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First of all, I enjoyed, and agreed with almost all of your long message. I'm also happy to see that I'm not the only one who posts 5kbyte+ messages! > ANS- I wish someone would try to explain why they think deep air > dives would prepare a person for mixed gas training. O.K. Suppose you are about to train a person how to do trimix dives. You have to choose one of two students. Both have logged 2000 dives. One of them has never been deeper than 60 feet, and the other has done half his/her dives to depths in excess of 180 feet. Knowing *nothing* else about their diving abilities, which do you suppose is more prepared to become a trimix diver? The answer is not obvious. You might say that the person who has never been below 60 feet would make a better trimix diver because s/he appears to have an attitude of caution and staying within limitations. If you said this, I would agree with you. You might also say that the person with deep experience would be better because they have survived the process of natural selection on deep air, so they must be doing something right. I'd agree with you here also. But of the two, knowing nothing else, I'd feel much more comfortable training the person with deep air experience, simply because they have a lot of diving experience working within narrow margins for error. As has been pointed in previouys posts, deep dives are generally pretty easy until something goes wrong. The difference between qualified and unqualified deep divers is how they perform under very stressful situations. Sure, stressful situations can happen at depths of less than 60 feet. But the margin for error at shallow depths is much greater than the margin for error at deep depths. Why? Because at 60 feet each exhaled breath is a smaller percentage of the remaining gas supply; because each extra minute of time spent at 60 feet does not translate to an extra five minutes of decompression time. Besides the obvious narrowing of margins on deep dives, perhaps more important is the psychological ability to calmly and rationally solve problems. Certainly, a diver on trimix at 200 feet is going to be better at solving problems than a person on air at 200 feet. However, I think a MORE important factor is that a person who is calm at 200 feet is better at solving problems than a person on the verge of panic. And the best way to remain calm in stressful situations on a deep dive is to be comfortable on deep dives, and pretty-much the only way to be *truely* comfortable is to have a lot of experience. I HONESTLY am not advocating deep air *training* prior to trimix training. Nor am I saying it is unneccessary (I have no experience in training, so I'm not qualified to say). And I don't agree with the statement "you cant be a good deep mixed gas diver until your a good deep air diver". However, I *DO* believe that a diver should have a LOT of experience operating under conditions with narrow margins for error before s/he even considers a trimix dive to 250 feet. I think that a lot of air diving in the 150-200 foot range is at least ONE WAY to acquire this sort of experience. (I really wanted to use the word "discipline" in this message, but I think I've used it too much recently). > I am a firm believer that there should be both dives and > time of Experience between All levels of certification. I TOTALLY agree!!! Training provides the knowledge, but experience is the only thing that allows a diver to become qualified. DEEP DIVING CANNOT BE TAUGHT, IT CAN ONLY BE LEARNED! Aloha, Rich Richard Pyle deepreef@bi*.bi*.ha*.or* ******************************************************************* "WHATEVER happens to you when you willingly go underwater is COMPLETELY and ENTIRELY your own responsibility! If you cannot accept this responsibility, stay out of the water!" *******************************************************************
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