New Look, New Website

After a long period of not-much posting we're pleased to announce we've had some minor internal rebranding and launched a new website for Pro-Tech Philippines.

We're aiming to be back with regular posts each month from here in, but until then check out our new website at www.protech-ph.com.

November 2015 – Post Dengue Hammerhead and Tech Courses

Finally getting back in the water after getting over coming down with Dengue really hammered home just how much you miss diving when you can’t get wet!

Given the rearrangement of courses over October ,November ended up as a busy month with multiple tech courses, including finishing the TDI Advanced Nitrox and Decompression Procedures courses with Asanga and Nick.

A good friend and diver from back in the MDA days, Brittin, returned to the Philippines for a week in November to complete his Hammerhead CCR factory training and TDI Air Diluent Decompression Procedures course.  Brittin had been out of the water for quite a while and had no other experience with Rebreather but took to the unit like a natural, flying the unit fully manually in perfect trim within the first few days!

Finally we ended up November (well, actually it was in December but only just!) with a trip to Verde Island from Anilao Beach Club.  The day trip is quite easy from Anilao and can be done with a 1.5 hour transfer on a large banka capable of holding up to 20 divers.  For divers based in Manila it’s often through the Verde Island trip needs to be done from PG, what many divers based in Manila don’t realize is that is actually possible to do the same trip cheaper and with less transport headaches from Anilao than it is from PG – we’re hoping to do a lot more of these trips in the coming months as, quite simply, Verde Diving is awesome.

September 2015 – DRT Show, Tech Courses, Dengue and Expanding Our Suex Fleet!

September started with bright and sunny conditions making for east diving with Dave Sherry from New Zealand who completed his Hammerhead CCR Factory Training and Air Diluent Decompression Procedures courses with us.  Dave has been diving CCR for quite some time and having already been trained on a few other units had no problem getting used to the Hammerhead.

We also managed to get started on entry level technical courses for 3 divers in the MDA group, Asanga, Eamonn and Nick.  All three are making the jump from soft-tech diving (recreational diving sidemount/twin tanks) to full technical qualifications.  Being based in Manila, all three chose to complete the course over several weekends rather than a continuous week of training – looking forward to catching up with them again next month.

September also launched the first major DRT (Dive Resort and Travel) show to be held in the Philippines.  Pro-Tech joined up with our friends at Dive-Thru and Manila Dive Academy as part of the Zero Impact Diving booth.  The show was a little slower than expected but we had a great time, got to meet lots of great people, caught up with some great friends - lets hope the 2016 show builds on the foundations of the 2015 show and keeps growing stronger.

The last highlight for me in September was having a free day to check out the Acacia house reef deep wall and see just how far it went using our shiny new XK1 Suex DPV and trusted Hammerhead Rebreather.  The wall just keeps to keep going and going, even spending 40 minutes between 80-90m with the speed of the XK1 couldn’t find the end of the wall!

Sadly September didn’t end as planned when what seemed to be a little bit of headache developed overnight into Dengue fever and kept me out of the water for over a month :-/

August 2015 – Some Bad Weather and Some Deep Trimix Dives!

August and September are typically the two hit-and-miss months here in Anilao with regards to the weather – and this year was no different.  A few near perfect days, a few terrible days and everything in between made for some interesting diving conditions.

We had James from Malaysia with us for the start of the month, completing his Advanced Sidemount course in very challenging, wet and windy conditions.  Diving conditions were still fine over at the secluded Secret Bay site, this site is really for macro photographers rather than non-photography diving but a slightly sloping sand bottom also makes for a great training site.

A free couple of days in the middle of the month gave us the perfect chance to re-plan the 110m dive that had originally been planned for a few weeks earlier with Alex from MDA and JM from Ocean Player in Cebu.  It was great to get back in the water with two such accomplished divers and join them putting their new Trimix skills into action on their first sub-100m dives.

