📺New Presentation From Simon Mitchell

Dear Team Member,

I hope this message finds you healthy and well. Here are some offers we have noticed during the week that might make your travel to our destinations easier and cheaper. Let’s get straight to it!

SIMON MITCHELL PRESENTS LATEST RESEARCH IN DECOMPRESSION THEORY

Dive RAID Asia hosted Dr. Simon Mitchell last Sunday to discuss the latest research in decompression theory and what it means for modern technical diving.

For those that are not familiar with this juggernaut in technical diving, Dr. Simon Mitchell is a New Zealand physician and scientist with specialist training in diving medicine and anesthesiology. He is widely published with over 150 scientific papers and serves as the Editor of the Diving and Hyperbaric Medicine journal.

Dr. Mitchell has twice served as the Vice President of the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medicine Society and was elected to Fellowship of the Explorers’ Club of New York in 2006. In 2015 he was named the DAN Rolex Diver of the Year. Dr. Mitchell continues to practice hyperbaric medicine to this day.

Dr. Mitchell's diving career has included more than 6000 dives spanning sport, scientific, commercial, and military diving. He has been a lead member of teams that were the first to dive and identify three deep wrecks of high historical significance in Australia and New Zealand. At a depth of 180m in 2002, these were the deepest wreck dives ever undertaken.

This is not a presentation you want to miss. It was recorded and can be found by clicking on the thumbnail above!

Diving After Your COVID-19 Vaccination: Guidelines

Got your second shot and prepping the kit to get in the water already? DAN Europe has released guidelines to divers planning to hit the water right after being fully vaccinated.

DAN EUROPE wrote:

“At this time, no evidence is available regarding the impact of diving conditions on the severity of the side effects, nor on the resulting impact on the performance of divers with regard to diving safety. Taking into account that these vaccines are new pharmacological products, and in order to ensure that the side effects described above do not interfere with the completion of any safety-related tasks, we would like to draw the diving community’s attention to information and guidelines provided by WHO, EMA, and ECDC on COVID-19 vaccination (see references), and would add the following specific recommendations for divers:

1. In view of the necessity to contain or end the COVID-19 pandemic as soon a possible and because at this point, widespread vaccination appears to be the only way this could ever be achieved, it is highly recommended that all persons receive the COVID-19 vaccine as soon as vaccines become available, in accordance with the national COVID-19 vaccine roll-out plan.

2. Divers should consider a waiting period of minimum 7 days after each dose of COVID-19 vaccine, before engaging in compressed-gas or breath-hold diving activities.

3. It is advised to extend this interval to 14 days for divers

   1. a. Who have had side effects after vaccination persisting for more than 48 hours
      b. With personal health risk factors such as, but not limited to:

      1. Excessive body weight

      2. Chronic metabolic disease (including diabetes)

      3. Smoking

      4. Use of medication which may increase the risk of thromboembolic incidents (including oral contraceptives)

      5. Or any combination of the above

      c. Who wish to perform dives which require specific technical skills or which are exceeding the limits of no-decompression recreational diving (technical diving, deep decompression diving)
      

4. Divers are advised to consult with their general practitioner in case side effects of the COVID-19 vaccination persist for more than 48 hours following the vaccination.

5. In case any symptoms, possibly related to diving disease, should appear after seemingly low-risk dives performed in the 7-day period after a COVID-19 vaccination, consultation with a diving medicine specialist is advised. We encourage all divers and local diving federations and scientific societies to report any such incidents to the DAN Europe Medical Division at medical@daneurope.org

6. As a COVID-19 vaccination does not completely protect against the possibility of transmission of SARS-CoV2 virus to other persons, protective measures (distance, mask, hygiene) must continue to be observed by all divers, vaccinated or not.”

JILL HEINERTH DOES AMA

Jill Heinerth gets asked a lot of questions - not just about diving or exploration, but also about life in general. Now, Jill and her husband Robert have collected some of them and answered with a series of Youtube videos.

If you have a burning question you’d like her to answer, (it doesn’t have to be about diving) please use the comment section below the Youtube video and she will feature it in the series!

We have 2 spots left on Jill’s trip in January next year. Join us! Click here to email us for more information.

That wraps it up for this week.

As always we look forward to some great adventures with you in the years to come and as always, don’t forget, if you are feeling lonely, then we are here to chat Dirty.

Best,

Aron Arngrímsson and the DDE Team