What is Enriched Air Diving?
Enriched Air diving or Nitrox diving is becoming increasingly popular in Scuba diving and refers to Diving with a special nitrogen and oxygen breathing gas mixture with an oxygen concentration higher than the 21 percent found in normal air. Ordinarily recreational scuba divers use regular compressed air in their tanks rather than blended gasses. Enriched Air Diving has a variety of benefits over using regular air for divers.
Why do a specialty course in Enriched Air Diving?
As water pressure causes the nitrogen from the air you breathe to dissolve in your bloodstream, the longer and deeper a diver is underwater, the more nitrogen is absorbed by his system. As the nitrogen builds up, a diver can only be underwater for a limited time depending on depth as the pressure is more deeper and then must ascend slowly, make decompression stops consequent surface interval times before diving again.
The diving time allowed when using enriched air nitrox changes as the “enriched” air used has more oxygen and less nitrogen. This means, when diving nitrox a divers body absorbs less nitrogen during the dive than a diver that uses regular air. It’s important to note however, that although enriched air nitrox allows a longer no-decompression limit, it does not eliminate the risk of decompression sickness or nitrogen narcosis but simply lowers it.
Overall the PADI Enriched Air Diver Specialty is perhaps one of the most popular courses that PADI offers. Scuba diving with enriched air nitrox gives you more no decompression dive time. This means more time underwater, especially on repetitive scuba dives Nitrox allows you to stay down longer and get back the water sooner. Gas blends with 32 percent or 36 percent oxygen can sometimes nearly double the time a diver can spend at depth before reaching the safe limits of excess nitrogen. Once certified, you will be able to plan and execute dives using blends up to 40 percent oxygen.
What does the Course cover?
The PADI Enriched Air Diver Specialty course is designed to qualify recreational divers to use enriched air (Nitrox) for no decompression stop recreational diving. The course addresses the use of
enriched air with 22 percent to 40 percent oxygen, with emphasis on enriched air with 32 and 36 percent oxygen. The course covers both a theoretical portion of roughly 12 hours of instruction as well as a practical portion comprising of at least two open water dives using enriched air to successfully complete the Specialty.
The course covers the following:
- Planning, organization procedures, techniques, problems, and hazards of Enriched Air diving
- How to avoid issues with oxygen toxicity
- how to analyze enriched air with oxygen analyzers and flow restrictors
- Understanding the different blends and mixtures of Enriched Air Diving
- Dive Planning —divers learn to calculate, , the maximum depth, planned depth and no stop limits for the dive using Enriched Air Tables and the using enriched air computers.
- Enriched air scuba diving equipment considerations
- Going through the PADI Enriched Air Diver Manual – which is a comprehensive guide to Nitrox Diving
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There is no written exam to successfully complete the PADI Enriched Air Diver Specialty however the diver must successfully complete the knowledge sessions on all the key information areas and perform the two training dives to the satisfaction of the instructor.
Prerequisites to do the Course
To qualify for the EAN Diver course, an individual must:
- Be certified as a PADI Open Water Diver, PADI Junior Open Water Diver or have a qualifying certification from another training organization.
- Be 15 years of age or older.
photos from flickr courtesy: Woolve.com, nsyll, Brian Meidell,
