Sometimes, it’s annoying, even dispiriting, to write diving manuals and course standards. It can be a tough ask! They’re essentially How-To-Books or an umpire’s playbook for an activity with moveable goal posts and different off-side rules depending on where the game’s being played. And things get more tangled... More of a dilemma when the program you’re writing about is technical rather than recreational. Cave diving is a classic... what’s the word... conundrum.
The boundaries separating recreational from technical diving get more blurred every time your favourite dive magazine drops a new copy. At one time, breathing nitrox was considered technical diving. Now divers can use nitrox on their open-water checkout dives. Diving with a twinset or independent singles (that’s sidemount in old-person speak) would have got you shown the exit from most recreational dive charters. Skills and kit configurations once venerated by cave divers alone are now normal for folks whose goal is to have a quiet, benign bimble on a reef at 10 or 12 meters.
Let’s talk about RAID’s Nitrox Plus program... and try to answer two questions: what it's about and where it fits in the RAID curriculum. It’s a relatively new course, and people have been asking those questions... even a few of our pro-members... So, let’s start with what it’s all about.
The best definition of Situational Awareness is probably that it is the ability to deal with a problem before it’s a problem. It’s the chess-player's skill. That is: thinking several moves ahead and having a plan for what could happen. Formally part of basic training for the military, commercial pilots, first responders, and folks in most high-risk industries, it is universally recognized as the foundation for effective decision-making under pressure.
According to a couple of website searches and the RAID cave-diving manual, we learn that a cave diver typically travels about 15 meters (50 feet) per minute under normal, low-flow swimming conditions. But how true is it... How accurate... Is it a real number for you and your team to use?
