Any scuba divers?

[zinfamous]

GL man, don't get the bends and die and stuff. :beer:

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

You'll be fine.

- Don't hold your breath when you ascend.
- Don't ascend too quickly - ascend at the rate of your smallest champagne bubbles or slower.
- Don't overwork yourself underwater because that compounds with a faster ascent to give you the bends.
- Don't go over you no-decompression limits (NDL). They're time limits on how long you can stay at each depth without entering forced decompression.

Join scubaboard and read their "accidents and incidents" forums and "lessons learned" and learn from them.

Afterwards if you're diving regularly buy DAN insurance so just in case something goes wrong you get a free trip to the hyperbaric chamber.

 

[purbeast0]

I ended up not getting it unfortunately because I got sick as shit yesterday and that was my 4th checkout dive. It really sucks because I felt super comfortable for the first 3 skills dives and loved every second of it, and I would have done 5 AOW dives afterwards too which would have been awesome. I missed out on a wreck dive, night dive, wall dive, deep dive, and feeding the sting rays at sting ray city. I'm super bummed about it since that was why I planned this trip but health is more important. Just really shitty timing.

 

[Scarpozzi]

I got my open water certification from PADI. My wife got her certification from NAUI.

We hit a few tropical destinations before kids, but didn't do SCUBA. We only snorkelled because SCUBA wasn't really required to see fish and would have been throwing money away.

We did some drift diving in Mexico. I jumped off the back of a boat with no floatation and only a mask....not knowing how long I'd be out there....they said the boat would pick me up in 30 minutes or so....I was young and stupid so I did it. =P Other people had flippers, but my personal ones were missing a clip and those on the boat were too small for my american feet. Spoiler alert...I survived the cuda infested waters.

We did a lot of snorkeling in Hawaii....it was great, but I got pummeled by the waves on the shore on a few beaches. It would have been nice to have a boat there.

One more point....another reason I prefer snorkeling. When I did all my SCUBA deep dives, *75 feet down, I surfaced to have blood coming out of my ears. I don't think my system does well below 10 feet.

 

[purbeast0]

Well my return trip to Grand Cayman to finish the OW and AOW certification has been booked, so hopefully I am healthy at the time I go!

 

[purbeast0]

I'm now officially OW and AOW certified. Still in Grand Cayman until Wednesday and if I wasn't with my family I'd be diving tomorrow and Tuesday.

Say hello to Captain purbeast of the USS Kittiwake.

 

[purbeast0]

Here's a couple videos I pulled off my goPro. I wish I realized it was in this stupid wide mode prior so I could have changed it.

This was our deep dive that's required for the AOW certification. Note the depth on my dive computer, as well as the max depth we had hit a minute of so earlier. Also, check out the beach ball the instructor is holding. It's a full beach ball (at the surface) and look at how flat it is. Pretty cool to see. Sorry that the video isn't the best quality either, but that'll get better with experience as I get more comfortable with everything. After that dive too one of the instructors told us how we were all tired at the end of the dive and its cause our buoyancy was bad, and you could see everyone other than the instructor kicking lol. It really sticks out in the video.

And here was us actually approaching the Kittiwake. It was pretty damn cool to just see that sitting on the floor of the ocean.

 

[purbeast0]

The next two were from the fish ID reef dive we did that was like max depth 40ft, again for AOW. These are two swim throughs we did that I didn't expect to do, and was a little apprehensive about it, but just decided to follow everyone and it was cool doing so. The first video is longer and towards the end it's a bit dark, but it wasn't really that dark in the swim through, you could alway see pretty well. It's just the lighting from the camera making it look that way. The second one is shorter and the lighting is a bit better.

 

[purbeast0]

I'm a little hype that I got these in the mail today...

 

[skyking]

congrats man. I did some supervised dives in Mexico about 20 years ago, enough to get me interested. Long story and I am hunt and peck with an arm in a sling. I'll be back