Dive profile

A dive profile is a description of a diver's pressure exposure over time. It may be as simple as just a depth and time pair, as in: "sixty for twenty," (a stay of 20 minutes at a depth of 60 feet) or as complex as a second by second graphical representation of depth and time recorded by a personal dive computer. Several common types of dive profile are specifically named, and these may be characteristic of the purpose of the dive. For example, a working dive at a limited location will often follow a constant depth (square) profile, and a recreational dive is likely to follow a multilevel profile, as the divers start deep and work their way up a reef to get the most out of the available breathing gas. The names are usually descriptive of the graphic appearance.

The intended dive profile is useful as a planning tool as an indication of the risks of decompression sickness and oxygen toxicity for the exposure, and also for estimating the volume of open-circuit breathing gas needed for a planned dive, as these depend in part upon the depth and duration of the dive. A dive profile diagram is conventionally drawn with elapsed time running from left to right and depth increasing down the page.

Many personal dive computers record the instantaneous depth at small time increments during the dive. This data can often be downloaded to a personal computer or tablet and displayed in graphic form as a dive profile.

Some types of dive profile have been named. An analysis of dive profiles logged by dive computers by the Divers Alert Network used categorization rules which were based on the fraction of the dive time spent in four depth zones: descent, bottom, multilevel, and decompression. The descent zone was defined as the part of the dive between the surface and first reaching 85% of the maximum depth. The bottom zone is the part of the dive deeper than 85% of maximum depth. The multilevel zone is ascent from 85% to 25% of maximum depth, and the decompression zone is less than 25% of maximum cepth. A square dive was defined as having more than 40% of the total dive time in the bottom zone and not more than 30% in the multilevel and decompression zones. A multilevel was defined as having at least 40% of the total dive time in the multilevel zone. All other dives are considered to be intermediate.

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