Lang: I again thank all training associations for sharing their nitrox data for the common good. Instead of having every agency representative provide a "death by PowerPoint"
presentation for twenty minutes, we have tabulated the nitrox certification data that was submitted to us. I wish to review this information and give everyone a few minutes to either elaborate on, or modify your submissions. The first spreadsheet is only for the certification data. The second one shows the reported DCS incidences of nitrox versus air. Initially, our intent was to get a hard count of numbers of nitrox dives. Barring every nitrox diver having a logbook to submit, that objective was not promising. Several groups did provide nitrox certification numbers but some had no way of tracking numbers of dives. Next, we opted to look at numbers of nitrox fills and made the reasonable assumption for recreational nitrox diving that one fill would equal one dive. I understand that for some cave diving operations the same cylinder gets partially refilled, which would not quite work for our assumption here.
The first thing I want to accomplish is to verify the submitted data.
Table 1. Recreational Nitrox Certification Data Organization
NAUI PADI SSI IANTD
TDI ANDI UNCW NOAA NASA AAUS Aggressors Sea Hunter TOTAL
Instructors 878 7274
605 8140 12823
3196 N/A N/A 8 N/A N/A N/A 32,924
Divers 4472 46788
1570 64378 66206 49118 803 139 384 N/A N/A N/A 233,798
Since 1992 1996 1996 1991 1994 1989 1986 1981 1996 1987 1997 1997
B. Wienke: Those are the NAUI data and the information is only for diving instructors and recreational nitrox students certified. NAUI came on line with the nitrox program in 1992 as a specialty course. In 1998, NAUI Technical Diving Operations was formed to include recreational nitrox and technical diving, which is extended range diving, deco-diving, and tri- mix.
D. Richardson: Those are the data that PADI submitted. We differentiated (did not include) the instructor-trainer group (418) from the instructors at large. That might affect your bottom line. If it has any relevance, that would be the only difference. The data are from January 1996 through September 2000.
J. Hardy: Those are the SSI numbers. The program was put together in 1996, but those figures only represent 1997, 1998, and 1999. I would like to come back to Drew for a moment.
Lang (ed.): DANNitrox Workshop, Divers Alert Network, November 2000
When I reviewed the figures, I saw that the first year of the program had higher number of certifications than the second year of the program. It was high, went down and went up again. Drew, did you find that same thing for PADI, an initial influx and then a drop off?
D. Richardson: Yes, Jon, basically the same experience. We viewed that as a pipeline of interest, if you will. It didn't drop off a lot, but it did somewhat and since then it's been a steady upward growth if you look at it on a curve.
J. Hardy: Exactly the same with SSI.
T. Mount: That is the IANTD submitted data and it is current through the end of October. We also have instructor trainers who aren't listed there, but it wouldn't change the numbers because they have instructor numbers prior to becoming instructor trainers.
B. Gilliam: Yes, TDI is exactly the same. As represented, our instructor trainers would be included in the instructor group anyway so those numbers wouldn't change. Our numbers are accurate through the end of the third quarter.
E. Berts: The ANDI numbers confirm what we submitted. Probably the only comment to make is that the number of instructors represents nitrox instructors and nitrox instructor trainers only. Instructors with other ratings are not included, for example, an open water instructor who is not a certified nitrox instructor. To get some validity to the data, since that's what we're looking for, it would be fair to comment that there has to be a tremendous number of duplicate certifications. This might possibly explain the sudden influx of numbers with, for example, PADI's data and SSI's data, followed by the drop-off. Crossover certifications and multiple certifications are frequently the case.
M. Lang: Do you have any feel for what the overlap might be?
E. Betts: It's an appropriate question to ask. If we're trying to validate data, I really couldn't offer a conjecture. There is a reasonable number of ANDI instructors who also hold other agency's instructor numbers. I would probably estimate that number to be as high as 25 percent.
B. Gilliam: Ed may be right in regards to the possible cross-certification of instructors. I doubt if you're seeing any of that skewing the diver statistics because I don't really see anything that has the tendency for a regular diver to end up with multiple certifications. Although that may be true at the instructor level, I think the other numbers are pretty hard.
M. Lang: For nitrox?
B. Gilliam: Yes, for nitrox.
T. Mount: I would concur with what Bret said. We actually sent a survey out to instructors at one point to know if they cross-certified students and very few of them do. Most of them certify with one agency or another. Many of the instructors obviously are multi-agency certified.
M. Lang: Drew, would you want to comment on that?
D. Richardson: That's consistent with our analysis.
J. Hardy: What Bret is saying is true. There are a lot of crossovers at the instructor level, particularly at first. These instructors may have already held a certification from a technical diving association, but as far as I can tell, we have very little crossover at the student diver level.
B. Wienke: I would concur with that and as the cost of certification goes up for divers with the agencies, you'll see less multiple certifications for divers.
/. Nitrox Operational Data Discussion
M. Lang: As there are no more comments on this first section of operational data, we'll proceed with the rest of the data submissions.
D. Kesling: The UNC numbers are what we submitted. My main comment is under number of instructors. We have instructors teaching under NAUI, PADI and IANTD programs. That's the only comment about issuing recognition material certifications for the scientific diving nitrox study and those 803 divers.
