Michael Menduno

Michael Menduno/M2 is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of InDEPTH magazine and an award-winning reporter and technologist who has written about diving and diving technology for more than 35 years. He coined the term “technical diving.” His magazine aquaCORPS: The Journal for Technical Diving (1990-1996), helped usher tech diving into mainstream sports diving. He also helped organize the Enriched Air Nitrox Workshop (1992), produced the first Tek, EUROTek, and ASIATek conferences (1993-1996), and organized Rebreather Forums 1.0 , 2.0 and most recently Rebreather Forum 4 held in Valletta, Malta in 2023.

In addition to his responsibilities at InDEPTH, Michael is a senior editor & writer for DAN Europe’s Alert Diver magazine, a former contributing editor for X-Ray Magazine and staff writer for DeeperBlue.com. His freelance writing work has appeared in dozens of magazines. He is a former board member of the Historical Diving Society (USA) and a current member of the Rebreather Training Council (RTC). He is also a cave diver, rebreather diver, GUE technical diver and an avid Masters swimmer.

Title of the presentation: An Outlook on Tech Diving Gases.

Similar to the impact of the personal computer in the world of computing, the adoption of mixed gas technology by the sport diving community in the late 1980s/early 90s, was arguable a technological revolution that profoundly altered the sport diving world, in what I called at the time, the “Technical Diving Revolution.” Like military and commercial divers before us, by adopting helium breathing mixes, we were able to greatly improve divers’ safety and performance over air diving, enabling tech divers to, literally, go where no one had gone before.

For my talk, I will present a brief history of mixed gas technology and its early use and adoption by sport divers i.e., the Technical Diving Revolution. I will then provide the latest updates on the global helium market (arguably the most important diving gas beside oxygen), including the outlook following the recent easing of Helium Shortage 4.0. Finally, I will discuss recent efforts to incorporate hydrogen breathing mixes to reduce breathing gas density and ameliorate the effects of High Pressure Nervous Syndrome (HPNS) on über-deep dives—an idea once proposed by the late, legendary cave explorer Sheck Exley. Take a deep breath!