O2 Cell Lifetimes and the Importance of In-Dive Validation Checks

The importance of both regularly changing O2 cells and carrying out in-dive validation was evident made on a recent mixed gas dive in Anilao.  The dive in question was done using a JJ-CCR with 3 cells that were just over 16 months old – normally I’d only use cells under, or very close to, 12 months – however due to a ‘technical issue’ (aka forgetting to bring the counterlungs for my HH unit!) I chose to use the available JJ over the other option of a 6 hour round trip to Manila to pick-up the HH counterlungs.  I should also point out here I am certified to use a JJ and it is a unit I’m familiar with :-)

The dives were originally scheduled for July with some our Trimix course graduates, however we were forced to reschedule when typhoon “Falcon” (International name “Chan-hom”) passed close to the East coast of the Philippines, bringing with it rough conditions to the West coast.  Even with the dive entry direct from shore we opted it was better to delay the dives to another time rather than push through with a long dive while the waves were getting bigger by the hour.

Picking the right conditions for the dives and finding a time in which we were all available (myself, a course director based out of Cebu and an instructor based out of Manila/Anilao) brought us to Friday 14^th to Sunday 16^th August to complete the dives and extend the Acacia deep line a little further.

All gases were already blended and ready from the previous planned dives in July and we had a perfect window with tides to complete the dives. Given the circumstances and the fact that I’d previously used cells up to 18 months on different units with no problems I felt the risks involved with using the older cells could be countered with the caveat that I’d perform regular validation and verification checks on the dive and bail-out if I did not feel comfortable with any results.

Having completed all pre-dive checks on the JJ all seemed fine, the unit was already reading 0.21/0.22/0.21 on all cells before calibration, during calibration the 3^rd cell seems a little slow to react compared to cells 1 and 2, checking the mV reading it was showing just under 43mV for O2 which seemed a little low (the other 2 cells were reading around 49 and 48mV) – given the slow reaction I decided to recalibrate the unit and found the same results, all cells also returned down to linearity when exposed to air (0.22, 0.21 and 0.22 as I recall).  Another set of pre-checks followed and the unit seemed ready to dive.

The output from the primary handset is shown below:

During the first dive our planned depth was 110m, the aim being to confirm the line was still in place and ready the end spool for a extension down to 130-140m the following day.  With the lower mV reading on cell 3 I wanted to check linearity at a PPO2 of 1.4 and above so confirmed all 3 cells could reach 1.6 PPO2 at the start of the dive (line 0 on the shearwater output).  During the initial descent (between lines 0 and 1 on the shearwater output) I noticed the third cell was consistently a little lower than the other two, but just inside the 20% deviation needed to be voted out by the Shearwater electronics – I normally fly all rebreather in manual mode with the electronics set as a back-up at 0.7 or 1.0 PPO2 in most cases so this wasn’t of immediate concern, however I wanted to check it stabilised for decompression info during the dive.

The plan was to use scooters to make the initial swim easier (and quicker for the divers using OC) from shore to the steep drop-off (around 100m distance from shore), we dropped the scooters at the top of the steep drop off at a depth of 60m, this gave me a chance to validate the cell readings – adding O2 to spike the PPO2 to above 1.4 now resulted in the 3^rd cell, previously showing the 20% lower PPO2, now jumping to a PPO2 of 1.7 while the other two cells showed 1.4 (line 1 on the Shearwater output) – I was worried at this point that it could be that the other two cells were faulty and the 3^rd cell the most accurate, however adding diluent to bring the PPO2 back down showed the 1^st and 2^nd cells reacting much faster while the 3^rd cell didn’t seem to change, responding very slowly and much less than would be expected for the amount of diluent added to the vented loop.  By this time I was almost certain the third cell was at fault and cells 1 and 2 were giving me correct reading, to confirm this I vented the loop and filled with diluent through the descent to 110m, checking the PPO2 did not fall below the diluent PPO2 for that depth (I was using a 9/65 diluent so checking the PPO2 didn’t fall below 0.1 x the pressure works as a quick check – the wonder of metric units!).

