A second-stage regulator free-flow happens when the downstream valve in the second stage sticks wide open. Most of us have experienced that at one time or other at the surface. You place your regulator in the water at the surface with its mouthpiece face-up, and the next thing you know, your reg is wildly free-flowing. Usually, all you have to do is put your thumb or hand over the mouthpiece or turn the reg face-down, submerged in the water. At the surface, a free-flowing regulator is annoying, but at depth, a regulator locked in free-flow can be dangerous.

 Cold water is the No. 1 culprit behind a free-flowing regulator, but there are less-common reasons, too. For example, there have been instances of a diver using their octopus reg to inflate an SMB, only to have it free-flow. A second stage that is clogged with sand, jamming the valve open.
Suddenly, you’re immersed in more bubbles than those produced by a Jacuzzi. So what should you do if your regulator free flows at depth? You can continue to breathe from a free-flowing second stage as you surface, and during your open-water training, you practiced this skill. Follow our tips for dealing with it calmly and safely.
1) Remember your training. Invoke the mantra Stop, Think, Breathe, Act.
2) Remove the second stage from your mouth. Tilt the mouthpiece so that it’s partially in your mouth — grip it on the right side of your mouth as normal, but left the left side rest lightly on your lips, just outside of your mouth. (This allows excess air to escape through the sides of your mouth.)
3) Press the purge button and use your tongue as a splash guard against the roof of your mouth to prevent choking on water. Tilt your head to the right.
4) Keep your mouth slightly open and breathe carefully and calmly from the free-flowing air bubbling next to your mouth.
5) Ascend at a safe rate. A free-flow will deplete your air supply in a matter of minutes, so it's important that you surface as soon as possible.
6) Once you surface, close the cylinder valve to stop the free-flow.
7) Practice this skill in the pool. It’s not a great feeling to have your reg free-flow, but in the unlikely case it happens to you, it’s best to have practiced this skill. A pool is a safe environment for you to get comfortable with the skill.
Of course, there are other options:
1) If you carry a pony tank, switch to your bail-out gas, and then safely ascend.
2) Switch to your buddy’s alternate air source, and then surface together.
You know the old saying — an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure? That’s certainly the case with a free-flowing reg:
1) Make sure your reg is serviced regularly. Don't dive again with a reg that has experienced a problem until it’s been checked and repaired by a qualified technician.
2) When diving in cold water, get a cold-water regulator that’s designed to prevent free-flows.
3) Don't let your reg or alternate air source drag on the bottom or beach as it might get clogged with sand or mud.

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Underwater Navigator Specialty Course

We will also teach you 

Have you ever wonder how your instructor or Dive Master always find there way back to the boat or finds points of interest underwater. The Underwater Navigator course teachers you the skill and techniques to give you confidence to find your way around.

Academic

The Navigation course will teach you how to use the compass underwater using the bezel and the lubber line. To start with we make things easy by learning you with the cardinal points of north, south, east and west. For example if the north is in the 2 index marks on the bezel and you turn round till the south is in the 2 index markers you are on a receptacle heading.

• Methods to estimate distance underwater.
• Compass navigation while making at least five turns.
• Marking or relocating a submerged object or position from the surface.
• Underwater map making.

Equipment

Besides your basic scuba equipment, you’ll need a compass and underwater slate. Your PADI Instructor will show you how to use a reel and line for estimating distance underwater.
Diver Prerequisites

• Certified as PADI (junior) Open WaterDiver

Included in the price

• 4 Dives 3 Training dives and 1 fun dive
• This includes all your Padi materials required
• Transfer to and from hotel
• Light breakfast, , coffee or tea in the morning
• Refreshments
• Lunch
• Equipment

The cost of the Underwater Navigator course is only 11,000baht.
Maximum 2 to one Padi Instructor.
10% Discount for early booking (10 days before start of the course)

ReActivate Program

ReActivate Program program is designed to help you ease back in to the water if it’s been awhile since your last dive. Your PADI instructor will reacquaint you so you feel comfortable and relax diving again. You will update your dive knowledge, planning dives using the recreational dive planner , Problem management and skills. The pool or confined open water is where you will practice and fine tune your underwater skills with the guidance of a PADI professional.

