The head of his own tax planning and investment management firm in Madison, Mississippi, John Hoyt Williams has been scuba diving since he was 13 years old.
He has since shared his love of scuba diving with his wife and kids. Both Hoyt Williams and his son hold advanced certification in nitrox diving.
As a diving term, “nitrox” applies to any breathable air with a mixture of nitrogen and oxygen that contains oxygen at levels that exceed the 21 percent that occurs naturally in atmospheric air. Most commonly, nitrox diving tanks contain air composed of 32 percent oxygen.
The benefits of nitrox diving are numerous. Essentially, divers who breath nitrox are able to lengthen dives without decompression stops and shorten necessary service intervals while limiting the risk of decompression sickness. Exacerbated by spending too much time in the depths, rapid ascents to the surface, and inadequate surface recovery times, decompression sickness results from an overabundance of nitrogen in the bloodstream. By replacing substantial amounts of nitrogen with oxygen, nitrox allows divers to reduce overall nitrogen blood saturation.
