Every once in a while I like to categorize all my art supplies so I can compare what I’m using now, to ask the stuff I used to use. I’ve started doing the same thing with my scuba gear, now that I’m shortly adding pieces to the collection. It’s cool to have a record, for memory’s sake.
I technically don’t have much, but some of the items are really bulky. My fins and drysuit in particular take up a lot of space. Eventually, I want my own BCD and regulator/first stage & second stage set. I’ve used enough different kinds, that I think I know what I want now… I feel like I’m always changing my mind though!
I think I own mostly Cressi grear, because that’s what’s really available where I’ve lived. I’ve seen some disdain for Cressi in the United States, which really annoys me. It’s a good brand! It doesn’t have the cache of ScubaPro or other “high-end” brands that people like to throw around, so I guess some people look down on it. What a shame! The brand has several distributors in Mexico so it’s really easy to find, and it’s been durable and affordable. I’ll happily use it!
I didn’t have any trouble with my sinuses, just an itchy throat, so I decided to risk it. I never ended up getting a sore throat, but I’m happy I went diving when I did because once the illness really took hold I had a stuffy nose and pretty gunked-up sinuses. I squeezed in that dive just in the nick of time!
Night diving reminds me of cavern diving. It’s very dark– in most cases it’s actually darker than a cavern or cenote. Different animals come out when it’s dark, or the animals you see at day have different behaviors. There were so many octopus on the reef, which I have never seen around here during the day.
The weird stuff swimming around in the water freaked me out a little. They didn’t bite, but they were attracted to our lights and hands and kept bumping into my skin. A couple looked like they were going for my face. I have no idea what they were! Where do they go during the day, and why do they only come out at night? So many questions…
This is a continuation of a previous post which you can access HERE!
>Are the scuba / wet suits comfortable?
Not really, to be honest! A wetsuit should be snug and slightly uncomfortable, but not actually uncomfortable. It’s important to have a close fit because of the way wetsuits work:
A wetsuit is aptly named, because you get wet wearing it. Neoprene, what wetsuits are made of, is a decent insulating material. When you wear a wetsuit a layer of water gets trapped between your skin and the neoprene. your body heat warms up the water which in turn helps keep you warm. You don’t want that heated water to get out, so you want the wetsuit to be a bit tight.
Neoprene compresses under the pressure of the water as you go deeper and deeper, so an effective wetsuit is going to be a bit tighter than you might like. It should NOT be super uncomfortable, but as you start diving and the neoprene compresses it’ll become a lot more comfortable. It should under no circumstances be painful to wear, but if a wetsuit is too small you won’t be able to get it on anyway.
>Can plus sized folk learn to dive?
Yes they can, and I’ve gone diving with a lot of plus-sized people! Some of the most confident divers I’ve been around have been large men and women. I’m a skinny girl myself and I actually consider it a bit of a detriment for this particular sport…!
Diving can be enjoyed by anybody. This isn’t the exact answer to this question, but it gives me the opportunity to talk about disabilities and scuba.
I have a back issue, and despite not being able to do a lot of physical activities on land, I am fully able to dive. I need help when I need to have anything on my back like a heavy tank and weights, but when I’m underwater all the weight and pressure I would normally experience from lifting/carrying on land is gone. Others with more drastic health conditions and injuries– an amputee, for example– also have great success diving. There are lots of programs out there specifically designed to teach physically disabled individuals how to dive. Being able to move around freely in the water, when you can’t on land, is absolutely amazing.
And so on that note, different people with different body types can absolutely go diving. In my experience, people who have more body fat will stay warmer than someone with less. That doesn’t seem like a big deal, but that’s a huge deal. Water sucks away body heat about 20 times faster than air does, so when you’re a skinny-minnie like me, you practically freeze in relatively warm water. I personally think being cold on a dive is one of life’s worst tortures…
People with more body mass/fat can and do maneuver underwater just as well as smaller people. When you dive, you don’t swim like you would on the surface of the water. It’s a pretty slow, relaxed activity. You don’t have to be Michael Phelps– you just have to know how to stay horizontal and kick your fins smoothly. Anyone can do that with a little instruction and practice.
