DSAT Tec Deep students can now use normoxic trimix on their final course dive under a change announced today by PADI’s technical diving arm. The change in standards is the first result of a series of conferences DSAT is holding around the world to map the future of the Tec Rec program. (more…)

Unbeknownst to many tech divers around the world, Thailand is speckled with caves and caverns from north to south, many of which have never been fully explored. Earlier this month Aquanauts’ Roger M. Smith and fellow ANDI Instructor Bruce Konefe tackled the vast Song Hong cave, accessed via a sinkhole in remote Trang province.

Dived by only a handful of people since its discovery in 2006, the cave, about 960 km southwest from Pattaya, was notorious for its hard-to-find location, but has now been plotted on Google maps. It’s believed to have two entrances, but the easier-to-access opening is about 12 meters down in the 110-meter deep sinkhole. It then opens up into a huge cave, so large a light beam will not reach the opposite cave wall. (more…)

PADI’s DSAT technical diving division will host three roundtable forums in Thailand in April and June to gather suggestions and ideas on the future of the agency’s tech courses.

The forums, set to coincide with PADI Intructor Exams, will be held April 26 in Phuket, April 30 in Koh Tao and June 21 in Pattaya. (more…)

We finally got our hands on the photos from Aquanauts’ Cavern Diver course last fall at Thailand’s Thong Pha Phom near Kanchanaburi and what a great surprise they were.

ANDI Instructor Roger M. Smith led the course for Aquanauts interns (and now PADI instructors) Greg Hannigan, A.J. Rankin and Scott Clark. Hannigan was behind the lens and shot a bundle of photos. The best ones were without the direct strobe, which too often illuminates the suspended particles in the cavern waters.

After a bit of Photoshop “channel mixing,” that restored proper color values and added luminence, what you see below is how things looked to the divers on the three-day course. (more…)

This blog focuses on tech diving in Thailand, not equipment, but some developments are too significant to ignore, like this week’s announcement that Suunto has finally released a trimix dive computer.

Dubbed the Hel02, has full mixed-gas capability, is rated to 120m and incorporates the new Suunto Technical RGBM algorithm, which is based on the RGBM algorithm used in all current Suunto computers. (more…)