IANTD - International Association for Nitrox and Technical Divers
IANTD founded in 1985 is the only EANx agency that offers training in all aspects of EANx through continuing education programs. This allows you to expand your knowledge and training with the top professionals in the field. IANTD instructors are well trained, highly experienced and extremely qualified. IANTD Standards and Procedures provide for the highest level of EANx education and training available.
IANTD (IAND, Inc.) was founded by Dick Rutkowski, the former dive supervisor for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Mr. Rutkowski introduced the recreational diving community to the technology of EANx. This program was developed through NOAA during his tenure. Today the board of directors and the membership of IANTD are composed of many of the most experienced divers in the world pertaining to the use of breathing gases other than air.
IANTD's mission is to understand the opportunities and challenges of Nitrox, advanced and technical diving, in order to foster openness, individual responsibilities, and provide a standard of care for instruction in the diving community. IANTD believes in the Golden Rule and will be honest, ethical and fair in all our venues. We also believe that there are universal principles and natural laws that are more absolute and we try to live by them. We envision our mission activities in the following areas.
PUBLIC AWARENESS AND ADVOCACY. IANTD is working to promote openness in the diving community, to share procedures, techniques and operational methods with divers seeking to expand their diving experiences. IANTD will stay informed on diving developments and promote them into diving activities.
SAFER DIVER PROGRAM. IANTD believes in individual diver responsibilities that are developed through aggressive skill refinement and experience in the water. Vigorous instruction with a strong student/instructor relationship enhancing a transfer of the diving responsibility to the student is our essence.
PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT AND REFINEMENT. IANTD has developed a program set for diving knowledge and skill levels. We will continue redefining these programs based on reports from instructors in the field, to improve and strengthen their value to our membership. We will continue to develop a set of core values that apply to advanced and technical diving. IANTD Standards and Procedures have been developed and evolved to allow world wide recognition of skill and knowledge at each certification level addressed by IANTD.
FOSTERING COMMUNITY. Much of the work IANTD has done has been directed at fostering a sense of community in the diving world. The diving community by virtue of its size needs cooperation amongst itself to prosper and grow, anything less is counter productive.
IANTD MEMBERSHIP. If YOU support our goals and our work, you can express this by becoming an IANTD member. Members receive the IANTD Journal, NITROX DIVER, have their questions answered, and are kept abreast of new innovations and coming events in the diving world.
The IANTD Training Philosophy "IANTD believes it is better to be safe, cautious and demanding in training than to have one accident." Do YOU Agree? If you do, then join IANTD for safer and more enjoyable diving.
IANTD is dedicated to producing knowledgeable and skillful divers. Both of these are key to developing competent, confident and relaxed divers who can fully enjoy the exhilarating experiences of advanced and technical diving.
KNOWLEDGE and UNDERSTANDING is beyond a doubt the key to power in any endeavor one undertakes. In diving, the combination of knowledge and understanding equates to safety.
ANTD has designed its course materials to instill in-depth knowledge to the student and practitioner of advanced and technical diving endeavors. This knowledge develops greater confidence and better understanding of both the enjoyment and risk aspects of safe diving.
To insure a sound knowledge base IANTD is demanding on the subject material presented in its programs.
SKILLS and STRESS MANAGEMENT are important in performance of safe dives and in the ability to survive when faced with stressful events in the water.
IANTD courses are designed to develop superb water skills and relaxed and comfortable divers, to achieve this level techniques are taught and drills are incorporated to enable divers to realize their full potential. The confidence developed in this type of training will reward students by becoming self confident and self reliant divers.
Equipment familiarity exercises, such as simulation of a gas failure with valve shutdowns and regulator switches, are included to allow divers to become confident and capable in reaching and manipulating the valves and in performing the regulator switches. To the amazement of many, this is often difficult on the first couple of tries! Indeed equipment adjustments are often needed to enhance the performance of this skill. This is a skill that may save a diver's life someday and one in which all divers need to be confident with. This type of confidence is developed by demonstration and practice.
Stress management exercises have been placed into our courses to simulate realistic diving emergencies. Their purpose is to train divers in response-awareness and to develop in their minds a memory of having experienced a similar event before. For instance, the drill of swimming to a buddy for a prescribed distance, without breathing, and then commencement of gas sharing followed by a timed swim. To some this appears as a fitness or harassment drill. In fact, it is a confidence builder and a mind conditioning exercise to enable a rehearsed response to an emergency instead of an on site challenge as to whether the event can be mentally coped with. The distance is similar to the stress one encounters when having to swim to a companion diver, who is also probably swimming , and communicating their needs and instigate gas sharing. The timed swim is to instill a reaction of maintaining a normal swim pace to enable gas consumption to remain at a normal rate.
IANTD believes confidence and efficiency are developed by spending time in the water. All courses specify a required "minutes of bottom time" to be accomplished within a certain number of dives. IANTD is the first to incorporate this into diver training.
IANTD believes basic survival skills must be PRACTICED until they are reflex reactions. IANTD recognizes that many skills in its courses are redundant and thus allows provisions for crediting diver training from one course to another.
IANTD values experience and its standards has provisions for credit of equivalent experience towards a given level of certification. At the same time we all realize that experience is not always compatible with knowledge and skill performance. To provide a marriage of experience, knowledge and skill performance divers must demonstrate the required skills and knowledge appropriate to the level they are being credited for prior to certification at a higher level of diving.
IANTD believes that our instructors do set the example. To this end the instructor must always be in the water supervising the dive, demonstrating overall good diving skills while providing an extra element of safety in the water. At the same time the instructor must take care that the student does not depend upon them and insure confidence is being developed.
Assistants can be used but only if the instructor is present and in the water at the same time the students are. This is for a three fold reason:
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First, the instructor must be evaluating the diver.
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Second, the instructor has more experience to observe the diver from.
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Third, for liability reasons.
It is considered by IANTD to be an irresponsible action if the instructor is not present on training dives.
IANTD requires the instructor in charge to accompany students on their first dive to a new and greater depth and to discourage students from exceeding the prescribed limits of the training program they are participating in.
IANTD believes diving is a risk activity and thus divers must be aware of risk.
-The more advanced the diving styles, the more polished the skill level of divers must be to provide safety. In addition, standard minimum skills and theory insures each instructor that a diver coming into our own course from another IANTD Instructor is ready to advance their diving education.
IANTD requires standard student text and/or other equivalent texts, if submitted and approved by the BOD, to insure that the theoretical knowledge exists to make the given level of diving safe.
In cave diving, the NSS/CDS and NACD text are considered equivalent. In fact, IANTD Cave Diving Manual and Student workbook recommends these texts in addition to it's own use.
Upon completion of a course, IANTD requires students to complete a written exam as this is our only means of measuring their knowledge level.
IANTD has leadership/supervisory ratings to allow Instructor Assistants and to prepare these divers to advance towards instructorship.
"IANTD believes that being confident, competent and knowledgeable, through responsible diver training enables one to survive the seemingly impossible."
If you need any help or have further questions please e-mail us