If a girl with a bad back and no body fat can dive, anyone can haha! The one thing I can think of that may make things difficult is equipment sizing. A dive shop might not carry a wetsuit that’s big enough, but as time goes on more and more accommodations are made to be available for as many different people as possible. If you’re a plus-sized person and you want to dive regularly, consider investing in your own wetsuit, boots, and fins. BCDs are very adjustable so that’s rarely been a problem in my experience.
>…How do you breathe??? Is it like regular breathing on land? Is it like snorkeling where you have to be really careful not to get water in your breathing equipment? Is it a secret third thing involving an ancient ritual or something??
IT IS A SECRET ANCIENT RITUAL! Haha just kidding!
Or am I…?
This is a question I get a lot. When you diver, you have a tank of air strapped to your back. The air from the tank flows through a hose, and at the end of the hose is a mouthpiece called a regulator. The air in the tank has a lot of distance to cover before it gets to your mouth, so when you take a breath from the regulator there’s a little bit of resistance. Some people get nervous that there’s any resistance, but I’ve found that once those people get underwater they get so distracted by everything happening they forget about their fears.
You really just breathe normally from the regulator. The regulator is designed to fail open, which means that if there’s any problem, the regulator opens and keeps supplying air rather than closing and restricting the air flow.
Now, if that does happen– a free flow occurs– then the air comes out of the regulator really quickly! It’s too fast to keep in your mouth. You should have enough air in your tank to get safely to the surface, and there’s a way to tip your head against the regulator to sip the air when its free flowing.
>I’ve recently heard about dives being done at shipwrecks in the Canadian Arctic (the wrecks of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror in Nunavut), and I was wondering how divers would deal with such cold water temperatures. (Presumably they’re doing it in the summer to avoid the ice, but still, I wonder how they aren’t suffering from hypothermia.)
Alright, first off, those are some hardcore ship names. Although I feel like naming a ship Terror and Erebus is downright bad luck…
In one of the questions above I explained how a wetsuit works. There’s another type of suit called a drysuit. It’s also aptly named: you stay dry wearing it. Unlike a wetsuit, no water enters. Your body is completely sealed away and protected from touching the water. There are seals on the neck, wrists, and ankles (some suits like mine incorporate waterproof socks), so only your head, hands, and sometimes feet are exposed to the elements. This keeps you much warmer than a wetsuit. Air as an insulator is much more effective than water. Plus, you can wear layers in the drysuit because they won’t get wet!
In the case of the HHMS Erebus and Terror, the water is so cold divers use specially-made drysuits. These drysuits have attachment hoses that pump warm water through the suit, keeping the divers warm. That sounds like absolute luxury to me! As one diver says in the article, however, the first few minutes are miserable. Even with gloves, boots, insulation, and warm water… that ocean is not fun to be in. Sounds like it doesn’t matter what time of the year it is.
I told my friends online, “ask me scuba questions!” and they sent me some really good ones. This is a long one, folks!
>What’s your least favorite part of prepping for a dive?
I always feel like I’m forgetting a piece of equipment. At this point, I have almost all my own gear which makes it really easy to set everything up the evening before the dive. Despite that, I still always get this nagging worry in the back of my mind every morning as I’m driving to a shop, that I’ve left something important behind. I’ve got a pretty good track record now, so I don’t know why I worry!
Honestly though, my least part of prepping is setting up the dive with the dive shop. It’s the human interaction, getting information, making plans, changing plans, asking for information and not getting it… overall it’s been fine, but people can get really weird really fast. I just want to dive, man! I don’t want any drama!
>Did you have assumptions about scuba diving that changed since you began diving yourself?
As a kid I assumed diving was only for professionals. I didn’t understand that the vast majority of people who dive are doing it recreationally! Scuba was reserved for conservationists, military, filmmakers, etc. When my dad asked if I wanted to learn to dive, I didn’t know what in the world to expect.
>I know scuba divers try to maintain neutral buoyancy, but how do you know whether or not you’re at neutral buoyancy?
