While I am certified for Nitrox diving, I'm not sure I would actually use it very much. After over 100 open water dives and many dive classes (I was one class away from being a certified instructor back in the 1970s) I realized that I didn't want to do extreme diving. Night dives in the Caribbean are exciting enough. Wreck diving, ice diving, cave diving, commercial diving, hard hat diving all seem too dangerous. Diving in the warm, clear Caribbean was great, and 75% of that experience can be obtained with just a snorkel, mask and flippers.

One of my friends was a commercial diver working on Oil platforms in the North Sea. Out of the eight divers he worked with, he is the only one that lived through it without serious injury.