Bailing out to Open Circuit is like falling in the snow when you are learning to ski. It’s a solution when facing a problem—not always the most elegant solution, but always the easiest one, and most of the time, the most efficient one. But Open Circuit bail-out is actually much more than simply going off the loop and breathing from another second stage. There are lots of possibilities.

It has been a year now since I started to exclusively side-mount the off-board tanks of my rebreather—either a Megalodon CCR or an Evolution CCR. Why? Simply because it’s much more convenient!

The use of rebreathers in caves is nothing new. Decades ago, Hans and Lotte Hass used them to venture into marine caves. Profiles like Rob Palmer in the UK, Bill Stone, George Irvine and Jarrod Jablonski in the USA, or Olivier Isler in Europe, are also strongly linked to rebreathers and cave diving.

Recreational cave divers discovered Oxygen CCR in the Navy surplus, then experimented with Draeger Dolphins, and more recently, APD Inspiration. Nowadays, there are many different brands and models, and they become even more popular within the cave diving community worldwide.

Discussions about diving are very often boring—always the same stories about numerous sharks dangerously close, strong current ripping a mask off or friendly dolphins playing during a deco stop. We heard them so many times.

So, if you want to have some fun, simply say that you dive on your own with a rebreather and wait for the reactions. You’ll hear some nasty comments about you being an accident waiting to happen, and some people will clearly show you their option about your mental health.

How to deal with an unconscious rebreather diver?

The title of this article was originally: “What to do if a convulsion happens”. Based on a lot of discussion, private or on various forums, the protocol being presented here can actually be used for any kind of situation where an unconscious rebreather diver is found underwater.

One morning, sooner or later, you will wake up with a strange sensation—as if some minor and weird changes happened in your body overnight. You are not turning into another Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, but in the recent weeks you have co me to find your dives to be very noisy with all the bubbles escaping from your regulator starting to get on your nerves. All your dive gear has also started to feel very heavy, with all these tanks and regulators to carry everywhere.

There is no such thing as safe technical rebreather diving without proper preparation. But preparation means much more than just checking equipment, going through dive planning and “What-ifs”. It is also a matter of long-term preparation.