A supervised open water dive is an optional addition to the program for certified divers. This dive offers an opportunity to obtain an environmental orientation to a local dive site from a PADI Member while gaining confidence and refreshing dive skills.
So what’s involved

• Practice open water skills
• Knowledge Reviews and a quick review
• Dive Planning using RDP and a Computer

We will also update your log book to show you are up to date on your dive skills.
Diver Prerequisites Minimum age is 10 years old, certified as PADI (Junior) Scuba Diver or above
Pool only 1,800baht
Trip to Koh Tao and two dives 6,000baht
Tao and two dives 6,000baht
ReActivate Program Include 
Hotel Transfer
Morning coffee/tea
Light Breakfast 
Lunch 
Refreshments 
Dive Equipment 
Divemaster  / Instructor
10% Discount for early booking only on the tour to Koh Tao (10 days before tour starts)

Sail Rock Scuba Diving Tour

Sail Rock is also considered a great dive site here in the Gulf of Thailand. It lies half way between Koh Phangan and Koh Tao. This is the place to see huge schools of fish like trevallies, bat fish, fusiliers, giant barracuda, bull sharks and the whale shark. There’s a swim though called the chimney which starts at 18mtr goes up to 5mtrs and a window at 12mtrs.

To the east side of Sail Rock there’s a pinnacle where you can see big shawls of Silver Trevallies, the pinnacle starts at 12mtrs and goes down to 34mtrs. The trip to Sail Rock takes about 50 minutes to get there and we return about 1.30pm.

We travel to Sail Rock everyday weather permitting

Visibility: 10 – 30 Meters

Currents: Mild to Strong

Experience: Intermediate to Advanced

Depth: 5 – 35 Meters

Scuba Diving Tours Include

• Hotel Transfer
• Morning coffee/tea light snack
• Lunch
• Drinks (water, soft drinks)
• Full Equipment
• PADI Divemaster/Instructor
• Total Cost 4500b
• 10% Discount for early booking (10 Days before start of Tour)

You have been looking forward to this coral reef dive. You take a giant step off the dive boat and find yourself in warm crystal clear tropical waters. Soon you start your descent. Around you there are beautiful tropical fish trying to figure out who is dropping in to see them. You are headed down to a splash of color that extends as far as you can see. You have seen fish like these before when you visited an aquarium, this time it is different. They are around you, no glass, it is their home. You see a turtle graciously moving below you, it seems not to have a care in the world. Welcome to the world of reef diving.

What is a Reef?

The majority of scuba divers prefer the warm tropical waters to do their diving and coral reefs are the primary focus of their diving. While there are cold water reefs, the warm water ones are the ones that gets our attention. Many Open Water Divers with their 60 feet/ 18 meter limitation look longingly at the deeper profiles of the advance open water and the deep diver. In reality, some of the best diving are in the waters that are in the realm of the Open Water Diver. Most species of coral rely on algae growth for its own growth and that algae requires sunlight. While a few coral species will grow as deep as 150 feet /45 meters and a few black corals as deep as 450 feet/ 135 meters, the majority are in less than 100 feet /30 meters. The largest concentrations are often in less than 60 feet/ 18 meters.
What we see as a reef, is a combination of living organisms and the skeleton remains of earlier ones. A living skin if you will. The reef foundation builders are the stony coral polyp. These creatures are very small averaging 1 mm /.04 inches to 3 mm /.11 inches. They are the simplest of creatures, a few layers of tissue, a mouth and tentacles. They, with the help of their algae which also gives them their color, excretes a calcium carbonate shell. They will live in this shell and retreat into it when stressed or threaten. To feed they extend themselves and open to the passing currents, using the tentacles to move food towards their mouths. A polyp in good conditions might create a second shell inside the first. Corals can reproduce asexually and sexually. When they reach a certain size they will create a bud, that becomes a separate coral which attaches and creates their own shell. Yearly, a coral colony will spawn. About 75% of the species will broadcast spawn, releasing male and/or female gametes into the water. These gametes are positively buoyant so they will float to the surface and hopefully combine. As they grow they will sink and hopefully attach to a suitable location. This event happens simultaneously over many colonies.
When the polyp dies the shell remains, and another polyp or coral larvae (planulae) may attach themselves and grow. Thousands of these polyps will form colonies. In time, larger species of coral will grow. The living portion of the reef is only a thin layer. NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program (CRCP) has an interesting web page that gives a scientific explanation of coral reef development.

A few interesting facts about coral reefs can give us a better understanding of them. Even a small isolated reef will support a complex ecosystem. Coral reefs are the home of over 25% of the marine life in the world and over 35% will spend at least a portion of their life on the reefs. However, reefs cover only one quarter of one percent of the ocean floor. The majority of these reefs are found in three areas, the Coral Triangle, the Great Barrier Reef, and Mesoamerican reef systems.

