Deep Sea Diving: The Importance Of Trimix

One of the most important aspects of scuba diving that a diver has to study is how to set up the breathing tank. Divers do not use oxygen in their tanks, they use (or, increasingly, used to use) compressed air. However air is roughly 70 percent nitrogen and 30 percent oxygen and the nitrogen can result in nitrogen sickness under pressure, so more and more divers are turning to Nitrox.

Nitrox is not air, but it is still made up solely of nitrogen and oxygen, although not in the same ratio, which you can change. The difficulty with increasing the amount of oxygen in the mix is that there is a greater chance of suffering from oxygen poisoning the deeper you go. Therefore, the trade off is that the more oxygen you use, the shallower you are allowed to swim.

It sounds like a rough choice, you can suffer from either nitrogen or oxygen toxicity, take your pick. However, there is a third option and it is called Trimix. Trimix is the 'air' that deep sea divers use. It is a mixture of three gases, as its name suggests: nitrogen oxygen and helium.

Helium is used as a kind of filler. It does not do us any injury and it does not do us any good either, but it permits divers to take a lung full and it reduces the volume of nitrogen and the volume of oxygen thereby reducing the chance of sickness.

The only difficulty with helium is that it conducts heat five times more than oxygen and nitrogen. This leads some deep sea divers to suffer from a condition called hyperbaric arthralgia. Hyperbaric arthralgia is a kind of joint pain that a number of divers experience as they go deeper than 100 feet in salt water.

Deep sea divers have to learn about the various Trimixes as part of their curriculum, because one day they will be accountable for choosing the mix they use. The choice is not merely compressed air, nitrox and Trimix, because there are different ratios of the gases in Trimix to take into the equation too.

For example, a 10/70 Trimix will be made up of 10 percent oxygen, 70 percent helium (and 20 percent nitrogen). This kind of mix is appropriate for diving to a depth of 330 feet in salt water or 100 msw (metres in salt water). Fresh water is a bit lighter than salt water. This does not count at lower depths, but it does after a hundred feet.

Breathing and gases are just one aspect of diving that you will have to learn if you want to go diving. Another aspect of diving that is associated with diving is the speed of ascent. Divers used to be taught not to come up faster than their smallest bubbles, which is around 60 feet per minute. However, lots of instructors now think that this is still too fast and recommend 30 feet per minute with a three minute wait at 15 feet.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on a lot of subjects, but is currently occupied with Body Glove cases products. If you would like to know more about Body Glove Wetsuit Sales, please go over to our website for some impressive bargains.