Bad Diver

Electric Beach, Oahu

2009-01-08T23:49:00.002-04:00

A few pictures from the dive this past weekend. It was a great dive with lots of White-tip sharks, fish, eels, & a few turtles.

Honu

White mouth moray eel

White tip shark

Electric Beach

2008-08-10T14:38:00.001-04:00

We saw a White Tip shark at Electric Beach. Captured it on video, although the video quality is not too great. Also saw several eels, including a Yellow Margin moray & a Snowflake eel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn52UUg_byU

Hawaii Diving

2008-07-09T16:21:00.003-04:00

We made it to Hawaii on June 16. Back to diving the great Pacific. The underwater world is quite different here than in the Carribean.

First off the water is quite a bit cooler than in Puerto Rico. We had to go get a full 3 mil suit, and wear it with a hood to stay warm. A nice tropical dry suit would be nice!

The coral growth is not as abundant as in the Caribbean. I am guessing that this may be due to the temperature difference.

However, the fish here in Hawaii are larger. What I mean by this that we see more pelagics here than we did in Puerto Rico. Diving in Puerto Rico we saw a lot of small reef fish and octopus. Here in Hawaii we see Jacks, Barracudas, lots of sea turtles, and an occasionally dolphins. Maybe one of these days we will encounter a whale!

In the meantime, I will be posting updates on dive sites of the Hawaiian Islands; most particularly Oahu.

tiny little creature on the bottom of the sea

2008-05-31T10:51:00.002-04:00

Look what we found while diving in St. Criox. This little seahorse was hanging out on a buoy line right off of Cane Bay wall.

How you know you are a BAD diver

2008-05-20T16:20:00.000-04:00

There are 2 meanings to the word "BAD", but this post is refering to the meaning of not good. So, how do you know you are a bad diver?

1. Your dive gear is in the garage until the day before you leave for your annual dive trip to Mexico.

2. The last time you took your mask off underwater was in your open water class.

3. You have a compass on your console but have no idea how to use it.

4. You refer to decompression time as bars in the green, yellow and red.

5. You know the phone number to Leisure Pro by heart but you don't know where the local dive shop is.

6. You think a 3min safety stop at 15ft is a magical cure for decompression sickness.

7. You have no idea what I am talking about in line 6.

8. The last words you say to your dive buddy just prior to jumping of the boat are "Hi, my name is Joe."

9. You wonder why the visibility in front of you is over 100ft but the vis behind you is a swirling sand storm.

10. Other divers in the group are watching you instead of the fish.

11. You surface every ten minutes just to get your bearings.

12. You feel anything under 65ft vis is limited.

13. You believe PADI when they tell you you're an advanced diver when you were just certified three weeks ago.

14. You think NITROX is a gas used by your dentist.

15. You get online to find the speed rating of your new split fins.

16. You can't swim from one side of the pool to the other without resorting to the doggy paddle.

17. You would cancel a dive for the sole reason of forgetting your snorkel at home.

18. When you hear someone say "underwater housing" and you think to yourself, "That would be a really cool lifestyle."

19. You got into diving to meet beautiful women.

20. You refer to the buttons on your inflator hose as the up and down buttons.

21. You think an important dive skill is landing on your feet when you get to the bottom.

22. You just puked in the camera bucket.

What is going on with the Dive Industry?

2008-05-20T08:44:00.000-04:00

It seems to me like the big question in the dive industry these days is why do divers choose to go to the Internet instead of using the local dive shop?

Go to just about any SCUBA Diving forum on the net and you will find this topic actively being discussed. To me the question shouldn't be why do people buy off the Internet or from the local dive shop but why do divers not come back after training?

I go to the local dive sites just about every weekend of the year and I see all the open water dive classes. What I don't see are the people that are there to do fun dives or to work on fundamental skills. Fundamental Skills? What is that? You know that annoying part of the class where the instructor made you take off your mask, share air with your buddy, and learn a little (and I mean very little in most open water classes) about neutral buoyancy.

I, for one, do not understand how you can make a confident safe diver in one weekend. The industry concept of drive-through dive instruction is ridiculous. The idea of asking someone to give you anywhere from $150 to $350 for a quickie one weekend dive class and then in return telling them they will be a confident and skilled diver is almost criminal. How much time was actually spent teaching this person how to dive? In most classes I would say less than an hour. You show your skill to the instructor a few times in the pool and then once or maybe twice in the open water during your check out dive and just like that your ready to dive on your own.

Now this same diver takes a trip to Cozumel a few months down the road and finds out currents are real, your air does go a lot quicker at 90ft than at 20ft and there is a lot to think about. Then guess what's next? Nothing, that's it! For most people the final answer is "I tried diving it was ok but I am ready for the next chapter in my life."

The true answer is my training sucked and I wasn't prepared for real life diving so I quit. The diver is not to blame the industry is to blame. Teach people how to dive, tell them they have to spend time in the water to get good at it and truly enjoy it.

Diving isn't cheap, equipment is expensive, training can be long and extensive but when your done you will enjoy it for the rest of your life and you will be safe doing it.

I am not saying I am the perfect diver or that I am better than most the people out there. I just want people to take the sport I love more serious. It is a sport that will offer you a few hours of peace or it can be a sport that will push you to your limits. It's what you want it to be. The problem is that the people that are learning how to dive today are not given a chance to learn the sport well enough to enjoy it therefore they leave it.