I went diving at Alki "Cove 2", aka Seacrest Park, today for my dry suit certification. Originally I had planned to finish up my dry suit class on 12/5 when I go on a Bandito boat trip, however because I'm going diving at Sunrise on next Saturday I had to expidite my ceritication... Since I already have 12/5 booked with an instructor, I figured I shouldn't waste any time, so I signed up for a Nitrox diving class.

Nitrox is interesting... the basic theory is to avoid nitrogen related injuries by diving with higher percentages of oxygen. Sounds great, except that pure oxygen is also fatal to humans (we breath something like ~21% O2 normally, while Nitrox is typically 32% or 36% O2). So you are a little in a damned if you do, damned if you don't. Too much nitrogen and you get bent, too much O2 and you die. Sucks, don't it.

Net net, once I finished the class I'll be able to safely dive with Nitrox which is (really) safer that diving with straight air - longer bottom time, with less side effects.

Cool stuff I saw: ~5' Octopus, several sunken boats, a MS Intellimouse at 50', and lots of fish.