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Tech Diving Essentials: Adequate Exposure Protection

Tech Diving Essentials: Adequate Exposure Protection

jadescubaadventures
Jade Scuba Adventures (360-233-6825) can assist you with building these skills & pairing the right gear with them!

Intro to Tech is a topic you will see us frequently discussing in the first half of 2025. Tech diving is not just about going deeper for longer. In fact, many Pacific Northwest divers are already using strategies and gear that would be considered “tech-light” in other waters.

In this series, we will delve into how to advance as a “tech-level” diver such as perfecting skills like buoyancy & trim, propulsion, dive planning, improving rescue skills & use of alternative gases. To support their improved skills, serious cold-water divers also need redundancy in their gear, exposure protection appropriate for our conditions & gear to plan your dives.

Why is exposure protection important?

  • Local divers know that our Pacific Northwest water temperatures hover in the 50s-60s year-round
  • Beyond being comfortable during dives, being warm enough during your dives is also a safety consideration
  • In water temperatures 50-60 degrees colder than your core body temperature, it does not take long for the cold to start negatively impacting:
    • Your enjoyment of the dive
    • Control of your body (like using your hands to adjust your inflation or communicate with a buddy)
    • Your judgement (a crucial tool in reducing your risk during a dive!)
    • The deeper and longer that your dives are, the more you need to plan for your exposure protection

What do you mean by “exposure protection”?

  • Let’s start with your suit for diving
    • A 7mm wetsuit is typically the thinnest you will see in our area
      • It offers minimal protection for shorter or one-dive-a-day scenarios
      • Adding another layer of neoprene around your core (Farmer John style) adds additional protection with additional bulk
    • Dry suits for recreational use fall into major categories:
      • Neoprene
        • Offers “built-in” insulation, but is compressed at depth- affecting buoyancy and warmth
      • Trilaminate (preferred by most tech divers)
        • Offers great flexibility, mobility in tight spaces or maneuvering in a specific manner
        • Lightweight, quick drying, and adaptable to warmer temperatures with lighter undergarments
        • In the picture below, Bill (on the left) is wearing a neoprene Pinnacle Tahoe suit and Andy (on the right) is wearing a trilaminate Waterproof D7. You will feel like an astronaut in either suit!

What else do I need besides a dry suit?

  • Let’s start with a great hood!
    • Much body heat is lost through your head, so a hood with a 5/10 blend (5mm around your face, 10mm on the crown of your head) will offer the best protection against heat loss by ensuring a tight fit around your face and thicker neoprene where you need it.
    • Like all neoprene, hoods compress over time and lose their effective heating power (you need to replace it every so often!0
    • A high visibility option improves your chances on being seen underwater AND above water
  • Our best-selling hood is shown below- a Waterproof 5/10 H2 High Visibility Hood

What about my gloves?

  • Being able to use your hands underwater is very helpful!
  • Using wet gloves, you will eventually lose dexterity in your fingers as your hands chill
  • With practice, dry gloves + liners will offer you excellent dexterity
  • See picture below, dry gloves even allow you to carve a pumpkin underwater!

I want to learn more! Text/call Ashley at 360-233-6825 or email info@jadescubaadventures.com

Diver Spotlight: Jacque Burris

Diver Spotlight: Jacque Burris

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While Jacque learned to dive in our local waters in a dry suit, she sure enjoyed diving the cenotes in Mexico with only a Sharkskin Titanium 2 top + pants set. Shown above, Jacque nearly doubled her total number of dives while in Mexico and greatly expanded her dive experiences in different situations. It was a great option to be able to rent top-of-the-line gear from Jade Scuba Adventures that she has already trained in rather than having to rely on locally available equipment.

Every month we feature an interview with one of our “Friends of Jade Scuba Adventures.” Often, these are divers that have greatly developed their skill sets through a few classes with them. With this series, we hope to inspire others to keep improving their dive skills, build their dive community & have fun diving!

Jacque has been our “Most Improved Diver” of 2024! From brand new Open Water diver to Cenote Diver, Jacque has had an amazing six months of diving. When she started diving in June of 2024, Jacque said she was “really nervous on my first session with Ashley because she’s the master- but she was the most laidback person ever!”

