Advanced Trimix Course
I didn't start out choosing Evolution as the dive center to use; instead, I chose one of Evolution's owners, Matt Reed, to be my instructor for my trimix course and then for convenience I used Evolution's services for my recreational diving too. Prior to the course I hadn't met Matt in person, but I knew him by reputation. Other technical divers had spoken highly of his experience as a diver and his skill as an instructor, either from their own experience or by word of mouth. I gave serious consideration to a few other very good instructorsincluding one who had taught me in the pastbut none were offering the trimix course in a place I wanted to go (choices included Puerto Galera, Subic Bay, Pattaya, Phuket, Thailand's caves, etc.). Matt's solid reputation as an instructor plus his location on Malapascua prompted me to send him an e-mail, and after a fairly lengthy correspondence I made up my mind. I figured that if I were disappointed with him or with the course, I could just call a halt to it and go diving for fun on shallow reefs. I wasn't disappointed.
TDI's Advanced Trimix Diver course is comparable to IANTD's Trimix Diver course or ANDI's Trimix Diver course or CMAS' Advanced Trimix Diver course, and is roughly comparable to some other agencies' courses insofar as it trained me to dive as deep as 100 meters with hypoxic gas mixes (I think DSAT/PADI's max is 90 meters. NAUI, PSAI, GUE, and some other agencies do their own things a little bit differently). Hypoxic mixes are mixes with too little oxygen to keep a diver alive at the surface or in shallow water, so one needs to breathe a normoxic travel mixwith 18% to 21% oxygenfrom the surface until the switch to the hypoxic back gas. Willing to do all the training for full trimix, I didn't need a normoxic or intermediate or 65m trimix course as a prerequisite (which tend to limit the maximum depth to around 65 meters or so, depending upon the training agency). For a diver prepared to do all the training needed for diving hypoxic mixes, a deep air tech diving course such as Extended Range or "Tec Deep" or equivalent tech diving certification to 55 or 56 meterswith switches to 2 different deco gaseswill suffice as the prerequisite to TDI's advanced trimix course. Other agencies might require a normoxic trimix course as a prerequisite.
All dives were done with the standard tech diving equipment configurationnorth Florida cave rig, or whatever you want to call itusing AL80 (11 liter) doubles, an AL80 travel bottle, an AL40 (5.5 liter) deco bottle with EAN50, and another AL40 deco bottle with pure O2. Having already learned most of the other requisite skills and theory in my previous technical diving training, I found that managing all those bottles was the hardest part of this course: clipping and unclipping them to/from the D-rings, moving them around, stowing one on a leash dangling back behind me, etc. I still need to practice those motor skills to get them 100% committed to muscle memory.
Day 1 of the course was spent in the classroom going over theory, physics, physiology, decompression models, etc. We did additional academic sessions of varying lengths every day. I was already rather well-read about most of these subjects so some sessions went relatively quickly, whereas some other subjects were ones that we had to spend more time on (for example, the theoretical and empirical debates about isobaric counter-diffusion). I found all of Matt's classroom presentations to be very thorough and informative. He's a smart guy who understands some complex, arcane stuff and is able to explain it in a way that helps other divers understand how that stuff should affect their dive plans.
Day 2 was a couple of lengthy 5-meter dives to work on bottle movement and bottle repositioning, gas switches, frog kicks, helicopter kicks, back kicks, out-of-gas scenarios, valve management (shut-down drills on the twinset/manifold, "feathering" a free-flowing deco reg (i.e , opening the valve when inhaling and then closing it while exhaling to conserve gas)), wing failure, deploying an SMB and ascending with it through stops and gas switches, etc.
I found the bottle movement and bottle repositioning exercises to be challenging, because my left hand had trouble finding the correct places to clip the boltsnaps onto the left hip D-ring (the leash should be under the SPG, this bottle here, that bottle there, and so forth). Matt had to work with me on that all throughout the course, and although it's passable now it still isn't perfect.
