It's All About the Algorithm: Undercurrent 07/2025

It's All About the Algorithm

from the July, 2025 issue of Undercurrent

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It's All About the Algorithm

Diving computers use an algorithm -- a mathematical calculation, a process, or set of rules -- to be followed to compute real-time decompression status during a dive.

This century, no physicists have taken it upon themselves to write a new algorithm for dive computers. Manufacturers have merely tweaked the algorithms. Most use an algorithm based on the work of Swiss physicist Albert Buhlmann (died 1994), some with additional Reduced Bubble Gradient Model (RGBM) modifications by Los Alamos atomic physicist Bruce Wienke (died 2020). Others use the Pelagic DSAT algorithm, developed earlier by Rogers and Powell, a Haldanebased algorithm loosely based on data similar to the PADI Recreational Dive Planner, and more liberal (less cautious) than the Buhlmann derivatives. It allows a diver to stay down longer and come up faster, though it was intended for no-deco-stop dives to less than 100 feet deep, not the kind of profiles many sport divers use. Once a diver got into deco-stop diving, the stops tended to be punitive....

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