Once in a while something happens that makes divers gather under one roof and ventilate their views on the world of diving. One such thing that drew people from all over the world was Rebreather Forum 3.0. With the purpose to gather all the people with interests in the rebreather industry and if possible come to a consensus on some topics important for shaping the future of rebreather use worldwide. There were representatives from manufacturers, military, scientific, recreational and of course technical divers. There were people with all levels of rebreather experience ranging from myself with a few try dives up to more experienced users like Bill Stone, Jill Heinerth, Richard Pyle, Phil Short…. The list just goes on but in short, everyone was there and if you weren’t I feel a little bit sorry for you.

The organizers behind the conference were PADI, DAN and AAUS with a long list of supporters but the person who was running the show was Rosemary E. Lunn who describes herself as a dive industry fixer. Having been part of organizing conferences myself I can imagine some of the work she put into this and I was impressed by how calm she seemed throughout the weekend.

So, another conference you might think. Wrong! As you can probably figure out by the 3.0 above there have been previous rebreather forums but the last one took place in 1996. Back in 96 they approximated the number of functioning CCRs to somewhere between 25-50, in total, and we are not talking about models. With that in mind one might call this forum the first one after the real launch of rebreathers and the development is really still in the early stages. This makes for exciting times if you have any interest in rebreathers and if you don’t, well maybe you should. After this weekend I am quite convinced that the use will only grow and that this might very well be the future of diving.

The conference spanned over three days and were sectioned in different focuses. The first day was an orientation with numerous lectures going on in three different rooms as well as test dives with several different machines. Personally I attended inspiring talks from people using rebreathers in a lot of different situations and they described some of the reasons behind it. In the afternoon the actual forum began with looking back at some of the lessons learned from RF2. The first day was wrapped up with a loud shirt party where everyone could just relax and talk to some of the other attendees. My jetlagged little brain soon gave up after a day full of lectures and meeting new people and I decided it was best to conserve my energy for the rest of the weekend and call it a night. The following two days were filled with lectures and discussions on topics ranging from oxygen sensoring (gave rise to some debate) to the emerging recreational rebreather market. I will not attempt to retell all the things that were discussed but if there is one thing that kept popping up it was the use of checklists! Another thing that was widely agreed upon was the need for a community wide attitude change towards safety and discipline. Do not worry that just because you weren’t there you are going to miss out completely, the proceedings from the forum will be collected and published hopefully before the end of this year, I will try to give a shout when they are out.

I have the feeling that I’ve learned a lot during this weekend and as soon as my mind has had a chance to process things will begin to fall in place. I can say for sure that I’ve met a lot of great people and hope to meet them again, possibly over the next year.

Without giving away too much I’d still like to hint at the possibility that more rebreather connected posts might work their way in to this blog in the near future so stay tuned!

Ps. This post should of course have out a few days ago but in the week that went by since I landed I have finished university with a final presentation of my bachelors thesis and then I moved out of my apartment.