Tom, below I include a message from John Missavage, brother of Doug
Missavage who was killed in a "deep air" class. Maybe you can tell this
list of "instructors" you have teaching deep air that this is what they
can expect, and you can remind your attorney and insurance carriers that
Alton won this case for a tidy sum. You can also take satisfaction in
the fact that Doug's wife, Maureen, took the oportunity to include
changing the standards in the settlement, in order to save others. We
especially applaud Maureen in this victory . 

Go ahead and get ready to change yours before they are changed for you.
I will remind you that we have had to argue with you endlessly to get
you to make the changes you have made so far. Still not enough in my
opinion, still not even close. You need to lose the deep air mentality
alltogether.

At least now there are alternatives, thank God, but your organization is
the biggest - you owe it to diving to lead, not follow. We have had to
do that instead, and we are not in the diving business.

Maybe you could get one of the more upright hominids on this cc list to
explain to me why deep air to 51 meters makes any sense what so ever, or
maybe you could give that one a try yourself. I see the IANTD logo still
has the words "deep air" prominently displayed.

Tom, my personal bet to you is that in a couple of years, deep air will
be regarded about the same way cigarrette smoking is regarded now - only
practiced by the truly ignorant. I will also remind you that IANTD
stands for Interantional Association of Nitrox and Technical Divers.
Nobody needs IANTD to go deep air diving, that is not "technical
diving", and certainly charging people to go deep air diving is about
like charging them to sniff glue, only not quite as stupid as sniffing
glue, unless you were to sniff the glue underwater. You really need to
take a good look here - you may find comfort and solace from this cc
list in these practices, but the rest of the civilized tech diving world
is not impressed.

Read this:

From: John.Missavage@ch*.co* <John.Missavage@ch*.co*>
To: wwm@sa*.ne* <wwm@sa*.ne*>
Date: Thursday, August 19, 1999 9:08 AM
Subject: RE: Re:IANTD vs 70 m air instruction and 158 m air dives You
gotta
be kidding


>Bill,
>I am thrilled to see that again the subject is getting attention. It will
>have been 3 years the 21st of September that my brothers and sisters lost
>Doug. An end to this diving deep on air should have come long ago. I still
>don't understand why it hasn't stopped. Thanks for your support and the
>support of I am
>Sure many others.
>I responded with an emphatic NO to deep air.
>
>John
> JOHN MISSAVAGE
> Systems Engineer
> Houston Chronicle
> 801 Texas Ave. suite 925
> Houston, Texas 77002
> Phone: 713-220-7988
> Fax:     713-354-3136
> Email:  sysjdm@ch*.co*
>




kirvine@sa*.ne* wrote:
> 
> Tom - good move with Bat Man II . Excellent list of strokes here, by the
> way, in your cc field. Now that you have a running start  maybe the rest
> of the deep air and nonsense can go with it?
> 
> 51 meter air? Give me a break. Too stupid , but you are pointed in the
> right direction with this post.
> 
> Keep moving in the that direction and maybe there is hope for diving
> yet.
> 
> This list is too much, like reading Jeffrey Dahmler's recipe book.
> 
> Tom Mount wrote:
> >
> > Mark
> >
> > Having had the description of your dive read to me over the phone I would
> > like to offer the following comments:
> >
> > 1. First the dive sounded like the biggest screw up I have ever seen
> > published. You were obviously out of it, lets see blind, overinflation of BC
> > to the point of rupturing the bladder, estimates of 130 meter/min ascent
> > rate due to loss of buoyancy control. etc etc.
> >
> > 2. It sounds like you are damn lucky to be alive and that if anything this
> > should have taught you the reason to avoid ultra deep air divers rather than
> > have a desire to teach it to 70 meters.
> >
> > 3. That your mental frame of mind as to the approach to do deep dives is
> > outdated by 30 years or so and numerous deaths are proof of this outdated
> > mind set
> >
> > 4. You must be unaware that IANTD only offers air diving courses to a max
> > depth of 51 meters and that a sister program to this course is Normoxic
> > Trimix
> > which is essentially the same program except all divers deeper than 40
> > meters are made on trimix and it will allow dives to 60 m. With your goal to
> > teach deep air to 70 + meters you certainly do not need an affiliation with
> > IANTD where this practice is expressively FORBIDDEN
> >
> > 5. After completing the dive you did and still wish to promote this type of
> > activity as such you would represent everything IANTD is trying to
> > discourage and avoid, thus you crossing over to IANTD is a little absurd.
> >
> > 6.  While if you had learned from this experience and god knows you had some
> > good clues dropped to you on the dangers of this type of activity
> > A. Blind at 100 m (but you continued the dive to 158m) time for a sanity
> > check,
> > B. explosive ascent due to loss of control for whatever reason
> > C. The need to do a omitted deco procedure because you could not recover
> > your buoyancy on the dive and various other comments you made concerning the
> > dive.
> >
> > As stated if you had learned instead of being intrigued by that dive, you
> > may have had good rational to share with divers about avoiding ultra deep
> > air diving but it seems your primary goal is to teach air diving to depths
> > that exceed accepted oxygen and nitrogen limits, Sorry that is something
> > that will not be done under the IANTD umbrella. I recommend you stick with
> > your present training agencies maybe they will allow this but we will not.
> >
> > 7. While I agree with your statement on the rights of an individual to take
> > risk on a personal level I cannot share your enthusiasm about wanting to
> > encourage others to do this type (ultra deep air)activity. Plus I find it
> > difficult to see your logic in wishing to do a 158 m air dive in the first
> > place when there are other ways to have adventure and take risk that are not
> > proven both in theory and in practice physiologically insane endeavors.
> >
> > 8.All you proved is for some reason on this one day, you as one person,
> > survived a dive to 158 m. I hope you at least picked up enough warnings from
> > the events that happened to you to avoid this kind of a dive in the future.
> >
> > 9. Deep diving even on propre mixes has its share of danger why try to
> > exceed well documented physiological risk limits.
> >
> > 10. In closing while my philosophy agrees with a statement by Dr Gil Milner
> > along time ago.
> >
> > “You Have The Obligation to Inform One Honestly of the Risk, And As a
Person
> > You Are Committed to Educate Yourself to the Total Risk In Any Activity!”
> > “Once Informed & Totally Aware of the Risk, Every Fool Has the Right to
Kill
> > or Injure Themselves as They See Fit!”
> >
> > So if you really understand and accept the risk then you have the right to
> > kill yourself, but Mark we do not want you to be responsible for training
> > IANTD divers if you feel ultra deep air diving is something you want to
> > promote and teach them. So as long as your stated goal is to teach air to
> > great depths,
> > then we really would prefer that you were not an IANTD instructor
> >
> > So I do not know at what part of your instructor crossover you are at or who
> > with but I will have to prevent its completion at this time maybe when and
> > if you "grow up we can reconsider this action".
> >
> > Respectfully yours,
> > Tom Mount
> > CEO IANTD World HQ
> > http://www.iantd.com
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: bdi@wh*.ne* <bdi@wh*.ne*>
> > To: Tom Mount <TOM.MOUNT@wo*.at*.ne*>
> > Cc: techdiver@aquanaut.com <techdiver@aquanaut.com>; Christian Gerzner
> > <christiang@pi*.co*.au*>; Mark the Nark Andrews
> > <extreme@de*.fr*.co*.uk*>
> > Date: Tuesday, August 17, 1999 11:46 PM
> > Subject: Re: Darwin Award winner -'Mark the Nark'Andrews
> >
> > --
> > Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'.
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> 
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