Jacque has studied the history of the cenotes and the local cultures in detail- so it was a dream getting to dive into the cenotes in December of 2024 and see sights she has only read about. “I loved Mexico! It was a dream come true. It was magical! I just felt like I was in a dream while diving the cenotes.”

Q & A with Jacque

Why did you choose Jade Scuba Adventures for your training?“You’re the closest to me. I googled you and looked at your reviews. I looked at everything and thought I would give you guys a chance and see what it was all about.”
Why did you start diving?“I thought it would be fun. I looked into it while in Puerto Rico, but then I returned home to Kansas where there’s no major water. When I moved to Washington, I thought it would be great since there’s lots of water up here.”
How many dives do you have?“24 since my certification last fall.”
What roles do you have in the scuba community?“I’m still getting to know other divers and get some experience with other divers and how they do things.”
What advice do you have for new divers?“Get off your a** and do it. I’m healthier for it.”

Text/call Ashley at 360-233-6825 or email info@jadescubaadventures.com

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Tech Diving Essentials: Analyzing Your Gas

Tech Diving Essentials: Analyzing Your Gas

jadescubaadventures
Jade Scuba Adventures (360-233-6825) can assist you with building these skills & pairing the right gear with them!

Intro to Tech is a topic you will see us frequently discussing in the first half of 2025. Tech diving is not just about going deeper for longer. In fact, many Pacific Northwest divers are already using strategies and gear that would be considered “tech-level” in other waters.

In this series, we will delve into how to advance as a “tech-level” diver such as perfecting skills like buoyancy & trim, propulsion, dive planning, improving rescue skills & use of alternative gases. To support their improved skills, serious cold-water divers also need redundancy in their gear, exposure protection appropriate for our conditions & gear to plan your dives.

Why would divers choose to use a gas besides compressed air?

  • Nitrox is the most common enriched air blend
    • Increasing the amount of oxygen in a diver’s air blend results in many positive changes to their diving experience like increasing your time at depth, lowering your risk for DCS, and shortening your surface interval between repetitive dives. Reach out to Ashley to schedule your SDI Computer Nitrox class!
    • Nitrox divers are required to test each cylinder prior to diving.
    • The easy-to-use Palm O2 is the smallest unit on the market, perfect for traveling!
    • Does not sense for helium or other gases.
    • The battery and sensor are user replaceable.
    • Available in-stock at Jade Scuba Adventures.

Why would a diver need a carbon monoxide detector?

  • Carbon monoxide in a diver’s breathing gas can be difficult to detect until it has serious consequences.
  • Compressors filter air from their environment to pressurize into scuba cylinders.
  • If there is carbon monoxide in the environment of a compressor (most common when there is inadequate ventilation of a nearby engine), this containment can enter the cylinder.
  • At depth, carbon monoxide can cause symptoms in divers ranging from headaches and confusion to seizures and loss of consciousness.
  • Beyond working with a reputable dive shop, the best way to avoid the consequences of carbon monoxide poisoning is to test your cylinders with the small, user-friendly Palm CO.
  • Available in-stock at Jade Scuba Adventures.

What if sidemount, CCR, penetration, cave diving, advanced decompression diving are all on my “must do” list?

  • You need the All Trimix 4001 for analyzing gas mixtures with oxygen, nitrogen, and helium.
  • One touch calibration.
  • Includes temperature, barometric pressure and RH sensors.
  • Includes case for portability and travel.
  • Large backlit LED display that is easily read even in low light conditions, and which provides additional information such as Maximum Operating Depth calculation.
  • Long battery life with 16 hours of use and 15-minute auto-off feature to conserve battery.
  • Battery, oxygen, and helium sensors are all user-replaceable.

I’m sold! How do I order one?

Text/call Ashley at 360-233-6825 or email info@jadescubaadventures.com

Diver Spotlight: Robert Hudson

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While Robert loves diving with new friends, his favorite buddies are his daughter Jaden (photographed here with Robert) & wife Lanya. As he said of diving with Jade Scuba Adventures, “I liked seeing my wife, Lanya, learn more in her Drysuit class than she did in her Open Water class with another agency!”

