G2
First a question; It sounds like you are doing your diving in the Cayman Islands. Is that true? If so I can offer some recommendations on instructors etc as many of the Trimix instructors there are personal friends of mine.
Well here is my two senses worth, first to help you consider the source of this advice
I took the Trimix divers level course with IANTD and I am a TDI Trimix instructor.
You have received some good advice here already but I will just reiterate and add a few things.
The most important part of your Trimix course is the diving skills you will learn. Gas management, the physiological effect of helium, equivalent nitrogen depths, etc. all of that will teach you how to perform a dive deeper than 100 feet using helium as an inert gas.
PUG is right when he says you can learn it by reading the material from many sources [I am sure that he didn't imply that it wasn't better to have a person teach you] he was trying to demonstrate the simplicity of it [PUG hopefully I got that right]
But presumably you are learning about Trimix to dive deeper, which will certainly require decompression, which then leaves you diving in an overhead environment. Now we had better be self sufficient and prepared to handle any emergency without surfacing.
Sounds so simple doesn't it. The skills you described have their origins in cave diving true. [By the way I am a full technical cave diver] caving skills are very different yet similar to Trimix skills. [Say multiply the Trimix skills by 100]
The skills in your Trimix course are two fold. One is to add stress to your diving and then perform tasks under stress. The second is to be able to be self sufficient at depth while maintaining perfect buoyancy control [if you have several things go wrong and you are at your 200 foot deco stop [or any stop] you do not want to be moving up and down through the water column while solving the problem.
As good as you are at your diving skills now you will be surprised how you will move 20 feet or more while say doing gas shut down drills with no mask on, heck or even with your mask on. With training and practice you will do the skills without moving even a foot.
In both IANTD and TDI you will experience and be expected to perform skills under stress at or beyond your comfort zone. This is important in skill development as you are bound to have something go wrong someday, and knowing you can solve problems while under a great deal of stress will save you life someday.
Much of you skills are also designed to streamline your swimming abilities. Remember you will be caring at least four tanks with you, and if you are in Cayman you will notice it while swimming across those sand flats for 15 minutes
One thought on which agency. This is where fireworks always fly around here.
IANTD, TDI, GUE, PADI Tec whatever, ANDI. I am sure there are more to choose from.
I have lots of experience with TDI and IANTD, yet limited experience with the others so my views are partially informed. I think that anybody who recommends an agency probably have the same story, it is hard to comment on other agencies unless you have actually taken a course from that agency, not just read about it on the net.
Be cautious of any agency that says theirs is the only one that can teach you properly.
All agencies will provide you the skills you need to perform the dives safely. So after that in my opinion it would come down to picking an instructor by reputation and type of diving they are doing. For instance if they are teaching Trimix diving. Are they performing deep dives using helium? Again if you are in the Caymans I have some friends there that I dive with, we are doing dives deeper than 400 feet on open circuit and 500 on closed. You want to learn from those who have depth of knowledge they can pass on to you. Not that you are planning on that kind of diving but I am trying to show a difference between someone who dives only in class situations and one who is diving in a real environment. [And there is a difference in the real environment, things go wrong there, and the way it is handled can then be passed onto you through first hand experience]
As for what agency to recommend, [given the same instructor teaches for all agencies]
IANTD and TDI are very similar with a couple of exceptions
IANTD makes you do a lot of swimming, TDI does not, this is to one see if you can swim and two add a level of stress and commitment to complete the program [this is the short reason]
TDI skills are all done in shallower water, where as IANTD requires you to perform all the skills at all depths.
Otherwise I think they are both the same or at least similar.
These agencies I have little experience with but I have dove with and/or interacted with the instructors
PADI I think they are to knew to the game, they have good materials, but it feels more like a PADI specialty not a tech course
ANDI I do not know a whole lot about this agency
GUE [being cautious here] puts out good divers, but also each of those divers comes out with a very derogatory attitude towards other divers not of their religion. And believe their way or die. I believe they have stopped evolving, stopped testing new techniques and theories. [Except of course for the grand master who then tells his disciples how they will dive.
Well I have been rambling on enough for now. If you have more specific questions dont hesitate to ask.
ps my daughter wanted to add some faces so here goes
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