Caribbean Dive Operators collaborate to Launch Saba’s First Trimix Course
Located in the Northeast Caribbean, just 28 miles southwest of St. Martin, the small island of Saba is just the tip of an undersea volcano. With a land mass of only 5 square miles, you might think that not much happens there, but in actual fact, there’s lots happening in Saba – most of it underwater.
Beneath the surface, Saba is a labyrinth of lava flows, caverns, deep sea pinnacles, sea mounts and mind blowing wall dives. If you like big marine life, Saba has it. Hammerheads, whale sharks, mantas, eagle rays, turtles, eels, huge schools of fish, and much more. With so much great deep diving available, two local dive operators Octopus Diving and Saba Deep have decided to get together to run Saba’s first Trimix course.
Tony Waterfield of Saba Deep and Chris Davies of Octopus Diving and Caribbean Technical Diving first met when Tony hired Chris to service his scuba compressor. Tony was delighted to find out that not only was Chris a great compressor mechanic, he was also a certified IANTD Technical Diving Instructor. What cemented the partnership was that Chris is located on the nearby island of St. Martin, just a short 1 hour ferry ride away. As luck would have it, Tony was looking to do a Trimix course and Chris wanted to do a Trimix Instructor course.
To teach the course, Chris brought in his diving mentor Rich Stevenson of Diving Marine Solutions in the UK. Rich, a certified Trimix Instructor Trainer, also an accomplished underwater cameraman, has been quoted by CBS news program “60 Minutes” as being the “world’s most accomplished underwater cameraman”. Together they conducted Saba’s first Nomoxic Trimix Course. With private villa accommodations in the “Haiku House” provided by the Queen’s Garden Resort, not only was the course a great learning experience, it was great to experience some of the best accommodations and the finest cuisine that Saba has to offer. During the course both Chris and Tony soon discovered that Nomoxic Trimix is the idea gas for diving Saba’s plunging walls and deep coral pinnacles.
“The beauty of Nomoxic is that with 20% oxygen in the mix, there is enough oxygen to sustain divers on surface and due to its helium content, at 60 meters, Nomoxic has an END (equivalent narcosis depth) of only 36 meters where nitrogen narcosis isn’t a problem. Diving this gas will allow our customers to comfortably experience the deep walls and pinnacles of Saba and the deeper wrecks of Saint Martin,” says Chris Davies.
For further information on diving in Saba or St. Martin contact Octopus Diving at:
info@octopusdiving.com www.octopusdiving.com or phone +1-914-487-1315.