Major Reef Systems

Most of the land mass around continents and islands in the tropical zones will have some form of coral formations. There are three forms of reefs: the barrier reef, the fringe reef, and the atoll. The barrier reefs are the ones we hear the most about, especially the two largest, the Great Barrier Reef of Australia and the Mesoamerican reef system. Both of these reef systems include a number of smaller barrier and fringe reefs. The Mesoamerican Reef includes the Belize barrier reef. A barrier reef is off shore from the land it is associated with. The face of the reef is on a continental edge which drops down thousands of feet. Behind the reef extending to shore is a shallower area called the lagoon. The reef helps protects the shore line which may be many miles/ kilometers away.
The main characteristic of a fringe reef is that it attaches or nearly attaches to land. The fringe does not have the continental edge that a barrier reef does and if it has a lagoon it is not very large. Any reef that you will dive from shore or near land will likely be a fringe reef. They are the most common of the reefs.
The Atoll is the least common form of a reef. According to Charles Darwin, the three forms of reefs are simply the different stage of development. In an atoll, the reef has formed an oval or circular formation around an island. Changes in seawater depth has caused the island to sink, leaving a ring of coral that is still growing. The inside of the ring is a shallow lagoon often with one opening to the open sea.
We have mentioned the two largest barrier reefs, the Coral Triangle area is the third large concentration of coral. The Coral Triangle represents an area with the greatest bio-diversity in the world. Quoting the World Wide Fund For Nature,
“The Coral Triangle, the global centre of marine biodiversity, is a 6 million km2 area spanning Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Timor Leste and the Solomon Islands. Within this nursery of the seas live 76% of the world’s coral species, 6 of the world’s 7 marine turtle species, and at least 2,228 reef fish species.”
These three area contain the majority of the world’s corals.

Artificial Reefs

There is one more form of reef that does not fit the scientific view and that is the artificial reef. Since man has first started going to sea, boats have been sunk. When sitting on the bottom, they attract different marine life who rapidly move in. Seaweed, algae and other marine life floating in the current may also find these ship wrecks. Coral larvae may also take roots here and start the growth of a colony. It may take decades before the coral colonies are large enough to support juvenile fish with places to hid, however, the ship can provide that service. In time the ship wreck will be covered with coral and present the diver with an excellent blend of mankind and nature.
Many advocates of artificial reefs will point out there is nothing artificial about them. Man may have placed the substrate in the location, but it was nature that built the reef.

Reefs Need Help

It is a very sad point that mankind has done much to destroy the reef and marine life. Roughly one-quarter of coral reefs worldwide are already considered damaged beyond repair, with another two-thirds under serious threat. As we lose reefs, we also lose the breeding grounds for adults and sanctuaries for juvenile fish. As a diver, we need to make sure that our actions are not adding to the problem. Once a diver see a healthy reef and compares it to a damaged one, they can see the impact. Learn what you can about marine and coral conservation and do your part, however humble, to help turn this problem around.
Continue reading more from the DeeperBlue.com Beginners Guide to Scuba Diving.

Specialties and Advance Open Water Diving Certification

After you have your Open Water Diver certification complete, you will often have divers tell you what training you should take next. The amount of advice you get may be overwhelming. The first suggestion will be to take the Advance Open Water Diver (PADI) training or Advance Adventure Diver Training (SSI). This advice is well meaning and for many divers a good plan for additional training. As a OWD, you are certified to dive to the depth 60 feet/ 18 meters. As long as you are comfortable staying within that depth limitation, there is no requirement for additional training. While there are dozens of specialty programs, hundreds if you include PADI’s distinctive specialty courses, only a few are mandatory before recreational divers can dive in that area. Here are the mandatory programs and why they are:

• Advance Open Water Diver (AOWD): The primary outcome of this training program is that it changes the maximum depth that a diver can dive. Advance Open Water Divers are able to dive to 100 feet 30 meters. Advance Adventure Diver Training (SSI) is equivalent is PADI’s AOWD. SSI has additional requirements for their AOWD.
• Deep Diver Specialty: The AOWD certification allows diving to 100 feet 30 meters. Deep diver training adds another 30 feet/ 10 meters allowing the diver to dive to recreational limit of 130 feet/ 40 meters.
• Enrich Air Nitrox Diver (EAN) Specialty: Dives must be certified to dive with enriched air. There are additional steps that must be done when diving with EAN and additional risk to address.
• Overhead Environments Specialties: Diving in an overhead environment, one that does not have a direct ascent to the surface, requires a special certification. Wreck penetration is the most common overhead environment, however, it also included cavern and ice diving. These certifications train for the additional risk these environments address
• TEC: The Technical programs are beyond the scope of the recreational diver. They can include deeper depths than the recreational diver can accomplish, use of different breathing gasses and decompression diving. Additional training is required to become a technical diver.