First let’s define the terms:
Buoyancy: The force a liquid puts on an object in the liquid, that pushes the object up. If an object is less dense than the liquid, it will float. If the object is more dense than the liquid, it will sink. If the object has the same density as the liquid, it will neither float nor sink. Buoyancy is the tendency of an object to float or rise when in a fluid.
Buoyancy is dependent on how dense an object is, and how much water it displaces.
Positive Buoyancy: You are floating. If you’re on the surface of the water, you are staying there. If you’re underwater, you’re moving up towards the surface. You are less dense than the water.
Neutral Buoyancy: You are neither floating nor sinking. If you’re underwater, you are staying still. You are not going up or down. You are at the same density as the water.
Negative Buoyancy: You are sinking. If you’re on the surface of the water, you are going under. If you’re underwater, you’re moving down towards the bottom. You are denser than the water.
The obvious thing to first check when diving is to see if you’re floating up or sinking down. If you’re moving up, you might have air in your BCD (the flotation vest). Air makes you less buoyant. If you’re sinking, you probably don’t have enough air in your BCD. By adding and removing a little bit of air at a time from your BCD you can get to neutral buoyancy.
Many divers have a dive watch or a dive computer with a depth gauge built in, or an independent depth gauge. As you scuba and adjust your buoyancy using the BDC (adding or subtracting air), keep an eye on the depth gauge to see if you’re still floating or sinking. When you’re underwater sometimes you don’t have a reference point to see if you’re moving up/down in the water column– if you’re diving in the open ocean with no bottom in sight, you might not realize how much you’re moving around! Having a depth gauge is critical.
Being neutral while diving has a lot of advantages. You can control your position in the water better, which helps you get close to things like coral reefs or rocks. Then you can get a better look at the interesting little creatures hiding there! Being neutrally buoyant helps your trim– your position when you’re horizontal– and that helps you swim forward better in the water. That in turn makes you work less hard, which keeps your breathing slow and steady. You use less air! This is all why learning how to get to neutral buoyancy while diving is so important. It improves your overall diving and experience.
>How did you learn to swim? 🙂
I was enrolled in swimming lessons at a young age. In a way, it was a safety requirement: I grew up near the ocean, so swimming was a particularly important skill to have. Knowing even just how to tread water as a kid could help save me in case anything happened. It was also a nice thing to know how to do when on holiday! Hotel swimming pools are the best growing up. Now as an adult I’m constantly thinking, “Who’s peed in this pool…? Am I gonna pick up warts?!”
As an adult you can also sign up for swimming lessons at your local pool, and I highly recommend it. I worked as a lifeguard for a summer in college and I saw plenty of adults learning to swim. It’s kind of a scary undertaking so I’m quite proud when I see people giving it their best try!
In order to become certified as a diver, you do need to know how to swim. You don’t have to be a good swimmer, but there are a couple swim tests you have to pass. Here are the requirements for the PADI Open Water Diver course:
Swim 200 meters/yards with mask, fins, and snorkel without stopping. No time limit.
Float and tread water for 10 minutes using any method. You cannot touch the bottom or sides of the pool.
Once you’ve become a certified diver, you don’t have to perform another swim test unless you want to become a professional (Divemaster).
>What’s your favorite encounter with an animal during a dive? I’d love to hear your stories!
The latest crazy animal encounter involved a lionfish. As a warning, the following story does involve spearfishing and an animal being hunted, so if you don’t like that kind of content skip down to the next questions.
Lionfish are invasive where I live, and divers sometimes hunt them. My instructor at this time had brought his speargun with him on a training dive, and I was keeping an eye out for the fish. We ended up finding one, and the instructor speared it. I had never seen someone use a speargun in real life before and I have to admit it was fascinating, if morbid.
Lionfish are surprisingly hardy. The fish was a fighter, and even after when we thought it was dead, it renewed it’s efforts to escape! My instructor was trying to feed the lionfish to an eel we had found, and removed the lionfish from his spear to do so. The dang fish practically came back to life and started swimming towards me and the other diver next to me.
