How high am I? Since diving involves pressure, altitude matters. Most training is done assuming sea level because most divers want to take that exotic vacation and . . . dive in the ocean. However, not all bodies of water worth diving in are at sea level.
Through social media, I connected with someone who lives at a lake that’s at a higher altitude. They do a cleanup event there. I asked if they were doing underwater cleanup as well and promptly got invited to come do that. So, I took the class.
I’ll say this at the top of the page. Do not dive at altitude without some training. All of your depth and no decompression limit values change at altitude. When you leave the water after a dive, the standard tables expect 1 atmosphere of pressure (1 bar) but depending on your altitude it could be less (the place I’m hoping to dive at is about 10% less). This means that the nitrogen in your tissues will off gas faster than it would at sea level once you leave the water. You need to understand the needed adjustments, so you don’t get yourself sick or worse.
SSI offers the specialty in altitude diving but does not have the normal online material for it. It’s up to the instructor to provide all of the course material. My local dive shops do not offer it, so I started searching online. I found Punkfish Academy, an online education part of Punkfish Diving on the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands of the coast of Africa, but part of Spain.
They offer some of the diving theory classes online (the ones that don’t require dives). Even more important (at least to me) is that one of the instructors is an incredibly experienced diver (Veronika) and the other is an astrophysicist (Dominik). This means the science portions of the classes will not be . . . light. I like that. I have a chemistry degree and do not want it to be a dumbed down version.
The class was incredible. It was a lengthy YouTube webinar followed by an online test and questions that in my case were all answered by email. Both Dominik and Veronika covered the material in a very comprehensive manner and Veronika was very thorough in answering the questions I emailed while I went through the material.
I’d strongly recommend them for those theory classes. They teach in English and have even more material in German. While I’ve had some German classes, I’m not up to following the diving and scientific terminology yet. I need to visit in person.
