Oceanic Objects to Review of Veo 250

The April 2004 Undercurrent reported testing results from 10 computers, originally published in Britain's Diver Magazine. Diver ganged 10 different computers on one rig, to make side-by-side comparisons. Taking them beyond the limit of no-stop diving, they could detect differences in their algorithms (mathematical calculations that attempt to keep divers safe from the ill-effects of breathing nitrogen under pressure). One computer was the Oceanic Veo. Oceanic's John Lewis has written us to dispute two statements in our article. Here's our original text, along with his comments:

Undercurrent: Oceanic Veo 250 (also Versa and Versa Pro): It offered information on necessary deco-stops completely unlike the other computers. It went into deco-stop diving only below 160 feet, some time after all the other units sitting alongside it.

Lewis: The no-decompression (NoD) limits of Oceanic dive computers are consistent with test data and the dive tables of many instructional organizations in the United States. Any bottom times that exceeded these limits would incur a decompression obligation regardless of depth.

Undercurrent: ... and was generally back into no-stop diving as soon as the testers reached 30 feet. The amount of no-stop time then offered seemed "enormous" in comparison to the others.

Lewis: If the author had been familiar with the NoD times accepted by the numerous responsible institutions listed below [USN, DCIEM, Buhlman, PADI], perhaps the times offered by the Oceanic dive computers would not have seemed to be quite so "enormous."

"In summary," Lewis wrote, "we take pride in the fact that Oceanic dive computers have decompression algorithms that produce performance that is validated by controlled human experimentation. With regard to the various 'observations' presented in Diver Magazine, it is hard to attribute so many factual errors to simple mistakes."

The tester, John Bantin, Diver Magazine's technical editor, told Undercurrent:

"All our dives were undertaken during a typical week of live-aboard diving in the Red Sea. ... Photographs were made of the displays during what we judged to be crucial moments during each dive. They show actually what was displayed on the computers at recorded moments in time during each dive. Our tests are comparative. They do not say if a computer is right or wrong but just how a computer's displayed information compares with the displayed information of computers ranged alongside it. ... We hold these photographs in our files."