Rebreather training

For 5 very full days in a row we were fully closed!!We followed the fully closed rebreather course (Buddy Inspiration) at O2 technical diving, under the watchful eye of Ariane.?????rebreather?????? what the hell is that !OK here an as simple as possible short explanation, if you want to know a bit more, email me.The main difference with normal scuba equipment is that a rebreather reuses you exhaled air, by cleaning it from carbon dioxide (CO2), and adding the used portion of oxygen (O2).This way the system uses way less gas than a normal scuba system (open system)Because you reuse the gas, no gas will escape, so no bubbles, no noise, and animals will think your one of them, and you can approach them very close...(even sharks...)Next to that, the rebreather keeps the oxygen level of the breathing mix at an optimum level for the depth your diving at, and adjusts it when the diver changes depth. This causes less nitrogen build-up, so longer bottom time.Together this means you can stay down under up to three hours!!The training itself consisted mainly of emergency drills, the rebreathers are less forgiving than normal dive systems, so you really need to be conscious of what your doing (what your breathing), and act if something goes wrong.As soon as the alarm buzzer goes off, check the gauges/computers and act according to the problem.So during training dives, Adriane simulated all possible problems and malfunctions by closing our tanks, showing us simulated readings on oour gauges, and asking us questions to check if we reacted properly and quickly enough.All in all a lot of fun, and plenty of time to enjoy the dives, with passing eagle rays, sharks and enormous groupers and snappers.So now we're certified to dive with a rebreather to a max depth of 40 meters (same as normal diving).Next step will be (after we gained some more hours experience on the rebreather) Trimix and rebreather.This way you have the benefits of the rebreather, but then to a max of 100 meters. This will open up more deeper wrecks and reefs...We'll keep you posted on new rebreather adventures !Ariane, thanks for the course !! You are a great instructor, and even though we were already scuba instructors you didn't give us any slack, which helped us becoming properly trained rebreather divers.