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To the list,

I have been involved with this list and others for a while and have learned a 
great deal of valuable information.  I have seen postings that I thought were 
"right on!!" and others that I couldn't believe anyone could be so stupid as 
to write them.  I believe some of the personalities are the kind of people I 
would like very much to dive with and call "friend" and others I would call 
"sick" (to put it mildly) and would quickly use my cave diver's prerogative 
"to call a dive at any time for any reason" before entering any overhead 
environment with them as a member of the team.  I believe in the basic 
concepts of DIR (not necessarily all of the details yet but I'm working on 
it) and am slowly changing a number of the ways I dive in accordance with 
this.  I have tried to bring some information and interesting discussions to 
this list.

Recently, I have started to see an opinion coming out on the lists that 
bothers me a great deal.  It deals with the use of helium in breathing mixes 
by divers untrained and uncertified in its use.  Basically it scares the hell 
out of me so I thought I ought to bring it out in the open.  I am afraid that 
we may be heading for some serious trouble if we don't take a stand against 
this idea.  And I guess I'm looking for some support in my concerns.

Now first, for those of you that don't know me, I need to indicate that while 
I am certainly not a famous cave explorer or record setting deep diver, I 
don't believe that I'm a particularly wimp diver either.  I am older and so 
perhaps a little more conservative (I will be 60 this year), will never make 
3% body fat (or even 5 or 6% for that matter) and I do have an 80 mm 
stainless steel screw holding one ankle together.  But on the other hand this 
winter I made my 2,000th dive, around half of which have been either in an 
overhead environment or deeper than 200 feet, and my deeper dives this year 
were below 400 feet.  I am an active PADI Master Scuba Diver Trainer, NAUI 
Instructor Trainer, SSI Divecon Instructor, IANTD Advanced Nitrox Instructor 
and Trimix Blender Instructor, ANDI Technical Safe Air 3 Instructor, TDI 
Advanced Trimix, Full Cave and Rebreather Instructor, and a DAN Oxygen 
Provider and REMO Instructor.  I teach at Scuba Sciences in Phoenix in the 
summer and the Akumal Dive shop in the Yucatan during the winter and it is 
not unusual for me to make half mile swimming cave penetrations (around 90 
minute dives without stage tanks) and have almost half of my air remaining on 
exit, four or five days a week.  I am also involved in the exploration of our 
"new little cave" in Belize in which we have laid around 3,700 feet of line 
last winter and hope to continue more next fall.  I may be older and not too 
strong, but at my last treadmill test I was told I was in the top 1% of men 
in my age group.

I say all this simply to demonstrate that I believe I am not a "newbie" to 
technical diving and not afraid of "pushing my own limits" so to speak.

Recently I posted something on this list questioning whether it was wise for 
someone with no formal training to be mixing and diving trimix.  And the 
answers it drew really surprised me.  I figured it to be a no brainer; if no 
training then don't do it.  One of the five basic rules of accident analysis 
for cave diving deals with diving beyond my level of training.  And my 
experience with deep diving leads me to believe that clearly here too, one of 
the leading causes (to me it seems to be THE leading cause) of death is 
"cockpit error", "stupidity" or "overlooking something".  To me these are all 
different ways of expressing "lack of training".

Now I understand that training does not necessarily require attendance in a 
class with a certified instructor and an official certification card.  But 
for most people I really believe that that's sure as hell the way to go.  Of 
course there are highly experienced and extremely knowledgeable people who 
can mentor a novice and teach him or her all that is needed.  But unless 
there is some kind of special relationship between them, this situation is 
not too common.  And when is the training over?  And how are we sure that 
"all" of the required information has been covered?  These are subjects which 
have been carefully considered in a well defined course.

It's bad enough when some of the members of this list (based on their 
association with members of the WKPP team) argue that they don't need formal 
training to use Helium, but I'm afraid that it's far worse when divers with 
almost no access to other trained technical divers, start to do it.  For 
example, in a thread I've been following on rec.diver, the following quotes 
typify what has been going on;

1)  "Instrokters like you are the problem.  Trimix is no different than air.
Forget what ever the stroke instructor told you about He and do some
research."

2)  [From a diver with no trimix certification (S.A.B.)]   "I would submit 
that diving air is a higher risk than mix."

3)  [When arguing against the need for a Helium use certification (S.A.B.)]   
"I'm surprised you haven't launched into thread on the dangers of 
mixing/blending and the horror of O2 handling."

4)  [When arguing against the need for a Helium use certification (S.A.B.)]   
"At this point I think a thread on the home servicing and testing of 
Regulators is in order. Or is that too the sacred province of ...."

5)  "Certification is only a means for those who don't want to spend the time 
to
learn something properly to believe they will be safe while diving."

And another thing which I would think is really absolutely ridiculous if it 
weren't so sad, is that some of these people are actually using DIR as an 
excuse.  For example the statement "The advances in procedures and equipment 
utilization developed by the proponents of DIR have made the exploration of 
caves and open ocean much easier and safer."  This statement was made in the 
context of explaining why a trimix certification was not needed.

There are many more examples of this mentality but unfortunately, I do not 
have them immediately available.  To me this is very similar to what was 
going on in the early days of nitrox.  Most of the diving community was 
saying "too dangerous", the people involved were saying "it's safe and 
terrific with the proper training" and the uninformed risk takers were saying 
"I don't need no stinkin' training".  And these latter people were using the 
same excuses as are being bandied around now.  "Too expensive", "instructors 
only want the money", "my friend uses it and hasn't had a problem", "You're 
just trying to scare us", "you want to make money cleaning tanks", "I don't 
need anyone else to tell me how to dive", "there are too many BS courses", 
etc.

I would like to get some opinions from the folks on this list as to whether I 
am overreacting or is there a potential problem brewing?  I have no axe to 
grind other than trying in my own way, to make diving in general and 
technical diving in particular, a little safer.  Depending on the information 
I receive, I'll either stay up on my horse or STFD & STFU.  Thanks for your 
time.

Take care and safe diving,        Scott

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