Rebreather Certification and Information
In the past couple of years, the dive community has experienced, in a word, a revolution. Previous to this, no one likely ever uttered the words “Recreational Rebreather” in the same sentence. Only a few short years ago, rebreather diving was so obscure, so technical, that is was done only by a handful of divers and explorers. Generally speaking, you would have first been a recreational diver, then a recreational instructor, then an open circuit tech diver, then an open circuit tech instructor, and then... you were ready to be a rebreather diver.
Not so fast though...
Just when you think you are ready, you would need a spare $20,000 to buy one. Why did you have to buy one? Because in order to take the class, you would need to buy one, since your instructor almost certainly couldn’t afford to own 2 of them, much less was there any such thing as a rental rebreather!
So what’s changed with rebreathers?
Simply stated, Poseidon built the world’s first fully automatic rebreather to be used for recreational purposes, and PADI put together the standards, classes, training and materials for recreational rebreather classes.
What does it mean to you? Why is it a revolution? Why would you want to dive on a rebreather?
Simply put, anything that can triple your bottom time, and at the same time keep the need for any decompression at zero, is revolutionary. You can effectively dive longer at deeper than most technical dives, and still not need to do any decompression.
If that’s not enough in of itself, wait until you hear the rest:
Because you are not making any bubbles, you are “running silent”, and therefore become part of the environment, allowing you to be close to the wildlife like you’ve never experienced before. And because you are breathing on a closed circuit loop, recycling your breathing gas, you aren’t exhaling each breath and heat along with it into the water, thus you tend to stay substantially warmer during your dive.
How is all of this possible?
Without getting too technical in the explanation, a Poseidon MKVI and Se7en, automatically injects and maintains the amount of O2 into your breathing loop and keeps it a partial pressure much higher than what you would have in a tank of air or even Enriched Air(Nitrox) at a given depth. For example, at 60 feet (or 20M), the rebreather will have you at a pO2 of 1.0. which is much higher than air (air would have a p02 of 0.4). So effectively you’d be absorbing far less nitrogen into your tissues, the benefit being that you are extending your bottom time, and limiting decompression. It all adds up to triple the bottom time on average.
So now that the recreational rebreather revolution has begun, any recreational diver can join in!
How? All it takes is 3-4 days and you can be certified as an Open Water or Advanced Open Water Rebreather diver, which means you can dive to all the same recreational limits you dive now as an open circuit diver, but you can take advantage of all the rebreathers have to offer.
