If you have found a good dive buddy, hold on to them: they are an active partner in risk management, an extra set of eyes when you can’t see everything going on around you, and a secondary gas supply if things go totally pear-shaped. Whether you’re diving a few times a year recreationally on a tropical reef or regularly conducting complex, multi-gas technical dives, you need to be sure you can rely on your buddy—one hundred percent... or more. If you have found a good dive buddy, hold on to them: they are an active partner in risk management, an extra set of eyes when you can’t see everything going on around you, and a secondary gas supply if things go totally pear-shaped. Whether you’re diving a few times a year recreationally on a tropical reef or regularly conducting complex, multi-gas technical dives, you need to be sure you can rely on your buddy—one hundred percent... or more. But if you’re still looking for the perfect buddy, how can you tell the difference between one most likely to earn a place on the good list and one who's more of a so-so?

The ‘use-it-or-lose-it’ principle applies equally to physical fitness and brain health. Our body and mind adapt to and respond to the demands we place on them. Maintaining and building muscle and flexibility takes a commitment to regular exercise and resistance training. Brain health and neuroplasticity – memory and timely in situ problem-solving – operate under the same rules. Both will atrophy and degrade if they are not actively stimulated and used regularly.

When certified divers are asked what they wish their entry-level open water certification had focused more on, every instructor – ours or theirs – should listen. You might expect experienced divers to mention the esoteric, the stuff that only comes from a few hundred dives and hours and hours underwater. But that’s not the case. They talked about classes that missed the basics.

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.