to clip or not to clip?

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Originally Posted by FW

..... my regs are not very common anymore.

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I told you to get rid of those North Hill air lungs. That damn J valve will get you killed.

A unique key chain on the clip should make it obvious... this would be my pick. Not sure everyone would want the extra clutter though.

Ah hah! I found a much better solution! Glow stick bracelets. If you have a Michaels crafts store around you, I think they sell them 10 for $1. Put one around the neck of the tank, come in random different colors. Even in a silt out, you should be able to put your mask up against it and see the color.

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Originally Posted by Greenwood_60

A unique key chain on the clip should make it obvious... this would be my pick. Not sure everyone would want the extra clutter though.

Ah hah! I found a much better solution! Glow stick bracelets. If you have a Michaels crafts store around you, I think they sell them 10 for $1. Put one around the neck of the tank, come in random different colors. Even in a silt out, you should be able to put your mask up against it and see the color.

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Stage tanks, with staged lights :-)

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Originally Posted by FW

As long as we have dug up this old thread, does anyone have an answer to his question? I never have a problem, since my rigging is not "standard" and my regs are not very common anymore.

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My deco reg first stages are Mk 8s and Mk 9s (with G250 second stages) that are also not very common so they tend to be very easy to distinguish by feel.

Otherwise the stage regs have Mk 10 or Mk 10+ first stages with G250 second stages. They are pretty common so the upper portion of the clear tubing around the stage strap has 5 wraps of cave line around it. It is easy to see, and easy to distinguish tactilely.

Marci and I share the same collection of stage bottles so we share the same tactile marking system, but on the same profiles we'll be diving the same gasses. And, we tend to lay them down in order and pick them up in reverse order on the way out, so relative position clipped on the line tells us the rest of the required information.

For that matter our reels are marked the same way with 5 wraps of line wrapped very snug around the handle of the reel.

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Originally Posted by OFG-1

I told you to get rid of those North Hill air lungs. That damn J valve will get you killed.

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Hmmm...I have several refurbished double hose regs. Next trip to FL I should put one on a stage, leave it on the line somewhere in Ginnie and then come watch the board light up.

Forrest reg has 2 large hoses going to the mouthpiece.
Also they are signed by jacques cousteau in braille.
Very clever idea!

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Originally Posted by chimie007

Clipping deco bottle is nice in theory and is the logical safe choice but IMHO it might actually not be the better choice in certain cases.

At Peacock for example, it's easy to clip a bottle either to the main line or you primary line. Plenty of space for everyone.

Now I was at LR two weeks ago. Close to a dozen people in the system. Four primaries tying into the main line. Clipping a deco bottle to your own primary is asking for trouble with the flow and the traffic. Other choice is to clip to the main line but now you are deeper than your MOD (if O2) and 10 bottles there would be a mess. In a situation like this, I think it makes sense to stash the bottle in a pocket. There are pockets all over the place. Keeps your team's bottles together in one pocket. That's what everyone was doing.

I'm curious if someone has a better suggestion.

As for stage. I don't use stage yet. But clipping to the line seems to be mandatory in this case. Too risky that you will pass your bottle without taking it if it's not on the line.

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At Little River IMHO for O2 bottles stashing works best.

Of course for stage bottles. I prefer clipping to the line.


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I use an uncommon mouthpiece to keep mine easy to ID in little or no viz. No extra stuff necessary.

I shudder at the thought of having to look for a stage that was not on the line when it will soon be needed because of Murphy's interference.

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Originally Posted by tflaris

At Little River IMHO for O2 bottles stashing works best.

Of course for stage bottles. I prefer clipping to the line.

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One of the risks with a missing stage is the need to decide whether to burn more of your remaining gas trying to find it (and risk not having enough gas to exit) or to just exit on what you have left (and the latter should always be a viable option if you are planning for an adequate reserve). Consequently, if proper gas planning is done the real risks are indecision and/or an unwillingness to leave a stage behind and retreive it on a subsequent dive.

The exception here is if you've had other things not go well and are already cutting into the reserve - that's when you can't afford not to have your stage clipped to the line.

The opinion that stashing a deco bottle at LR is preferrable is potentially valid in many similar small caverns with sandy floors, where the spider web effect can get out of hand in short order. However the thing you need to consider in any cave is that you will always have the potential of losing or not being able to find your deco gas whether it is clipped off or not, so you always need to have a lost gas contingency plan.

In that regard a lost deco bottle is different in that there is no real decision to make. Unless you stashed the bottle way too deep, you are doing a reasonably close to optimum (back gas) deco while searching for it, and if you did proper lost gas contingency planning, the reserve gas will be enough for the longer back gas deco anyway. And worst case, if your reserve gas runs out, you still get out of the cave potentially bent with inadequate deco rather than drowning, so the situation is a bit diferent than it is with a missing stage.

I think my deco instructor would say that you are preparing for a problem that should never exist in the first place.

If you are all using the same gas and doing the same dive, why does it matter which team members bottle you or anyone else in your team picks up?