The wing failure exercise was useful because I have a single-bladder wing which I bought for the sole reason that I could get it really cheap from a Halcyon dealer I knew. (Was that the first time you've ever seen the words Halcyon and cheap used in the same sentence?) I had always been just a little worried about a wing failure at depth, and wasn't very comforted by the DIR you can swim up a balanced rig argument against a redundant bladder/hose system in my wing. And in fact, I tried itand swimming up the whole thing with all 5 bottles full of gas was hard work, and I'm not sure I could maintain that degree of effort through a long series of deco stops. However, an SMB or a lift bag can be used as redundant buoyancy: simply fill it with a breath or two to achieve neutral buoyancy, then hold it (mostly still rolled-up) so all the gas in it is gathered just under the dump valve, and then slowly ascend and pull the string on the dump valve to vent a bit of gas as necessary. Really easy: problem solved; single-bladder wing's OK. Even after all these years of diving, using my SMB like that had never occurred to me, and this was the first time that anyone had bothered to show me how it's done. Of course, it's very obvious in hindsight, but it wouldn't necessarily be the first idea that would come to my mind in an emergency . . . if it hadn't been taught.
On Day 3 we did a simulated hypoxic trimix dive to about 30 meters, and did all the bottle movement and repositioning, gas switching, SMB deployment, deco stops, etc. that we were practicing to do on a real hypoxic trimix dive with a travel gasplus simulated problems like regulator failures, out-of-gas, etc. Then we did some rescue exercises in shallow water. Those were very difficult. Doing rescues underwater is much, much harder when both divers have 5 bottles to carry than when they have just 1, and when there are deco stops and gas switches to do on the way up. I think it was Day 3 when we also did the 20- or 25-meter swim with neither gas nor mask, ascents guiding a blind (maskless) teammate through deco stops and gas switches, and maybe a few other problem scenarios I've forgotten about.
On Day 4 we did a couple of dives on air to the wreck of the Mogami Maru at a depth of 50 meters (we didn't really need the travel gas, but we simulated the dive as if our back gas was hypoxic mix rather than air). EAN50 and O2 were the deco gases and we had EAN50 in the (simulated) travel bottles. The need for a travel mix was simulated, but with 30 minutes bottom time at 50 meters with a couple of required gas switches for accelerated deco, those were otherwise very real technical dives (bottom times of 30 minutes gave us total run times of between 70 and 80 minutes). The 2 dives on the Mogami Maru were really enjoyable, as I mentioned above.
On Day 5 we did a dive to 100 meters and then on Day 6 we did a dive to a little deeper than 70 meters, both on the wall at Monad Shoal and both on hypoxic mixes for back gas with a hyperoxic mix for travel gas (25/35 or 30/40) and EAN50 and O2 for deco gases. Diving to 75 or 100 meters is very easy; it's coming back up safely that's the difficult part, but I was ready for it by then. At this site there wasn't much to see down there at 100msw that you can't see a lot shallower for a lot cheaper. As I mentioned above, I saw a single thresher shark on each of those deep trimix dives, and I saw a devil ray on one of them, but you don't need trimix to see that stuff. Those were just training dives to help prepare me for diving those sorts of depths and those sorts of gas mixes on deep wrecks like the ones I plan to dive in the future.
Summation
Malapascua is a mellow little island about 5 hours from the Cebu airport and about a half-hour by boat from the northern tip of Cebu island. It offers some really nice diving that's well worth the trip. I think there aren't very many places where a diver can get such a great variety of underwater attractions in a single location: daily sightings of sharks, good wrecks, and abundant macro crittersall within an easy boat ride. As I suggested above, if a diver with diverse interests had to choose only one place in the Philippines to go, that variety of different types of good dives might make Malapascua the best choice. I recommend the island as a great destination for divers of all experience levels.
I was pleased with the quality of service I received from Evolution for my recreational dives and was pleased with the quality of my continuing tech diving training from Matt Reed. I recommend Evolution as a professionally-run dive center catering to discriminating divers of all experience levels.
