Can you dive longer with nitrox

If you surface with too much dissolved nitrogen in your tissues, bubbles can form causing decompression sickness DCS. Staying within the no stop limits limits the theoretical amount of dissolved nitrogen so that you can ascend directly to the surface but make your safety stop.

If you exceed this limit as do tec and commercial divers , you have to make mandatory decompression stops in stages as you come up to keep the risk of DCS low. Based on the Recreational Dive Planner, for example, a diver on air at feet reaches his or her no-decompression after 20 minutes. At 60 feet, the diver's maximum time would be 55 minutes. But, nitrox changes these numbers.

Because you're breathing less nitrogen, less dissolves into your body, all else being equal, allowing a longer no-decompression limit. This can be calculated using an equivalent air depth EAD , which is a shallower depth at which nitrogen would be going into solution at the same rate if you were using air.

If, for example, at feet with EANx32 has an EAD of 90 feet, so you're absorbing nitrogen as if you were 15 feet shallower. Therefore, the diver's ordinary no-decompression limit of 15 minutes extends to 25 minutes — that's a 66 percent increase in bottom time.

The best application of nitrox is in the to foot range. No stop times for dives shallower than 50 feet are often so long that you'll empty your tank before you run out of dive time. Using EANx36 at 60 feet, your no stop limit is or more minutes depending on your computer for your first dive, so you'll again be limited by your gas supply, not your decompression limit.

You were taught to dive well within limits, and by pushing the limits outward, you can dive longer and still be conservative. Many enjoy nitrox diving to or even beyond air limits without being anywhere near the actual no stop max.

As with air this doesn't guarantee percent safety, but staying well within limits reduces practical DCS risk for most divers.

Interested in diving nitrox? This benefit does not come without some cost. Oxygen, while useful and essential to life, can become hazardous in high concentrations. Too much oxygen at pressure affects the central nervous system — oxygen toxicity — causing convulsions or seizures, visual distortions, ringing ears, nausea, twitching, irritability and dizziness, with convulsions or seizures being the most serious while diving.

Oxygen toxicity hits are very rare in diving, but if they happen under water, they happen without warning and lead to drowning if you lose the regulator while convulsing. Any percentage of oxygen can cause toxicity if you go deep enough, but with air you have to go well beyond established depth limits for this to be likely.

With nitrox, the depth limit is within recreational diving depths, and the more oxygen, the shallower the limit — the limit is the depth at which the PPO2 would be 1. Long term exposure to elevated oxygen can cause a different type of oxygen exposure as well.

This is the result of there being less nitrogen in the mix to be absorbed while you breathe. Even though there are plenty of great benefits that come with diving with Nitrox, you should also be aware of the risks. You should know that, when you breathe oxygen under pressure, it can become toxic, so you may not be able to dive any deeper than you would on regular air.

So if you have a higher percentage of oxygen in your nitrox mix, the toxic level can occur even at a shallower depth. Yes, you do! As mentioned before diving with Nitrox does have some additional risks. The more severe is the risk of oxygen toxicity. Under pressure, oxygen can become a toxic and deadly gas. If you would exceed the 1. Feel free to check out our Scuba Dive partners anywhere in the world for Nitrox training, packages or guided trips:. Unfortunately, these symptoms and signs may not occur in any particular sequence, and can occur with little or no warning.

Stay well within your limits at all times!! While 1. On air to reach the 1. A diver will most likely spit the regulator out and drown underwater when it happens. When oxygen partial pressure is over 1. Thus, with a higher percentage of oxygen in the air mix, the depth limit is shallower. As a result, it is not correct to say it is safer to dive with Nitrox.

Before using a Nitrox tank, make sure you have the proper training and perform the proper predive safety check. Oxygen is not flammable, but it is an essential part of burning. With a higher oxygen concentration and pressure, substances that would not burn in atmospheric air burn freely. While diving with Nitrox, there is potential risk of burning while performing predive check or filling a Nitrox tank.

To reduce such risks. Otherwise, a fire might break out. However, if a diver is using a higher percentage of oxygen in decompression diving, all scuba gears shall be oxygen cleaned before use.

After all the misconceptions, it is easy to find that if handled with extra care, the pros outweigh the cons in Nitrox diving. But does it mean with all these benefits, diving with Nitrox will be much more expensive than diving with normal air? Unfortunately, it is correct for most cases. There are different ways to mix nitrox but all of them are much more complicated and requires more sophisticated equipment.

As a result, it cost much more to fill a Nitrox tank than an air tank. But why? I hear you say. This is because we are under more pressure for longer resulting in breathing our tank quicker. This is the balancing act of diving on nitrox; not staying at a maximum depth for so long that we get short dives, but also being able to stay long enough to have the benefits of the reduced nitrogen load. Pro Tip: UW Photographers love using enriched air for the longer no-deco times.

This allows them additional time at a certain depth to capture the perfect shot. Read our tips on how to become an Underwater Photographer. As we still have nitrogen content in our tanks while diving on Nitrox, the effects of narcosis are exactly the same as diving on normal air.

Read More: What is Gas Narcosis? If you encounter gas narcosis on a Nitrox dive, follow the same steps you would when experiencing narcosis on normal air. Ascend to a shallower depth until the effects wear off. If you still feel uncomfortable then you should end the dive.

Hopefully, you now have a much clearer understanding of Nitrox diving and what enriched air is. As you can see, like with any diving it has its risks but as long as it is used safely and responsibly nitrox can really enrich any dive see what I did there! Nitrox is one of the most common specialties for divers to learn, especially for people planning diving holidays with multiple dives per day.

With the reduction of nitrogen load and no need to push NDL limits, it really makes those trips more enjoyable. Some divers use the nitrox scuba diving course as a gateway into technical diving. Log in to leave a comment. Sign in. Log into your account. Forgot your password? Password recovery.