 or 8 feet it still freaks me
out, and it still feels like i'm blowing up my eardrums like a balloon.
i don't know if that feeling ever goes away and returns to a "normal"
feeling when the pressure is equalized at a certain depth or not.
maybe the only two options are pain (not enough) or balloon (too much
or just right). maybe by it's very nature it's just supposed to feel
weird, i don't know.

so i may just be being held back by my own sensitivity with my ears. i
know pain is bad, so i never do that ... i won't go past pain. if it
hurts, i either stop going down (rarely) or sort of freak out and
immediately surface (usually).

i have not had any pain surfacing, only descending.

and since this is already too long a post for anybody to bother reading
all the way through, i might as well ask a question too! haha.
question is ... when you do get good at equalization and get down to
like 30 feet or 40 feet or something, what happens if you accidentally
let your ears "pop". what i mean is, i understand that you have to
force air into your ears to keep from experiencing pain. sort of like
positive pressure inside. but what happens if you accidentally swallow
and all that pressure goes back into your throat, doesn't it go back to
the same pressure it was at the surface, won't it suddenly be like you
had never equalized at all ? or does it just let the ballooned air out
enough to be equalized with whatever depth you are at ?

question is ... when you do get good at equalization and get down to
like 30 feet or 40 feet or something, what happens if you accidentally
let your ears "pop".

That is the whole idea. You should think of yourself as a sponge where
the inside pressure is equal to the outside pressure. Hence the term
"equalizing your ears." You may have to use two fingers to pinch
your nose closed and blow to force air into the area to equal the water
pressure pushing against your ear drum. Equalizing... do it early and
do it often. Once you get past the first atmosphere it gets easier.

what i mean is, i understand that you have to
force air into your ears to keep from experiencing pain. sort of like
positive pressure inside. but what happens if you accidentally swallow
and all that pressure goes back into your throat, doesn't it go back to
the same pressure it was at the surface, won't it suddenly be like you
had never equalized at all ? or does it just let the ballooned air out
enough to be equalized with whatever depth you are at ?

Go to a used bookstore and buy an old 10 buck SCUBA book. Your
questions suggest a need for some basic diving physics and physiology.
Besides, if your not sure of the "forces" that govern humans under
pressure you may be better served paddling on the surface.

Read and learn.... and then enjoy the water. You'll have a much
better and safer time armed with some information.

Dave wrote:
[snip]
Equalization always relates only to the difference in pressure between the
depth where you last equalized and the depth you're at. Surface pressure has
nothing to do with it at all.

see that's what i was confused about. i thought that the pressure in
my throat was zero feet surface pressure no matter what depth i was at,
and that i had to constantly maintain higher pressure in my ears than
what was in my throat to counter-act the water pressure. and if i
accidentally opened the tubes at let's say 50 feet without "pushing"
air into my ears that they might suddenly "loose pressure" back into my
throat and be back at surface pressure. frightening thought!

Don W wrote:
Well, I guess experiences vary with the individual. My main
point was that if the poster (purple stars) was experiencing
pain trying to free-dive he should be very careful and learn
to equalize the pressure or he would get to learn about
barotrauma from a medical specialist ;-) The time I think
I hurt my ears I was in about 12 feet of water at Stingray
City in Grand Cayman. It was a long time ago, but the
tinnitus is with me still sigh.

PS - I agree with you that its much easier to equalize ascending
rather than descending.

Don W.

My experience is different. When free diving you can't equalize because
you don't have an air feed at ambient pressure. (Your last breath was at
the surface) Unless I am not understanding the term "free diving" which
I believe means diving without tanks. I that case the air inside your
body gets compressed as you descend and you can't equalize by taking in
more air.

Gary

Dave wrote:
On 23 Feb 2006 12:45:49 -0800, "purple_stars" said:


when you do get good at equalization and get down to
like 30 feet or 40 feet or something, what happens if you accidentally
let your ears "pop". what i mean is, i understand that you have to
force air into your ears to keep from experiencing pain. sort of like
positive pressure inside.


Once you can control the muscles, you aren't really forcing air anywhere.
You're just opening up the passages so the air can pass through. Experienced
hardhat divers are almost constantly equalizing on the way down, so they
never experience what you call a "pop."


but what happens if you accidentally swallow
and all that pressure goes back into your throat, doesn't it go back to
the same pressure it was at the surface, won't it suddenly be like you
had never equalized at all ? or does it just let the ballooned air out
enough to be equalized with whatever depth you are at ?


Equalization always relates only to the difference in pressure between the
depth where you last equalized and the depth you're at. Surface pressure has
nothing to do with it at all.
I think one of you is talking with air (hard hat/scuba)and the other is
talking about holding your breath (free diving).

Dave wrote:
On 23 Feb 2006 13:07:07 -0800, "Bob" said:


Once you get past the first atmosphere it gets easier.


Yes. Going from 1 atmosphere to 2 is doubling the pressure. Going from 2 to
3 is increasing the pressure by just half.

1 atmosphere = 14.7 psi
2 atmospheres = 29.4 psi
3 atmospheres = 44.1 psi

The pressure increase is exactly the same for every atmosphere of depth.

Gary

My experience is different. When free diving you can't equalize because
you don't have an air feed at ambient pressure. (Your last breath was at
the surface) Unless I am not understanding the term "free diving" which
I believe means diving without tanks. I that case the air inside your
body gets compressed as you descend and you can't equalize by taking in
more air.

Gary

Hi Gary:
Hope I can add a bit of clairity.......... when decending at 75 fps:

Using sport SCUBA
Using "hard hat" either open simi or closed demand or a free flow pot.
Using nothing but your skin (freediving).

To equalize/clear ears need to have the inside preasure abot the same
as water preasure pushing on ear drum. How to do that? With iincreasig
preasure from decent use muscles to force a presure increase. As decent
continues so does presure. And will need to eqalize ears to new and
increasing water preasure. ANalogy wold be to squeeze a balloon with
hands.
Bob

When free diving you can't equalize because
you don't have an air feed at ambient pressure.

Of course you do. Every bit of air inside you
(except for that in the unequalized middle ear)
is at ambient pressure.

Chris