Nitrox

Our Favorite Web Dive Articles

NITROX

Ugly word or next step???

There must be a lot of divers like myself, with almost 24 years into the sport that still have a lot of the old relics and antiques hanging around.

I learned on a double hose monster regulator, and that is what I dove for a few years, and then upgraded to newer stuff, a regulator and the hose down to the second stage on the mouthpiece. The talk of the time was the fatigue that this system must have on the jaw, and the additional things that could go wrong. The regulator was without a pressure or depth gauge, nor did it have an octopus.

I can even remember the first horse collar I had. BC's were the new thing, and even upgraded the regulator to include a pressure gauge, but still kept to the Borden Tube type depth gauge on my wrist.

Things have advanced so much..... I have a digital readout on my wrist now, that downloads into my computer, and tells me anything I want to know. My BC is a full vest type for the sport diving I do, and another for Tek diving. I replaced the J-valve a while back on that first 80 aluminum I have in the name of safety (and the few occasions when the shop did not know what it was and I wound up with short fills).

All along the way, the old stuff has not failed so much, as much as the new technology and equipment seems to be making things safer for the diver under the water.

I remember the "wise old" divers and the talk around the places when the newer stuff would show up, saying things about how complicated the sport is getting, and the remember when's.

So I wonder if we are sitting on the brink of another advance and safety step now today. Truthfully, only time will tell.

I am talking about NITROX. Oops, I said it...... The ugly word. The stuff tek divers mess around with.

Well, the concepts are simple. The idea is truly safety oriented. The only thing that needs to be done is the education of the general diving public.

I had my doubts for a while about the idea of Nitrox for the general diver, but the idea is catching on so well, and with the equipment revolution adapting to the idea of improved gasses to ease the job for Jon Q. Diver, it becomes almost a shame to let the safety margins go unused.

So where does the revolution begin? Right here. Right now. It is already happening all around us. The Tek diving community has again been responsible for a safety advance for the rest of the dive community.

Where will it go? I don't know, but I do know that the ones who really get on top of it will do the diving public the best service. If it were to be included within the basic ciriculum for a diver for their c-card, not as a certification, but as an introduction, the basis would be installed for the later instructors to call forth from the students memories and enhance.

We all learn about the nitrogen, and it's effects, not only as a narcotic, but as a bubble agent. We learn to use the tables, and to work out the length of time we need to outgas that N gas.

But it has been the realm of the tek diving community to use the enhanced air stuff to reduce the effects of that N gas up until now, and it is so appropriate to be finally realizing that the normal diver does not need a lot of additional time to be educated in it's use, it's safety, and the dangers of not using it properly.

The basic idea is quite simple. If you are going to have gas in the system, let it be something the body can use, and in the event a bubble would form, then it would be easily consumed by the tissues around it. A simple idea in hopes of slowing down accidents and chamber activity.

The normal diver out on a dive to even a hundred feet of seawater has so much to benefit by the use of the enhanced gas. So does the diver even out for a dive to 60 fsw, especially repetitively, or like more divers are doing, for as many times as they can for the week that they are in some exotic paradise.

Overall, the acceptance of the idea of Nitrox will be one of those steps that will allow the days of plain old air fills for every dive to join my horsecollar BC in the locker in the garage, along with a j-valve and some other assorted gear.

Not that any of it has given out or needed to be trashed, but that there is something safer now.