Nitrox Diving in Costa Rica

Crocodive Caribe pumps Enriched Air or Nitrox for our Dives near Puerto Viejo Costa Rica.

What’s more, we don’t charge extra for it, it’s all included in our dive packages.

The primary purpose of enriched air is to extend your no decompression limits beyond those of normal air. Here’s how:

As you recall from your Open Water Diver course, our bodies absorb nitrogen while breathing air under pressure. The deeper we go and the longer we stay, the more nitrogen we absorb. As long as we keep dissolved nitrogen within reasonable limits, when we ascend, our bodies normally eliminate this nitrogen without problems through respiration.

If we exceed reasonable limits, we may get decompression sickness (DCS) when we surface. We use dive tables and dive computers to track our times and depths and keep nitrogen within reasonable limits.

Enriched air replaces some of the nitrogen you would breathe underwater with oxygen, so you absorb less nitrogen than you would for the same dive breathing normal air. Our bodies metabolize and This means you have longer no decompression limits for a given depth than you do using air. How much longer depends on how much oxygen is in the enriched air.

Here’s the real clincher! Because Crocodive uses high-pressure steel tank, you get 3440 psi and not the usual aluminum tank of 3000 psi. So the 45 minutes using Nitrox 32 at 80 ft is now within your reach.