Equipment Configuration for Air Sharing

Most divers who buy equipment from Underseas Scuba Center these days choose the SeaQuest Air Source, a device that integrates a BC power inflator and alternate-air-source second stage into a single unit. The Air Source provides users with two significant benefits:

• It simplifies and streamlines a diver’s overall regulator configuration by eliminating the need for a redundant second stage hose.
• It eliminates the possibility that an alternate-air-source second stage that accidentally comes loose from its retainer might: be difficult to find; become filled with sand or mud; or, cause damage to (or be damaged by contact with) rocks, fragile coral or other aquatic life.

Use of devices like the Air Source assumes divers will donate their primary second stage to an out-of-air diver, as it would be difficult for anyone but the person equipped with the Air Source to breathe from it. Thus, by teaching students to donate the primary second stage to out-of-air divers — regardless of equipment configuration — we prepare them for use of both integrated alternate-air-source inflators and conventional “octopus” second stages.

Controlling rate of ascent »