Cheers and safe diving!
I didn't start out choosing Evolution as the dive center to use; instead, I chose one of Evolution's owners, Matt Reed, to be my instructor for my trimix course and then for convenience I used Evolution's services for my recreational diving too. Prior to the course I hadn't met Matt in person, but I knew him by reputation. Other technical divers had spoken highly of his experience as a diver and his skill as an instructor, either from their own experience or by word of mouth. I gave serious consideration to a few other very good instructorsincluding one who had taught me in the pastbut none were offering the trimix course in a place I wanted to go (choices included Puerto Galera, Subic Bay, Pattaya, Phuket, Thailand's caves, etc.). Matt's solid reputation as an instructor plus his location on Malapascua prompted me to send him an e-mail, and after a fairly lengthy correspondence I made up my mind. I figured that if I were disappointed with him or with the course, I could just call a halt to it and go diving for fun on shallow reefs. I wasn't disappointed.
TDI's Advanced Trimix Diver course is comparable to IANTD's Trimix Diver course or ANDI's Trimix Diver course or CMAS' Advanced Trimix Diver course, and is roughly comparable to some other agencies' courses insofar as it trained me to dive as deep as 100 meters with hypoxic gas mixes (I think DSAT/PADI's max is 90 meters. NAUI, PSAI, GUE, and some other agencies do their own things a little bit differently). Hypoxic mixes are mixes with too little oxygen to keep a diver alive at the surface or in shallow water, so one needs to breathe a normoxic travel mixwith 18% to 21% oxygenfrom the surface until the switch to the hypoxic back gas. Willing to do all the training for full trimix, I didn't need a normoxic or intermediate or 65m trimix course as a prerequisite (which tend to limit the maximum depth to around 65 meters or so, depending upon the training agency). For a diver prepared to do all the training needed for diving hypoxic mixes, a deep air tech diving course such as Extended Range or "Tec Deep" or equivalent tech diving certification to 55 or 56 meterswith switches to 2 different deco gaseswill suffice as the prerequisite to TDI's advanced trimix course. Other agencies might require a normoxic trimix course as a prerequisite.
All dives were done with the standard tech diving equipment configurationnorth Florida cave rig, or whatever you want to call itusing AL80 (11 liter) doubles, an AL80 travel bottle, an AL40 (5.5 liter) deco bottle with EAN50, and another AL40 deco bottle with pure O2. Having already learned most of the other requisite skills and theory in my previous technical diving training, I found that managing all those bottles was the hardest part of this course: clipping and unclipping them to/from the D-rings, moving them around, stowing one on a leash dangling back behind me, etc. I still need to practice those motor skills to get them 100% committed to muscle memory.
Day 1 of the course was spent in the classroom going over theory, physics, physiology, decompression models, etc. We did additional academic sessions of varying lengths every day. I was already rather well-read about most of these subjects so some sessions went relatively quickly, whereas some other subjects were ones that we had to spend more time on (for example, the theoretical and empirical debates about isobaric counter-diffusion). I found all of Matt's classroom presentations to be very thorough and informative. He's a smart guy who understands some complex, arcane stuff and is able to explain it in a way that helps other divers understand how that stuff should affect their dive plans.
Day 2 was a couple of lengthy 5-meter dives to work on bottle movement and bottle repositioning, gas switches, frog kicks, helicopter kicks, back kicks, out-of-gas scenarios, valve management (shut-down drills on the twinset/manifold, "feathering" a free-flowing deco reg (i.e , opening the valve when inhaling and then closing it while exhaling to conserve gas)), wing failure, deploying an SMB and ascending with it through stops and gas switches, etc.
I found the bottle movement and bottle repositioning exercises to be challenging, because my left hand had trouble finding the correct places to clip the boltsnaps onto the left hip D-ring (the leash should be under the SPG, this bottle here, that bottle there, and so forth). Matt had to work with me on that all throughout the course, and although it's passable now it still isn't perfect.
