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I am not ceritfied, and this is not rocket science - it is goober easy,
other than when you have to wade through tht tainging agncey bullshit.

CaveDiving@ao*.co* wrote:
> 
> 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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