Changes are afoot at Phuket’s Pro-Tech Dive College with the opening of new facilities the boss gaining new closed-circuit rebreather ratings.

Construction of Pro-Tech’s new facility in Chalong has taken about six months, but is now complete, the company says on its Tech-CCR News & Events blog. (more…)

When it comes to diving shipwrecks, some feel there’s a distinct difference between diving wrecks sunk as artificial reefs (or insurance payouts) and wrecks on which people died. Many of these underwater tombs are only accessible to technical divers who both feel the thrill of seeing history close-up, but feel the weight of the events that lead countless seamen to their depths.

The U.K.’s Diver magazine has a great take on diving grave wrecks in its July issue. Author Michael Sawyer said he doesn’t dive grave wrecks to be a “ghoul,” but simply because “I’m drawn to wrecks. Period.”

“It would be foolish, however, as a diver, not to address the moral aspect while adding the (ship) to the logbook, considering that it’s a tomb, and a relatively recent one at that,” he wrote. (more…)

With no technical training, indigenous fishermen of Thailand Andaman Sea have successfully treated nearly two-thirds of those who suffer decompression illness through in-water recompression.

The Urak Lowoi, better known as Thailand’s “sea gypsies,” make their living fishing using surface supplied air on the islands of Phuket, Phi Phi, Lanta, Lipe, Jum and Adang. While the opening of the Tarutao National Park and the encroachment of the market economy has rapidly changed their lives, the traditions of women running their society while men journey far from home to fish lives on. (more…)

Another of our “how to” TECHnique columns. Today we again visit with Duane Johnson who gives us a primer on finger spools, which can be very useful tools when used properly. But they can be a total nightmare if you aren’t paying attention. (more…)

Editor’s note: The story below, while tragic, should not be construed to mean that diving the wreck mentioned in this post is any more dangerous than any other wreck. Properly trained, diving any wreck is safer than riding a bicycle. But, even with good training and conditions, accidents can happen. Some, as events in the case below suggest, are not caused by diving itself but by health factors.

Sad news today out of Koh Tao where technical-diving enthusiast Ted Conner died after ascending from a dive on the Unicorn wreck whch had claimed the life of a German diver in 2006.

Conner, Asia-Pacific regional manager for Germany’s URACA Pumpenfabrik GmbH & Co., reportedly died whle on the ascent line after making on open-circuit “build up” dive on the 60 -meter steel freighter that sunk during a powerful typhoon in a suspected insruance scam in 1989.

In a post today to the Scubaboard message forum, Jamie MacLeod of the MV Trident (which was not the company Conner was diving with) said the reason for Conner’s death, for the moment at least, is a mystery. (more…)

Encouraging news today for those living or traveling in Southeast Asia. Both Thai Airways International and Bangkok Airways have launched an assault on low-cost carriers such as Air Asia, offering discounts of 20 percent on individual journeys and booklets of tickets good for a year in and around Thailand. (more…)

How narced do you want to get?

If you’re upcoming dive plans include helium you’re paying for out of your own pocket, then the question of how much nitrogen narcosis you can tolerate is a relevant one. If money were no object then, studies show, heliox would be the obvious choice. But when you’re footing the bill, determining your Equivalent Narcosis Depth, or END, is a calculation you need to make. (more…)

Aquanauts today wrapped up another two DSAT Tec Deep courses, this time for Dharshana Jayawardena of Sri Lanka and Gary Smith, one of Aquanauts’ PADI Instructor and technical-diving interns. Both found the course extremely challenging, but hugely satisfying.

We joined the two students and TecRec Instructor Dan Beldon on Saturday for the final day of the first part of the 10-day course, a day in which they’d have to put to use all of the skills and knowledge they learned in the first six dives before moving on to real decompression dives the next day. The photos below should give you a sense of what an average day on the course is like. (more…)