M. Lang: They are IANTD certified?
D. Kesling: Those are scientific nitrox divers within our program who might receive recognition materials or meet the prerequisites for NAUI, PADI or an IANTD certification based on what they select or what the instructor offers.
M. Lang: Those numbers may actually already be accounted for in NAUI, PADI, or IANTD?
D. Kesling: Right.
M. Lang: I'll make a note of that.
D. Dinsmore: Those numbers are correct. The "2" represents instructors at the NOAA Diving Center. Besides being NOAA instructors, they are also NAUI nitrox instructors. The number "139", if you realize we have got about 300 NOAA divers, represents over one third of our total who are nitrox certified.
M. Lang: Are these yearly recertifications or are these one-time certifications?
D. Dinsmore: Those would be one-time certifications.
C. Borne: The numbers haven't changed. I need to point out that at the NASA facility, we don't certify divers, they're not given a card. They're not doing any kind of open water checkout dives, it's a facility-specific qualification. The number "384" is what is on my current roster.
There have probably been approximately 250 divers deleted from that roster. As far as certification or qualification, we're close to a 600 diver total. My instructors are with IANTD, NAUI and PADI. Sixty to seventy percent of my staff of 70 have gone on to get the nitrox certification, but some of my staff members do not hold the cards, they're just qualified to dive in our facility.
W. Jaap: If you look at the "non-available" entry under the instructor heading, we have 24 organizations at AAUS that do teach a nitrox course and certify through probably PADI, NAUI and IANTD. As far as numbers of divers last year, we had 442 nitrox divers in AAUS organizations. The typical percentage of nitrox diving compared to air diving is about seven percent at this point in time. Nitrox is showing a slight gain on air diving. Other than that, it shows we have been doing quite a bit of nitrox diving.
M. Lang: The next operational data section is from liveaboard nitrox diving. We thought we might be able to get a good handle on the number of nitrox dives that actually occur among captive liveaboard diver populations. The problem we ran into was that some operations don't track numbers of dives because they felt there wasn't a need to. The only way for them to track nitrox divers at all would be to physically count the release and waivers signed specifically for nitrox. Peter Hughes, for example, even though he was interested and wanted to contribute numbers, felt he could not allocate the staff time to trace this. The next option I pursued was to try to get an idea of the number of nitrox dives by overlaying a formula on the cubic footage of oxygen consumed; however, several liveaboard operations use gas separation membranes so we could not answer how many 80 cu.ft. aluminum nitrox cylinders were filled.
Lang (ed.): DAN Nitrox Workshop, Divers Alert Network, November 2000
B. Gilliam: Michael, Evin Cotter asked me to report on this since TDI pulled the hard records for the Aggressor Fleet. Their numbers are underreported because only eight of their 13 vessels were able to report, so their number of divers would be higher. Because their divers are certified through our agency, TDI, they are replicated in our numbers above. The number of instructors entered as "n/a" would actually be approximately 80 instructors during that period. Those numbers would probably be higher, but you would be getting into duplicate reporting there.
M. Lang: Alright, and the same for the other liveaboard operations, they're in the TDI numbers?
B. Gilliam: Yes.
D. Rutkowski: I'd like to make the following comment: Not included in this table is Hyperbarics International. I'm sorry, I didn't realize the importance of it. In 1985,1 started teaching recreational nitrox diving at Ocean Divers in Key Largo. Eventually we became so busy as an organization just teaching nitrox and fighting battles with the pseudo experts, that in 1991 I had to bring in Tom Mount and formed a company call IANTD. There is a lot of history there between '85 and '91 that should be included, but I think I turned most of my data over to Tom when we formed IANTD.
T. Mount: The number of divers and instructors is included in the IANTD data I submitted.
A. Marroni: Do the data, NAUI down to ANDI, refer to America only or are they worldwide data?
B. Wienke: NAUI data are worldwide.
D. Richardson: PADI data are worldwide with the exception of Japan, which has some strange gas laws making nitrox not very popular. PADI nitrox certifications worldwide are about two percent of total diver certifications. Jon, for further clarification, the only setback in the second year was really in the Nordic region, they must have had a winter? The northern European market did dip, the rest have met a steady climb since inception.
J. Hardy: SSI nitrox figures only reflect those processed through the United States. If they were processed in another region, they're not reflected in those numbers.
T. Mount: IANTD numbers are international.
B. Gilliam: TDI numbers are international as well.
E. Betts: The ANDI numbers reflect, to the best of our ability, worldwide values. However, we did have some aberrations on reporting especially from Australia and Japan. From a few third world countries, we couldn't get back timely data. There are a couple of ANDI regional headquarters that process certifications individually. For example, in Thailand and Philippines, the numbers are certainly accurate and I don't think that there'd be any skewing at all.
M. Lang: Let me ask, Bart, are your numbers included in IANTD, is that correct?
B. Bjorkman: Yes, because we're primarily a commercial diving operation, if anybody wanted to take a recreational IANTD nitrox course, we would train them to that standard and certify them.
D. Richardson: Just for Dr. Marroni's interest, continental Europe would be about 6,072 of that total number. If you look at greater Europe, out of the PADI U.K. facility, nitrox certifications are around 13,297.
/. Nitrox Operational Data Discussion