Many divers will take the first three of these programs and not feel the need to take any other training. If you are interested in any of the other specialties, they are nice to have but not required for you to try it yourself. Provided you stay in the depth limits of your certification.

Specialty programs

The specialty programs are geared towards teaching a diver the skills they need to enjoy a certain type of dive. Other than the ones listed above as mandatory, you are not required to take a specialty to do a dive in those conditions. They are designed to help you learn what may interest you. Each of the dive accreditation agencies have about a dozen courses that you can explore. Many divers find the marine life orientated specialties very helpful in understanding the marine life around them. Night diving is another one that many divers will choose, because it allows them to understand more the night experience.
PADI also has a program called Distinctive Specialties. These programs are designed by dive instructors and are less widely available. Some of these are designed to be done at only one location.

What is an Advance Open Water Diver

Many experience divers do not like the name of PADI’s Advance Open Water Diver program. They feel that the word advance gives a false sense of competency to the new diver. Student divers are able to combined the Open Water Diver program and the Advance Open Water Diver program into one course and be verified as an AOWD with only 9 open water dives. PADI points out that they mean it as advance training, not that the diver has advance skills. Scuba Schools International takes a different view. Their Advance Adventure Diver Training, is the same as PADI’s AWOD. SSI does have an Advance Open Water Diver, however, it requires at least 24 dives and completion of the Advance Adventure Diver Training.
PADI’s AOWD diver program is based on completing the first dive of five different specialties. Two of the specialties are mandatory, these are deep diver and navigation. The other three are selected by the diver so the course best fits their needs. The training method used in the advance course is the same as in the open water class as they use the knowledge portion, the confined water session and pen water sessions.

Adventure dives

The term adventure dive is a fairly recent concept to the dive training. The first dive of a specialty program has always been an element of the Advance courses. However, they were not available separately. Now they are available to certified divers as an adventure dive. The diver experiences the same lesson as the first dive including knowledge and confined water if included, as a student taking a specialty. Divers who take three adventure dives can receive an adventure diver certification. This works similar to the way Scuba diver is about half of the Open Water Diver. While each specialty has its own knowledge manual, the adventure diver knowledge material is grouped together so only one knowledge package is needed.

Rescue Diver

The Rescue Diver certification for PADI and SSI’s Diver Stress & Rescue certification, are a different type of specialty course and the most demanding of all the recreational diving programs. While the other programs have been designed to help you improve your diving, this one expands to helping other divers. A first aid certification is a prerequisite to start this training. It takes your previously learned in-water skills and your first aid training and applies it in simulated emergency situations. It requires rescuing “victims” and starting the first responder treatments. You will learn different methods to handle a variety of situations. The program also includes skills such as accident management. This course is the prerequisite to enter the professional training programs to become a dive master/ dive leader and on to instructor.

Master Diver or Dive Master

In recreational scuba diving the terms Master diver and dive master mean two entirely different things. The dive master is the first professional rating in recreational scuba diver and is the path from rescue diver to instructor ratings. Master Diver is the highest rating outside the professional progression. Only 5% of scuba divers will ever earn the certification. The requirements for Master diver is the completion of rescue diver certification and holding certification in five additional specialties.
As an open water diver, it entirely up to you which path you will follow and even where on the path you wish to stop. Taking the Advance Open Water course is a very good option that most diver do and benefit from the extra training and additional depths. What do you find interesting under the sea?

The “Mystery” of Nitrox (EAN) Diving

It is a widely held believe that EAN-XX will allow you to dive deeper. Depending on how you look at it, that is only partially true. The belief revolves around the concept of equivalent air depth (EAD). Since, the air in the EAN-XX cylinder has a higher percentage of oxygen, that means it has a lower percentage of nitrogen. So less nitrogen is being absorbed into your tissues. If we have a standard fill at 21% oxygen (air) and dived to 80 feet /24 meters, we would have a NDL of 29 minutes (figures rounded).Using an EAN-32, we can dive to 100 feet/30 meters with the same bottom time of 29 minutes. At 32% oxygen, nitrogen is being absorbed at the same rate as 21% oxygen at 24 meters. So the EAD of EAN-32 at 100 feet/30 meters is 80 feet /24 meters. So for the same bottom time we can dive deeper.

