RAID is constantly growing and turning more divers and wannabe divers on to the fun, comfort and safety of diving The RAID Way™. And occasionally we get to welcome old friends and dive buddies into the “family.” We’re so happy to let the diving community know that RAID Germany is now fully online. Stefano Stolfa (RAID Italia, one of the partners at DRI, and a senior Examiners (in center in photo)), recently worked with long-time RAID instructor-trainer Robert Lange (on right in photo above), and “new boy” Uwe Rath (left in photo) to upgrade their teaching status with the agency. Robert is now a full RRO for Deutschland (info@raid-deutschland.de), and will be responsible for professionals’ support and growth of the brand in that region. Uwe, who has been prominent in both recreational and technical diving communities in the Dominican Republic as well as in Europe, is now a RAID Examiner with a

WE’RE MAKING IT EASIER FOR YOU TO DO BUSINESS WITH DRI RAID was the first agency to go totally digital, fully online, no printed manuals, giving us the smallest fin-print in the industry and convenience for our members. And at the time, our back-end Business-to-Business site was state of the art. But since the only constant is change, especially in the digital world, over time, the other agencies followed our lead and caught up. Our once groundbreaking system got tired. We patched it, upgraded it, but it became obvious it really needed to be rebuilt from the first line of code to the last… brick by brick so to speak. Well, we’re doing just that. It’s going to take a while… several months because it’s like tuning a car engine while it’s still running. While the work goes on, if you’re a pro member or a dive centre owner, you’ll notice gradual changes as the contractors do the renovations. Plea

WHY WE MAKE SUCH A BIG DEAL ABOUT BUOYANCY (AND TRIM) You may have heard that students in RAID Open Water 20 programs (and beyond) are expected to demonstrate skills while neutrally buoyant. What skills? All of ’em: mask removal, second-stage recovery, gas sharing, all of ’em. And it’s easier than you think. So, what exactly do we mean by: “while neutrally buoyant”? We mean, floating in the water column and not touching the bottom, the sides, a piece of rope; nothing. Simply put, no kneeling on the bottom of the pool, in the sand, or anywhere else. Just floating and looking like a correctly-trained diver. We’re told that some instructors teaching for other agencies are not so picky. Ours are mindful of the environment—kneeling on some little critter or disturbing its home is not nice—and want to make the diving experience as enjoyable as possible. And that means for our students, but also fro

The short answer is no, but we understand the confusion. Dive RAID International, RAID for short, takes training open water divers—beginners—seriously. Our instructors are top-drawer professionals who teach new divers skills from day one, that other agencies think are advanced! And that confuses some. Our opinion is that buoyancy control, knowing a few extra tricks to swim with the least effort, how to be a confident and helpful buddy, the advantages of breathing from a long-hose, and proper gas planning and dive management are necessary and shouldn’t be extra bolt-on courses (costing the student extra bolt-on fees by the way): we feel these things are basic. And in RAID’s basic courses is when student are introduced to them. Before RAID came along, breathing gases (like trimix and nitrox), and kit configurations we introduce early on, were considered “technical.” So, some people think that’s

Dive RAID International has developed a Public Safety Diver (PSD) Entry-Level program which is due for release in mid-September 2023. It is the first offering from RAID into this type of diving. Although the agency is a “new” vendor in the PSD market, we recognised it as a special case and the SMEs (subject matter experts) who created this program have extensive experience in the PSD field. To give you a better idea of the scope of this new program, follow this link>>>. For more details please contact the regional office for your area (look here) or RAID HQ. If you’d like to be kept up-to-date with news from RAID via our mailing list, sign-up here>>>

As an instructor, it’s always a treat to hear from students after their course telling you how much they appreciate the help you’ve given them, and how valuable that help has been. It’s particularly neat when the most important event post training, is that nothing happened… when it really could have! Caleb and his boisterous buddy Jimmy Henderson, one of the RAID instructors at Dino’s Diving, recently got one of those messages thanking him for “drilling us in the basics.” A while back he worked with a father and son team before their Bahamas dive trip. The trip sounds like a fun time, but the highlight was when a shark did a crazy U-turn bumping into Caleb (the son) knocking the reg from his mouth and the business end of his mask around to his ear. Kevin (dad) writes: “If you panic here and flail your arm about you could lose a finger: anything moving is viewed as food.” But Caleb, calmly rea