The USC Catalina Hyperbaric Chamber is offering two courses this fall that will be of special interest to all divers.
This year, the Emergency Rescue Diver (ERD) will be offered in October from the 17th-22nd. The Advanced Decompression Physiology course will be on September 11-12, 2004.
Emergency Rescue Diver course is a course designed to prepare every diver with the knowledge, skills, and practice to handle emergency situations. The course is presented by Gordon Boivin, former senior instructor for the Canadian Coast Guard, and by Karl Huggins, program manager for the USC Catalina Hyperbaric Chamber.
Special topics include:
The best techniques for beach and boat rescues
How to make the best use of emergency oxygen
How to efficiently manage the diving accident scene
Specific methods for dealing with hypothermia, near drowning, and other diving maladies
Tuition for the ERD course is $600.00 which includes all instruction, five night’s housing at the USC Catalina Island facility, and all meals.
Advanced Decompression Physiology is taught by Dr. Michael Powell, head of Environmental Physiology and Biophysics at the NASA/Johnson Space Center. The course is designed to help advanced divers and diving leaders understand the forces at work in the human body during decompression. The course is taught from the aspect of bubble dynamics instead of the vantage point of decompression table theory. Students will learn what bubbles do inside of living organisms, including information on gas exchange, Doppler bubble detection, bubble control, and the influence of diving decompression on space decompression. Tuition for the course is $180.00 which includes tuition, materials, housing on Catalina, and meals.
For more information, see the Chamber’s website at http://dornsife.usc.edu/hyperbaric/home/index.cfm. Or, contact the chamber at USC Catalina Hyperbaric Chamber, P.O. Box 5069, 1 Big Fisherman’s Cove, Two Harbors, CA 90704. Tel. (310) 510-4020. The USC Catalina Hyperbaric Chamber is part of USC, a non-profit 501 (c) (3) organization.
