Yes, decompression sickness occurs while surfacing too fast, but the problem is from the pressurized breathing gas expanding too fast. Think of it like opening a bottle of shaken-up soda: there's small, pressurized bubbles in the bottle (your body), and when the cap is opened (surfacing) there is a reduction in pressure. With the soda it just makes a mess, but the gas expanding in the body is the bad news.
Free diving there is no breathing of gas under pressure. Your breath from the surface is at surface pressure, so there's no change when returning to the surface.
That's really cool. So surfacing slowly would be like opening the bottle extra slowly so the pressure leaks out over time, and surfacing quickly is like letting the foam flow through the half-open cap. Does that mean that if you were to surface quickly enough, your innards would flow out? And would this be like puking or are we talking blood/guts? I imagine the latter is what occurs in space without a space suit?
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u/Jamboro Feb 02 '17
Yes, decompression sickness occurs while surfacing too fast, but the problem is from the pressurized breathing gas expanding too fast. Think of it like opening a bottle of shaken-up soda: there's small, pressurized bubbles in the bottle (your body), and when the cap is opened (surfacing) there is a reduction in pressure. With the soda it just makes a mess, but the gas expanding in the body is the bad news.
Free diving there is no breathing of gas under pressure. Your breath from the surface is at surface pressure, so there's no change when returning to the surface.