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If your compressor was disabled, who is providing the nitrox for all the dive shops? I always that it was Protech.

Amigos is pumping 32% and thats something you can breath down to 100' very safely. be sure and get certified Nitrox before you do it.
Or let an instructor set you up for a dive to try
it out.

I've already dove it in Florida, both 32% and 36%. However, I'm not certified. I could get certified up here, except for the pesky little problem of PADI requiring two dives just to prove you know how to analyze your tanks. (yes, I'm being a bit sarcastic).

There's an online course though, so I might take that before I get back down.

I don't think PADI requires any dives for Nitrox anymore. A friend just got certified, and I don't think he did any dives, just classwork. I had to do two for SSI about a year ago, and those are my only nitrox dives so far. I haven't done a true dive vacation yet where I'd see the benefits of increased bottom time etc, and it's just not worth twice the price to dive the same dives in my local quarry.

If I paid the extra for Nitrox on all of my dives, I would pay about $250 to $300 extra - I made 20 dives on my September Cozumel trip. The diving had cost me approx. US$600 at that point and that was my spending limit. I definitely do not reject the Nitrox to spend the $ on beer.

Which places have Nitrox? I will probably dive with Nitrox when we visit 12/28/07-01/06/08.

PADI does not require two dives to earn a Nitrox certification. During your classroom session, you will learn to use an oxygen analyzer. You turn in your knowledge reviews and take a final exam. The exam is a snap as they let you use a "cheat sheet" with all of the formulas.

Cool! It's obvious I haven't been keeping up with the latest PADI course changes. That they are making things so much "easier", isn't that big of a surprise to me though.

Tortuga, where did you get your info that the two dives are no longer required by PADI? I just checked their website and they are still saying 2 dives.

Anyone who learns the "PADI way" and simply copies the formulae given is selling themselves short. You won't remember a formula learned in that manner, or even worse you may mis-remember it. The fundamentals of nitrox diving (and indeed all diving) are conceptually very simple, and if you understand them you won't need to apply any formulae that you'll risk forgetting - once properly understood you'll never forget it, or how to calculate the essentials when you need to.

PADI followed the more advanced training agencies a year or so ago and dropped the two dives they had previously required. They are now optional, but note that they are at instructor discretion, not the student's. I don't know what their website says, but I know what I have said is true. For IANTD they have always been at instructor discretion, and only occasionally have I insisted on them being done. Generally only when the student's general diving knowledge and ability was deficient.

Which raises another interesting point. When teaching nitrox I often find myself spending time on diving fundamentals that were poorly learned if at all. A nitrox course that lasts say just a morning can't possibly do that, so as with all training a potential student should decide up front whether they are simply after another card, or whether they want more than that.

The only thing that's different about managing a nitrox dive, at any rate a recreational one, is ensuring you don't go too deep for the mix in your tank. So the only point of an instructor taking a student on a nitrox dive is to try to coax the student to an excessive depth and hope the student is on the ball sufficiently to realise and not follow. But with 32% that depth is around 110', which is already getting a bit deep for many divers.

Protech shut down its compressor earlier this year when I learned the owner of the land where it was situated intended to steal and sell it. He had already advertised it off-island, and I only heard about it when I was told by someone who was considering buying it. So rather than lose hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth I dismantled it and put it into storage. But plans to reinstate it elsewhere are well advanced. Then we will return to full production of any mix of nitrox or trimix, with guaranteed pressures and mixes. What we used to do, in fact. I apologise to those people who have approached me hoping to get a bargain that that isn't going to happen.

When I teach Nitrox, more often than not, I find myself bring adults up to an 8th grade math level so they can compute the formulas.
Almost all modern dive computers do nitrox, and like so many things the exam is usually the last time they have to do it.
Peter and I agree on most things except when It come to the PADI philosophy, I'm a 100% PADI guy. Keep it simple and make it easy so everyone can do it.