While Nitrox diving has been used in recreational diving for over 25 years, there is still a degree of mystery about it. Even some misunderstanding what it can do for your diving. Because of this, many divers never undertake the short additional training that is required to qualify to dive Nitrox. Once you are training, diving with Nitrox only involves verifying the percentage before each dive. Nitrox is short for Nitrogen-oxygen, and is any blend of air where those two elements are the only ones other than trace elements. The air we breath is 21% oxygen and 79% nitrogen with small amount of trace elements. In recreational scuba diving, we can use what is called Enriched Air Nitrox (EAN). Blending an EAN mixture, we add 100% oxygen to normal air to increase the percentage of oxygen in the blend. We will generally see it as EAN-XX, where the XX is the percent oxygen in the blend. EAN-32 and EAN-36 are the most common and are used in the EAN dive tables. These two blends are commercially available, however, most dive centers that dive Nitrox can blend the mixture themselves so can have other percentages based on their needs. Divers qualified as Enriched Air Nitrox divers can dive using up to a 40% blend.

There is another factor that needs to consider, and that is Dalton’s Law of Partial Pressure. While some explanation of it is in your open water training and an expansion is in your advance open water and Nitrox / EAN training, we do not need a full understanding for our purpose here. When we are on land breathing, the partial pressure of oxygen, is .21ata. That value is made up of the percentage of oxygen times atmosphere pressure. When we dive to 33 feet/10 meters, we reach 2ATM and the partial pressure of oxygen (po2) becomes .42. Around this point the characteristics of how oxygen affect our bodies starts to change and oxygen becomes a toxin. However, the time it would take where the concentration would cause concerns are much longer than any diver would be still in the water. When the po2 increase to 1.6ata, the brain can start to become affected. This is called central nervous system (CNS) oxygen toxicity. At this point individuals will start showing signs of oxygen toxicity. These can rapidly escalate to convulsions and even death. For safety reasons, 1.4ata is considered the maximum safe partial pressure. When we are diving 21%, 1.4ata is reached at around 185 feet/56 meters. This is much deeper than we can dive due to the effects of nitrogen. However, if we switch to EAN-36 we will hit the 1.4ata safety limit at only 94 feet/ 28 meters. This is referred to as Maximum Operating Depth (MOD)and is well within range of a deep diver and before hitting the NDL based on nitrogen absorption. If we use EAN-38, the MOD is 87 feet/ 26 meters. So clearly, you cn not say EAN-XX can allow you to dive deeper. A final point, the oxygen off loading is the same as off loading nitrogen. The surface interval will reduce the amount in your system. Diving before the total is off loaded will not affect the ata point, however it will influence the time it takes to build up other toxic properties. While 100% oxygen is used in different medial situations, 100% oxygen will reach a po2 of 1.6ata in about 19 feet/6 meters of water.

Longer or safer?

The other benefits you will hear supporting EAN diving is that you can dive longer and safer. It is more accurate to say, EAN will allow you to dive longer or safer. Let’s use the same example as we used above, using air and diving to 80 feet /24 meters. We would have a NDL of 29 minutes for that dive. A diver using EAN-32 can stay at that depth giving him a NDL of 45 minutes almost 50% longer dive, before reaching the NDL. The air diver at 29 minutes and the EAN diver at 45 minutes have the same theoretical risk threshold. The EAN diver has had a longer dive but has not increased his safety. If both divers dive to the same depth and to the 29 minute mark, the air diver is at the NDL while the EAN diver has a large buffer, being still a time distance from his NDL. If they surface together, the EAN diver has a much safer profile.
Many dive professionals will use EAN to reduce their intake of nitrogen, even when diving with students on air. This gives them a greater safety margin.

When should I dive Nitrox / EAN and How to I become trained?

How long you can dive is really based on three factors, how fast you use your breathing gas (air or EAN), the NDL due to nitrogen and the oxygen loading. Few divers will benefit from the reduced nitrogen of an EAN blend if they are diving in less than 60 feet/ 18 meters. The deciding factor is the gas in the dive cylinder and not the other two factors.
Dives deeper than 60 feet/ 18 meters will benefit from an EAN mix, as long as it remains within the limits of the MOD. Diver preparing to dive EAN-XX must verify the oxygen content themselves, calculate the MOD, record the MOD on the tank and certified they did those steps. Those are the only task different for dive preparation. If using dive tables they will use EAN tables, it a dive computer they will enter the percentage.
Enriched Air Nitrox is a very simple certification class and can be combined with most other dive training. It consists of the knowledge portion and two open water dives. The two dives can be integrated into other training. Open water dive training will only integrate one dive, the second dive is additional. If you are not currently Nitrox / EAN qualified, you should explore a certification and join those with extended or safer diving.
Continue reading more from the DeeperBlue.com Beginners Guide to Scuba Diving.