Through the descent cells 1 and 2 behaved as would be expected, but yet the 3^rd cell continued to react slowly and tended to ‘stick then drop’ rather than a constant drop of PPO2 that occurred each time diluent was added on cells 1 and 2.  This well and truly confirmed the 3^rd cell faulty, I just wanted to confirm the 1^st and 2^nd cells were working as planned.  To err on the side of caution I kept the 3^rd cell reading below a PPO2 of 1.6 and let cells 1 and 2 drop to a PPO2 of 0.8/0.9 – the solenoid was set to fire were set to kick-in at a PPO2 0.7 and given the depth being over 100m at this point I wasn’t too worried about the lower PPO2 until the cells could be verified (my back up computer was set to a constant PPO2 of 1.0 until the ascent).  Once we had completed the adjustment of the spool and set-it up for the next dive I made a diluent flush on the ascent to check the cells responded, the PPO2on cells 1 and 2 rose slightly to just over 0.9 (very slightly lower than the actual diluent set-point at that average depth), while the 3^rd cell showed the PPO2 increasing well above 1.6 when additional diluent was added.  I was now confident cells 1 and 2 were giving good information, and that cell 3 was giving completely wrong information – by this time the 3^rd cell was voted out (as it had been since the 60m check on the descent) so the primary handset was controlling everything as planned.

The ascent continued as planned (with one delay at around 65m to adjust and re-secure the existing line placement), I wanted to keep an average PPO of 1.2 above 60m on the ascent so did this manually using the readings from cells 1 and 2.  The 3^rd cell was still way above the readings on cell 1 and 2, until I carried out another cell check at 36m by adding O2 to spike the PPO2 above 1.4 (line 3 on the Shearwater output), at which point  cells 1 and 2 spiked as planned while the 3^rd cell only increased slightly in PPO2 (bringing it back into 20% of the average and therefore no longer being voted out).  The next few deco stops then see the PPO2 of cell 3 drop slower than in cells 1 and 2, leading to cell 3 hovering just under 20% above the cell 1 and cell 2 reading – ie not voted out(between lines 3 and 4 on the Shearwater output).

To make sure the output of cells 1 and 2 wasn’t voltage limited I spiked the PPO2 back up to above 1.4 at 24m (line 4 on the Shearwater output) which brought all 3 cells close to 1.6 again, after this point the cell reading stayed quite close, until the cell 3 PPO2 suddenly dropped at around 73 minute of run time, I did another small PPO2 spike to check cells 1 and 2 weren’t frozen but found both responded as expected while cell 3 had almost frozen at a lower PPO2.  The lower starting mV reading for cell 3 meant that once again it was just hanging in there at 0.25 below the other cells and was not voted out again until around 10 minutes later when it dropped more than 20% outside the cell 1 and 2 readings.

By the end of the 6m stops on both computers I now had two quite different decompression profiles, my primary handset was showing over 40 minutes (I think it was 43) at 3m while the back-up (also a petrel but set to a fixed PPO2 of 1.0 initially then 1.2 after 60m on the ascent) was showing just 23 minutes. Given the problems with cell 3 and the fact the cells were older I thought it was best to finish off the dive on OC O2 which also brought down the total time needed at the final 3m stop (I switched to OC bail-out on 100% O2 a line 7 of the Shearwater output, the majority of the OC stop was then done at 4.5m as you can see).  After switching to OC I vented the loop via the counterlung OPV dump (line 8 on the Shearwater output), the JJ ADV is very sensitive and a little diluent entered the loop as I was venting - as soon as this happened I noticed that the reading for cell 3 increased suddenly while cells 1 and 2 dropped as expected.  Even during the OC part of the dive you can still see that the 3^rd cell reading jumps around a lot.

