James Blackman

Blackman teaches TDI out of Miami Technical Diving, across Key Largo, Miami and Fort Lauderdale, and is the name southeast Florida returns when the question is decompression, trimix or advanced wreck — a region with far fewer technical instructors than cave country to the north. Google reviews centre on Advanced Nitrox and Decompression Procedures and on Advanced Wreck, in one case eleven dives over six days built on a single classroom day, and describe him as patient and unhurried in both the classroom and the water. The forums say the same thing from a different angle: asked for Florida trimix recommendations, one poster who has taken several courses with him calls him the most thorough instructor they have trained with; asked for an advanced wreck instructor anywhere in the United States, r/scuba names him; asked for south Florida centres offering normoxic trimix, the thread resolves to him. He also turns up as the instructor behind other people's diving — a poster writing about deco theory refers to "my deco instructor, James Blackman" in passing, which is the kind of unsolicited mention that is hard to manufacture. He dives well beyond his teaching, including a trip to the Bikini Atoll nuclear fleet. The stay-and-train arrangement, with accommodation and home-cooked meals alongside the diving, features in most of the Google reviews and reads as a deliberate part of how he runs courses. The one consistent caveat is price: "great but pricey" is how r/scuba puts it, and nobody disputes the first half.