IANTD skills

IANTD skills

There aren’t many IANTD skills demonstrations on their YouTube channel, but the ones that are shown include gas switching, staging and retrieving cylinders, and switching to a backup mask. Of all the demonstrations by the various diving agencies, the ones here are (in my opinion) a bit of a mixed bag. As soon as the valve drill begins and the diver’s head goes down for the duration, he lost me. Awareness is a fundamental component of any dive skill.

Having said that, the skills are done slowly and clearly, and are easy to understand and follow. Staging and retrieving without a mask is great for adding an extra layer of complexity and task-loading and is something I do on the shallow dives of a trimix course.

It’s worth remembering that dive agencies are under no obligation at all to show any of these skills. They are after all something that you can only learn properly and safely during a course. However, it’s good to get a flavour of how each agency does things and compare the differences in the steps. IANTD, like TDI, is another agency where the skills are not set in stone; instructors will have their own way of doing them.

Information on IANTD courses can be found here.