We finished the dive by clearing both computers on OC bail-out (both were petrel controllers dived at GF 25/85), I was just a little surprised how much impact the faulty 3^rd cell appeared to have on the decompression times – this seems to be an ‘unlucky’ profile as the 3^rd cell seemed to have a funny habit of landing about 19.5% away from the other cells so didn’t quite get voted out.

Obviously there is a very high chance that all of this could probably have been avoided by having fresh cells after 12 months, however the way the cell behaved was something I had not seen before while ‘standard’ pre-dive checks and a validation PPO2 of 1.6 at 6m at the end of the dive wouldn’t have shown anything out of the ordinary.  The fact the cell behaved normally, then gave an artificially high reading at depth and an artificially low reading at mid-range before returning to near alignment in the shallows and finishing off with any slight change in PPO2 (increase or decrease) being exaggerated was a new one for me.

In summary two lessons learned, don't use cells past the recommended 12 months and secondly never under estimate the importance of in-dive cell validation through out the dive - hitting 1.6 at 6m does not validate the whole dive!

June 2015 - Wet season arrives... But there's still some Awesome Diving

JM and Alex Post-Dive Planning

The slightly later than normal start to the wet season finally arrived this month with conditions a bit rougher than the near perfect conditions we've had since October.  that said, we still had plenty of time for some awesome diving.

This month saw JM return from Cebu to complete his full DSAT TecTrimix course with Alex from MDA in Manila.   Both of these guys are highly experienced divers (Course Directors and Instructors in fact!) which made this course an absolute please to teach. 

Sadly our final post-course dive didn't happen as the outskirts of Tropical Storm Egay led to some rough seas and we all decided it was best to save the now blended gases for another day to make the dive in better conditions.  were looking forward to seeing JM again soon in the near future so we can team up again with Alex and made a slightly delayed post-course dive past the 100m mark.

Alex getting to grips with multiple bottles underwater...

...and on the surface

"Terrible" Weather

The weather for the rest of the month was great for half the month, not so great for the remainder of the month.  The peninsular geography of Anilao between two large bays means that even on rough days one side of the peninsular is normally pool like conditions. 

The secret Bay site to the East of the Anilao Peninsular is best know for the many macro critters and muck diving - but it also make a great spot for skills training and videos - we made the most of a few rough days by completing some additional skills videos for the Hammerhead CCR series we have on our YouTube channel, as well as some Open Circuit skills you'll see go on there soon.



Check out some of the sample skills in the links below:

Bail-Out to Open Circuit:

High PPO2 Procedure:

1 Cell Voted Out Procedure:

May 2015 - DSAT Courses and Trips!

May is normally the last month of peak season here in the Philippines and we thought we'd make the most of this with trips to both Coron Bay and Verde Island.

Our Coron trip was our first trip back to the Coron Wrecks for almost a year so it was great to get back, catch-up with people and dive again in the best wreck diving location in the Philippines.  We even had time to pull together a few video clips from this trip; the YouTube links below should give you an idea of what to expect - we'll be planning regular trips there every 3-4 months.

Coron, Irako Maru Wreck - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dREXbn6E4U
Coron, Kyokuzan Maru Wreck - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGQVO23rl9o

Making the most of the near perfect weather we also arranged a trip over to Verde Island from Anilao.  This trip went really well and is something we'll be doing a lot more of in the near future.  The boat ride from Anilao is around 90 minutes, so is longer than the PG trip but the large (PG ferry) sized boat we used made it a really comfortable trip.  The trip was done over a full moon weekend so some crazy currents were around, especially at the Washing Machine site when the tide was on a strong ebb.

We'd also like to pass on our congratulations to Cesar who this month completed his Tec45 course after a few weeks of diving with us.

The weather here is holding up well with conditions still hot and sunny and no rain it sight (yet!) so we're looking forward to more great dives in June with CCR, Technical and Instructor courses lined up here in the Philippines.