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> ...IANTD and ANDI, on the > other hand, seems always to have been for-profit. Moreover, although what they > teach in nitrox and technical nitrox is consistent with NOAA and commercial > standards (Dick Rutkowski was the father of NOAA nitrox diving before he founded > IAND and passed it on to Tom Mount as IANTD), their trimix program is not like > anything done by anyone in the commercial or military diving world. Commercial > and military divers typically use either rebreathers or surface supply when > doing mixed gas diving. Surface supply is not practical for cave diving and I suspect the same is true for wreck diving involving significant penetration. It will be great when rebreathers are available and not prohibitively expensive. In the mean time open circuit scuba is the only option for most mixed gas diving. For deep diving mixed gas is safer than air. You may well argue that sport divers just shouldn't be going deep at all. But some of us are very motivated to do it, for whatever reasons. If the decision is to go on mixed gas or not go you may make a good case for not going. If it is to go on air or mixed gas it is very difficult to make a case for air, apart from cost and logistics, IMO. Lest I appear to be bragging or preaching I should admit here that I still do some deep air dives, mostly because it isn't always feasible for me manage a gas dive even though I would prefer it. But then I'd rather be using a rebreather and have lots of other things I can't afford. > Now what concerns me is that most of the information available on trimix diving > as practiced by sport divers, and in particular the safety of this technique, > has come from those who promote it and stand to make some money from it. > Although the basic principles of mixed gas diving have been around for decades, > sport diving on mix has been pretty much limited to a few people until quite > recently, and most of the mix veterans are now IANTD or ANDI instructors. Does > anyone else feel uncomfortable about this? I must admit that I am not well > plugged into the cave community, so if the the NACD Journal has run dozen of mix > acccident analysis reports, please pardon my ignorance. Again, I don't think there is any question that trimix is safer than air for deep diving. No one I know of is falsely promoting the relative safety of trimix. I'm glad the veterans are teaching and making safer techniques available to the rest of us without repeating a lot of trial and error. The differences between sport and military and commercial diving in this area which you have pointed out make the contributions of those with experience appropriate for sport diving that much more valuable. I don't think the costs are out of line. My trimix class cost $400 and took three days, extending well into the night each time. We did one deep (190 feet) air dive and two gas dives, with all gas as well as books and certification fees included in the course fee. We had to drive a couple of hours each way to the dive sites each day, and the instructor had to make this drive as well. There were only two students in the class. (The maximum is only three.) I figure the instructor had net earnings of less than $20 per hour. Considering the knowledge and experience required to teach a class like that I think this compares quite favorably with most scuba training beyond the first open water class, which stores make artificially cheap to attract new customers to the sport and sell gear. If anything I think it is the agressive marketing of regular scuba diving to people who aren't already committed to it that should raise concerns. A trained diver who was going to be diving deep anyway is safer with mixed gas training. Is the average open water student who wouldn't have been diving at all safer because they get into the sport as a result of marketing? Bill Mayne
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