The condition of the wreck has of course change a lot. It is getting covered in algae and reckless divers have broken the windows and gauges that were nice details on the bridge. One has to ask oneself why one why one would bother with taking souvenirs from a scuttled wreck. The marine life is also more interesting now compared to what it used to be. Relatively large numbers of decent sized breams can be found and there is of course the standard cloud of damselfish.

The navigation out to the wreck is also easier now with two landmarks leading the way under water – first it is a plaque commemorating a British diver and then an anchor put in place by one of the local dive clubs. From there it is only a minute straight out to the wreck and the swim underwater is so easy that there is little reason to go for the surface swim option.

Overall I think the P29 is better now than it was at the time of sinking.

Caves or caverns?

Just to clarify my point of view – the difference between a cave dive and a cavern dive is that you can always see the exit and some daylight during a cavern dive. This is not the case during a cave dive which is one reason why cave diving is much more dangerous and requires a more redundant set-up.

Comino

Comino is located between Malta and Gozo and it is a popular dive site. Boat is the only way to access the dive sites so it is a bit less crowded than other sites such as Um el Faroud. The bad thing here is that there are loads and loads of tourists coming up on boats from Malta for the day. They are often taken around Comino in speed boats and the speed boat drivers are very reckless and have no concept at all that it might not be a good idea to hover above divers or stay away from an inflated SMB. All in all – on a good day Comino is absolutely beautiful.

Diving Comino Caves

So on to the dive. It is in fact a very easy dive with a maximum depth of 12 metres. One of the highlights of the dive is experienced just when you jump in and descend onto the sandy bottim below you at 6-7 metres. There are thousands of bream here and they have beed fed by divers and visiting tourists for what must be hundreds of fish generations. As soon as they see a diver they swim up to you to see if you have any bread. If you do you will have so much fish around you so you can’t even see your buddies. Biologically correct? Probably not. Fun? Certainly.

The caverns themselves are extremely nice – remember to go slowly and it is nice with a torch. A camera is also a good idea – you can take some amazing photos here. There is not so much life in the caverns themselves but it is a magic feeling being in them. The only drawback is that they are actually quite small. Any diver with a bit of experience (15-20 dives) can easily do these caves as you have access to the surface except for a few metres, also in the cavern. After exiting you swim around the edge of Comino and you are back with the fish in the bay.  Usually this takes about 30 minutes or so – it is almost difficult to do a really long dive here.

I really like this dive because of it’s simplicity. The cavern is great and the breams very nice to look at. The boat traffic is a big problem – it is not only unsafe it also creates lots of noise which kills the atmosphere quite a bit. The caves are also a bit too small if one should be picky. All in all this is a four star dive in my books.

Sea Pioneers – Dahab
Sertaki – Dahab
Oxygene – Dahab
Dahab Tec Divers – Dahab
Red Sea Ringers – Dahab
Sea View Divers – Dahab
Centre at Rokita Hotel – Dahab
Callyez Aqua Tec – Dahab
SSX Hammer Head – Sharm El Sheikh
Divers Planet – Sharm El Sheikh
Dive For fun – Sharm El Sheikh
Sea & C – Sharm El Sheikh
Blue Lagoon* – Sharm El Sheikh
Magic Dive Club – Sharm El Sheikh
Brother Dive College – Sharm El Sheikh
Red Sea Ringers – Sharm El Sheikh
Aqua Nabq – Sharm El Sheikh
Halala Balala – Sharm El Sheikh
Easy Divers – Sharm El Sheikh
Divers Bay – Sharm El Sheikh
Centre at Aida Hotel (NOT Scuba Divers Red Sea) – Sharm El Sheikh
Absolut Divers – Sharm El Sheikh
Taba Divers – Taba

DAN recommended 1999 that you can dive your dives in any order you prefer basing this on the fact that there were no research available to prove the opposite and it seems that the incidence of DCI had not increased when divers had ignored the classic approach. This has since been followed by lots of diver but PADI has decided to keep their traditional approach – a very wise decision I think.

In 2005 an article was published about reverse profiling which really puts things in a different perspective.

Multi-level dives

- Two groups of 11 guinea pigs each got to do each forward and reverse multi level dive profiles
- In the group which did the forward profile (normal approach) no DCI was detected
- 55% of the animals in the reverse group developed serious DCI and died

This is quite clear evidence that there is a significant difference in forward and reverse diving profiles. One should keep in mind though that humans are quite different to guinea pigs and that these profiles must be very extreme. Doing the same tests for humans would probably give quite different results but the trend would most likely be the same.

Repetitive dives

Repetitive dives are a little bit more realistic – I don’t actually think that many divers would do reverse multi level dives as suggested above.

- Two groups were then used to test repetitive diving
- None of the guinea pigs in the forward profile group were injured vs 33% in the reverse diving profile group

Conclusion

It is clear to me that we don’t fully understand exactly what is going on during decompression. Although many divers have done reverse profiles without getting bent does not mean that they are safe – the investigation above clearly indicates the opposite. In addition to this - almost all research on tables etc is done based on forward profiling. With all this in mind I would strongly recommend anyone to follow the traditional approach and avoid reverse profiles.

You can read the full article at Rubicon Foundation.