The wing failure exercise was useful because I have a single-bladder wing which I bought for the sole reason that I could get it really cheap from a Halcyon dealer I knew. (Was that the first time you've ever seen the words Halcyon and cheap used in the same sentence?) I had always been just a little worried about a wing failure at depth, and wasn't very comforted by the DIR you can swim up a balanced rig argument against a redundant bladder/hose system in my wing. And in fact, I tried itand swimming up the whole thing with all 5 bottles full of gas was hard work, and I'm not sure I could maintain that degree of effort through a long series of deco stops. However, an SMB or a lift bag can be used as redundant buoyancy: simply fill it with a breath or two to achieve neutral buoyancy, then hold it (mostly still rolled-up) so all the gas in it is gathered just under the dump valve, and then slowly ascend and pull the string on the dump valve to vent a bit of gas as necessary. Really easy: problem solved; single-bladder wing's OK. Even after all these years of diving, using my SMB like that had never occurred to me, and this was the first time that anyone had bothered to show me how it's done. Of course, it's very obvious in hindsight, but it wouldn't necessarily be the first idea that would come to my mind in an emergency . . . if it hadn't been taught.
On Day 3 we did a simulated hypoxic trimix dive to about 30 meters, and did all the bottle movement and repositioning, gas switching, SMB deployment, deco stops, etc. that we were practicing to do on a real hypoxic trimix dive with a travel gasplus simulated problems like regulator failures, out-of-gas, etc. Then we did some rescue exercises in shallow water. Those were very difficult. Doing rescues underwater is much, much harder when both divers have 5 bottles to carry than when they have just 1, and when there are deco stops and gas switches to do on the way up. I think it was Day 3 when we also did the 20- or 25-meter swim with neither gas nor mask, ascents guiding a blind (maskless) teammate through deco stops and gas switches, and maybe a few other problem scenarios I've forgotten about.
On Day 4 we did a couple of dives on air to the wreck of the Mogami Maru at a depth of 50 meters (we didn't really need the travel gas, but we simulated the dive as if our back gas was hypoxic mix rather than air). EAN50 and O2 were the deco gases and we had EAN50 in the (simulated) travel bottles. The need for a travel mix was simulated, but with 30 minutes bottom time at 50 meters with a couple of required gas switches for accelerated deco, those were otherwise very real technical dives (bottom times of 30 minutes gave us total run times of between 70 and 80 minutes). The 2 dives on the Mogami Maru were really enjoyable, as I mentioned above.
On Day 5 we did a dive to 100 meters and then on Day 6 we did a dive to a little deeper than 70 meters, both on the wall at Monad Shoal and both on hypoxic mixes for back gas with a hyperoxic mix for travel gas (25/35 or 30/40) and EAN50 and O2 for deco gases. Diving to 75 or 100 meters is very easy; it's coming back up safely that's the difficult part, but I was ready for it by then. At this site there wasn't much to see down there at 100msw that you can't see a lot shallower for a lot cheaper. As I mentioned above, I saw a single thresher shark on each of those deep trimix dives, and I saw a devil ray on one of them, but you don't need trimix to see that stuff. Those were just training dives to help prepare me for diving those sorts of depths and those sorts of gas mixes on deep wrecks like the ones I plan to dive in the future.
Summation
Malapascua is a mellow little island about 5 hours from the Cebu airport and about a half-hour by boat from the northern tip of Cebu island. It offers some really nice diving that's well worth the trip. I think there aren't very many places where a diver can get such a great variety of underwater attractions in a single location: daily sightings of sharks, good wrecks, and abundant macro crittersall within an easy boat ride. As I suggested above, if a diver with diverse interests had to choose only one place in the Philippines to go, that variety of different types of good dives might make Malapascua the best choice. I recommend the island as a great destination for divers of all experience levels.
I was pleased with the quality of service I received from Evolution for my recreational dives and was pleased with the quality of my continuing tech diving training from Matt Reed. I recommend Evolution as a professionally-run dive center catering to discriminating divers of all experience levels.
Cheers and safe diving!