Nitrox Requirement

[LKunze]

As already mentioned, nitrox is a huge asset for liveaboards with as many dives as you can potentially rack up. 

For local diving it isn't as big a deal but can be useful for long day trips driving up to the iron range, Crosby or Wazee.  I find I feel less tired on the drive home after getting in 3 or 4 dives diving nitrox rather than air.  Nitrox isn't rocket science and is pretty easy to understand so I don't think it really adds much complexity. 

I'd dive nitrox all the time if I could afford it.  I wouldn't be able to afford to do as many dives as I typically do each year if I chose to dive nitrox a lot. That's why I can probably count on one hand the amount of times I've bought nitrox fills in the past 2 or 3 years.  Air fills seem to be going up in price every year as well though and are approaching the price nitrox fills used to cost 4 or 5 years ago in many places.  I may be scaling back the number of dives I do in the future due to rising costs...fuel prices included but now I'm getting off topic.

Back to Lee's first post, I don't agree with "requiring" nitrox to be part of OW training but it wouldn't be a bad idea to offer a special package that included it perhaps at a discount.  That might encourage divers to get the nitrox training right away.