Dive in the off-season and bring your diving family with you. Four divers
have a lot of clout in late April and early May in the lower islands of the
Caribbean.  You can pretty well name your sites (although with only 4 on a
dive boat some captains won't go too far from shore because of fuel costs).

To try to settle this I did a search on Google for a dive simulator and finally found one.
It's the Suunto Dive Manager

http://www.suunto.com/pls/suunto/suunto2.pubproduct.prod_view?in_product_id=80&i
n_prodgrp_id=161&in_prodsubgrp_id=402

I chose the Cobra simulation to show the Air time and air consumption, because I assume
the dives are limited by the air in tank.

It has several dive profiles stored when you download it. I looked at the 102 ft dive to
Isle Royale National Park and took it as the deep dive. It shows the tissue graphs at the
end of dive.

Then I modified the profile by truncating the deep part. The diver stops at 50 ft and
holds there for a period of time and then resumes the same profile as above. Again I
looked at the tissue bar graphs at the end. To keep the amount of air at the end of dive
the same and keep the same SAC(surface air consumption) I had to insert some points at 50
ft--so the diver stays as long as possible at 50 ft to use the same amount of air as the
deep diver. It took a few tries to add the correct amount of wait time to yield the same
SAC and the same ending air pressure.

At the end I compared the two tissue N2 saturation bar graph profiles. Both have the same
shape with the middles bars being the tallest, but the deep dive graphs peaked at 110%
tissue saturation while the shallow dive peaked at 85% tissue saturation. In fact every
tissue compartment was higher in the deep dive than the shallow dive, even the slow
tissues.  This is the final proof that for a given amount of air the deep dive will result
in greater tissue saturation.

You could argue the profiles are not the same. In the shallow profile the diver stays at
50 ft and holds, but if he comes up he'll stay longer and shallower but then his tissue
loading will be even less. At the end of the dive it is the mid tissues that are
controlling. It's what I see in real dives. After a deep dive I have to have a longer
surface interval than after shallow but longer dives, to bring the displayed controlling
bar down.

You are right about the tables--if you have an infinite amount of air you can get to the
highest NDL group in shallow dives. For example at 35 feet if you stay for 5 hours you can
get to group O without going into deco, but at 130 ft you can only stay 10 minutes and get
to only group E before going into deco. This must have to do with the rapid tissues
quickly saturating in the deep dive but quickly gassing off, as you say. But in reality
the limiting factor is air time and in that case the deep dive results in higher group.

Adam

When you come up from a typical multilevel dive, Steve, and look at your computer's bar
graph you are looking at the mid tissues not the fastest tissues. You can see this in the
Suunto Dive Manager after a typical dive--it's the mid tissues that are controlling at the
end of a typical multilevel dive.

The message <3Zgac.1990$LB1.216@news.cpqcorp.net>
from hammond@not@peek.ssr.hp.com (Charlie Hammond) contains these words:

I realise that, I just wondered why you specifically stated staying
within no-stop times, I was taught originally a straight 24hours
regardless.

I think there is probably plenty of experienec of flying and
decompression diving in Europe, where mandatory stops are far more the
norm. It also depends on the gas you are using, I've got an 8 day dive
trip planned which finishes up around 5 or 6 on the last day and the
only flight I can catch is the 6:45am, which I've done before, however I
will be using He based gas, and none of the flights are very long or
high