Which shops offer technical diving in Hawaii?

[rgbmatt]

According to their website See in Sea is "rebreather friendly" I think that just means that they can fill 100% O2 though, not sure if that counts...

See in Sea does 100% O2 fills and custom nitrox mixes.

 

[IslandDiversHI]

B&B Scuba on Maui
Dive Tek on Big Island
Island Divers on Oahu
Scuba and Dreams on Oahu
Aarons on Oahu
NSE on Maui
Ed Robinsons on Maui
Maui Dreams on Maui
Hawaiian Rafting Adventures/Dive Maui
Ocean Concepts on Oahu
Konaquaitica on Big Island
See N Sea Scuba on Oahu

I was actually looking for dive operations that can support technical diving with doubles, He, and stages and operate trips for techinical diving. Just a partial pressure filling station probably won't make the article.
At this point I'm just generating a list on which I can do a little research.
Can anyone verifty that you can get a He fill at Ocean Concepts? which location? Also I hadn't heard of Konaqautica, are they currently up and running with He fills?

Thanks for the input.

 

[ScubaAndDreams]

Well I am pretty sure that Konaquatica is up and running with He...Jim Holt owns llike every rebreather out on the market....(to include the Meg...yay)

 

[Gilldiver]

A real Tech shop will have a O2 clean Haskel booster so that they can do any O2 or He mix up to 100% O2 at 3,000+ PSI.

A kind of Tech shop will do Mix by PP blending and top off with air.

A I want to be a tech shop will have a membrain NITROX system

I want you to think I am a Tech shop so you will spend money in it will do NITROX by PP Blending.

Just having NITROX does not make a Tech Shop.

 

[Al Mialkovsky]

Well not to be a pain but a membrane is only one way to do nitrox. If a shop is offering classes for tech diving and blending tri-mix I wouldn't discount it.

 

[grazie42]

most membrane systems only do <50% nitrox so I´d say that a membrane-system is not enough for a techshop...PP is a must...

 

[Gilldiver]

Well not to be a pain but a membrane is only one way to do nitrox. If a shop is offering classes for tech diving and blending tri-mix I wouldn't discount it.

Which is just about what I said. But a membrain is good to 40% O2 only. Now, if they banked 32% and had He to make most of the standard He mixes they would make it into the 1st tier of Tech Shop land. But if all they did was offer NITROX up to 40%, they are only a well equiped NDL non-Tech shop selling to the tourist trade.

It really all comes down to a gas booster like a Haskel. If you don't have one you just can not make mix higher then 40% in a cost effective manner. But a good O2 clean booster will run you $10,000 or so, so the shop has to be commited to this type of diving and mixing a lot of gas to pay for it.

 

[ScubaAndDreams]

Which is just about what I said. But a membrain is good to 40% O2 only. Now, if they banked 32% and had He to make most of the standard He mixes they would make it into the 1st tier of Tech Shop land. But if all they did was offer NITROX up to 40%, they are only a well equiped NDL non-Tech shop selling to the tourist trade.

It really all comes down to a gas booster like a Haskel. If you don't have one you just can not make mix higher then 40% in a cost effective manner. But a good O2 clean booster will run you $10,000 or so, so the shop has to be commited to this type of diving and mixing a lot of gas to pay for it.

Not quite right. You can easily do 50-80% using continious blending in combination with pp....and it's much cheaper. You can also fill O2 bottles to 2600 PSI w/full storage bottles.

 

[Gilldiver]

Not quite right. You can easily do 50-80% using continious blending in combination with pp....and it's much cheaper. You can also fill O2 bottles to 2600 PSI w/full storage bottles.

Yes you can do continious blending and many will do it that way for NITROX. But few shops will ever do it for He mix and bank it. There is just not enough call for it. So, I put a continious blending shop in the upper level tourist shop catagory. I have seen O2 in the 2600 psi range from the gas major suppliers, I have also seen it at 2000 to 2100 PSI and always use 2200 as my planing start pressure as that is the most common.

Look, NITROX is great for extending bottom times at 110 and shallower and as a DECO gas. Extending BT is still NDL diving and having DECO gas up to 50% (I don't want to do continious blending at fractions higher) helps with Deep air and Mix DECO. But if you don't have the mix, are you doing real "Tech" diving?

Perhaps it is because I come from the age where we did air down to 220-250 and lived through the introduction of NITROX and was there when the term "Technical Diving" was first used, so just all diving to me.

But if I am going someplace to do what I call Tech diving - deep/long requiring at least one gas switch - and the shop does not have the ability to make a mix, they are not a tech shop, they are just a shop riding a marketing wave.

 

[ScubaAndDreams]

Well, just to put things in perspective.

I did exactly that Continious blend & PP. I can do 10/70, 15/55, 18/45, 21/35, 30/30, 25/25 etc etc with EASE, 50% is easy, 35/25 is easy, O2 can be a challenge if I dont have full storage bottles...but ok whatever you want to define my diving as...I guess it's recreational