Tag Archives: diver

General Messages

My current and future Certification path with PADI

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I got the bug for scuba diving several years ago when I tried a “Discovery Dive” in tropical water.   A week after I got home from that vacation I found a local dive shop in the Seattle area (Underwater Sports) and signed up to become Open Water certified.   That was a fun class, although we started with 8 students in the class and pool, and on the first day of our open water dives, four people (half the class) dropped out.   To be fair, the water here is a balmy 48 degrees so some couldn’t handle that condition.  On top of that, the wind was blowing pretty hard causing the water to be quite rough and choppy.   The four of us that continued braved the cold, wind and chop, and completed the open water certification.

I then did some fun dives, and decided I wanted to become Advanced Open Water certified.   I went back to my same instructor and talked with him about doing that, and combined getting my AOW with also learning how to use a Dry Suit, and getting Dry Suit Certified.  Trying to do the AOW navigation dive in Puget Sounds dark and murky water really made it critical to learn how to use a compass, since visual cue based navigation was impossible.

I then did a good number of fun dives after this both in Puget Sound and in tropical places like Kona, Hawaii.   While in Hawaii, I decided to get myself certified for Enriched Air (Nitrox).   That was a fun class, and now when travelling I almost always prefer to dive Nitrox.

While in the Philippines, I decided to get my Underwater Photography certification, which was quite fun, and I got to use my first DSLR underwater, which was quite cool.

Next up for me will be Rescue Diver certification, which I am hoping to take in Feb of 2012, depending on my instructors availability to teach the class.   Additionally, I would like to get Underwater Videography certification sometime in 2012.   I will only need one additional specialty after these two certifications and I will qualify for the Master Scuba diver certification because I am well over 100 dives now.

After this, I will need to decide if I want to consider going down the Pro path and become a Dive Master.

Anyway, for now, in 2012, my goals are Rescue Diver, Underwater Videography, and then one more cert so I can get my Master Scuba Diver Cert.

What was your path to certification? (or what will it be?)

Make sure you post on the site for others to see.

Thanks,

LouisK

 

Diving Blogs

Diving the real world “Abyss”… doing a Black Water Pelagic dive

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One of the coolest dives I have ever done (and I have done it twice now) is known as a black water Pelagic dive.   Basically you leave after dark on a boat and head directly out into the ocean, a few miles off shore.  You want to be in water that is essentially bottomless (obviously it isn’t, but it’s over a mile deep).

50 foot lines are tied to the boat and each diver is attached to a line (given the diver the ability to focus on the dive and not worry about how deep they go – all the cool stuff is usually in the 20′-50′ depth range anyway).

At night, things that live at the bottom of the ocean come up to feed and more often than not what you see looks a lot like the creatures from the movie “The Abyss.”   I am convinced that James Cameron must have done a dive like this in order to get the idea for them.

The video at the top of this post is of a cone jelly that I happened to see, if you have good bandwidth, bump up the resolution of the playback to 720HD.

If you ever get a chance to try a black water dive, jump on it, this is one of the most exciting experiences you will have in the water.  Imagine, total blackness, not being able to see anything except the creatures you find when they are right up on you, no warning, you just see them.  Obviously not for the faint of heart, but more for the adrenaline junkies among you.

If you decided to try it, I recommend doing this with Jack’s Diving Locker in Kona Hawaii.