Every month we feature an interview with one of our “Friends of Jade Scuba Adventures.” Often, these are divers that have greatly developed their skill sets through a few classes with them. With this series, we hope to inspire others to keep improving their dive skills, build their dive community & have fun diving!

Robert has officially been hit with the “scuba bug!” First certified as a teenager, within the past 18 months he has really “dove in” with over 200 dives & a goal to hit just that number in this year alone. As he works toward his Divemaster certification, Robert’s advice to newer divers is: “Keep diving. More time in the water is going to equal skill. Don’t get frustrated. Keep diving with people you trust. Dive with people who have a higher skill level than you do.”

If there is anyone in our dive community that is ALWAYS excited to dive with a buddy, it’s Robert! In his own words: “I’m happy to lead dives & get people to check out new dive sites. There’s cool stuff out there! I’m always trying to get more people involved in diving.”

Q & A with Robert

Why did you choose Jade Scuba Adventures for your training?“It started off as convenience, because the shop is close to my home. That evolved into seeing their attention to detail and the concern of the instructors to make better divers.”
Where have you traveled for scuba?“We’ve dove in Florida, Hawaii, Cozumel, & Grand Cayman. We do warm water for travel but enjoy diving cold water at home as well.”
Why did you choose to start diving?“My whole life I’ve always been around the water: swimming, fishing, camping by the water. So scuba was the next natural progression to be totally immersed in it. I watched some reels of scuba & thought it looked cool.”  
Robert is a service technician for JSA so you will often see him in the shop leak testing a dry suit or rebuilding a regulator.
Robert has completed many courses with JSA. In this picture from the fall of 2024, he is working on his Foundations course in backmount doubles.

Text/call Ashley at 360-233-6825 or email info@jadescubaadventures.com

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Tech Diving Essentials: Mastery with Shearwater Computers

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Why do you see so many Shearwaters at our Pacific Northwest dive sites? Because they’re a great dive computer for beginners to tech divers!

Intro to Tech is a topic you will see us frequently discussing in the first half of 2025. Tech diving is not just about going deeper for longer. In fact, many Pacific Northwest divers are already using strategies and gear that would be considered “tech-level” in other waters.

Many divers get to a point in their dive career where they are considering- what’s next?

In this series, we will delve into how to advance as a “tech-level” diver such as perfecting skills like buoyancy & trim, propulsion, dive planning, improving rescue skills & use of alternative gases. To support their improved skills, serious cold-water divers also need redundancy in their gear, exposure protection appropriate for our conditions & gear to plan your dives.

Jade Scuba Adventures (360-233-6825) can assist you with building these skills & pairing the right gear with them!

Why is the Shearwater Perdix 2 perfect for every diver (including beginners)?

  • Large, bright, easy-to-read screen that you can customize (full color 2.2″ screen)
  • AA battery is easy to replace and long lasting
  • Vibration alerts help divers complete their safety stops without having to watch the screen
  • Easy navigation through options and excellent user interface
  • Air integration with the purchase of a Shearwater Swift transmitter for greater ease of monitoring your gas level
  • Internal dive log stores around 1000 hours of dives and easily uploads to your device
  • Solid history of firmware updates even on older computers
  • Worldwide two-year warranty

Why is the Shearwater Perdix 2 perfect for advancing/tech divers?

  • Great add-on to your current dive computer to start tech training (redundancy)
  • Integration with up to four tanks works beautifully for tech divers!
  • Most-used algorithm (Buhlmann ZHL 16-C) with Gradient Factors to customize your conservatism

What if I want a less expensive dive computer?

The Shearwater Peregrine is also an exceptional dive computer at a lower price point than the Perdix 2, but it does not have air integration. Is this a factor for the type of diving you do? What kind of diving are you expecting to do in the next five years? Air integration can be particularly useful for divers that might otherwise have their hands occupied (dive professionals, scubility partners), have trouble reaching/reading the face of an SPG, divers who like to measure their stats, divers with multiple tanks & more!

I’m sold! How do I order one?

Text/call Ashley at 360-233-6825 or email info@jadescubaadventures.com