Lionfish, in addition to being invasive, are venomous! They have big, beautiful spines on their backs that can deliver a nasty venom to anything that dares try to eat it. Or… to a couple divers it’s angry at. I didn’t want to get stung by a lionfish, and I certainly couldn’t let my dive buddy get stung, so I stopped it useing the only safe thing immediately available to me in the moment:
I stomped it with my fin. Whack whack whack!!!! I tried kicking it away a few times, then pinned it under my fin when it wouldn’t give up. My instructor came over and speared it again, then waved it in the eel’s face one more time. The eel finally chomped down on the lionfish, and the problem was taken care of.
I still feel bad about smacking the lionfish. Yes, they’re bad for reefs because they eat native fish and outcompete everything in the area, leading to loss of biodiversity. But I contributed to suffering. Death is a natural part of the ecosystem and animals hunt and eat other animals, but I don’t think most animals are getting beaten up by a diver’s fin.
The sargassum stink is bad. It’s not all day, but I smell it for at least part of the day every day. And I’m a 10 minute drive from the water! A lot of tourism in this area is dependent upon the beach, and if the beaches reek of rotten eggs, people won’t visit.
Courtesy of Riviera Maya News and Events
You can see in the image above, the sargassum–when not being removed by beach workers practically 24/7– piles up in a significant amount along beaches.
What can I say! I like bats.
IDC stands for Instructor Development Course.
We dove The Pit first, even though according to the handy graphic on the right, you’re supposed to begin with Level 1 and progress through harder and harder cenotes. I initially asked the dive shop if I could join an easy, beginner cenote… but when I told them my certification level and number of dives, I got the impression that they figured I’d be fine starting in a more advanced cenote. I’m happy to say they ended up being right.
I can’t believe how clear the water was. It’s so clear, you forget you’re underwater. It really feels like you’re flying through space.
I wish I could do the experience justice, but it’s hard to capture the weird beauty on paper. You kind of have to experience it!
Entering the halocline is very sudden, there’s no gradient. I blinked, and suddenly the world was pixelated. If I held my hand up about 4 inches from my face I could read my computer– otherwise, the salty water reduced everything to grainy colors and vague shapes. Having unique, or brightly-colored gear might be a good thing to invest in…! It’s not very thick though, so you aren’t in the halocline layer for long enough for it to be a true safety issue.
I was marveling at everything when I saw a huge commotion to my right– tons of divers were waving their flashlights at something near the bottom, getting everyone’s attention. There was a guy swimming right on the sulfur cloud, dragging his fin tips. What struck me as odd was that nobody went down to try and pull him up or physically get his attention.
We had been told, under No Circumstances should you touch the cloud. Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200, Do Not Touch The Cloud.
Why exactly? We were assured it isn’t a hazard to anyone (I dunno about that, but okay), but up until 6-8 years ago divers were allowed to actually pass through the cloud and descend to the bottom, or swim on/in it. The cloud ended up being agitated to the point where it rose, filing more of The Pit. This reduced visibility and made the available area much smaller. Smaller space means fewer people can dive, which means fewer people visiting, which means less money is being made. And when it comes to money, people can get very serious.
Most cenotes are on private land, and often owned by collectives of indigenous locals. Entrance fees can be their main source of income, so anything that threatens their livelihood is bad news. The Pit was closed temporarily in the hope that the sulfur cloud would eventually sink back down to its pre-agitation levels…
And thankfully, it did! Since that incident, it’s strictly forbidden to agitate the sulfur layer. Like I noted above, it’s taken so seriously there was talk of calling the police. Photos were taken of the offending individual, which were shared among the staff, so I have a feeling this guy got banned.
We last talked about the Gear Exchange, and how I initially failed it.
“Instead of exchanging masks, divers remove and replace their own masks.”
The PADI Instructor Manual had the info! That’s official, baby! And with just that one little change, I felt much more calm. I successfully completed the Gear Exchange the second time through, and it was shockingly easy when I had the right mindset.
With the hard part over, it was time to work on some other tasks.
I had no instruction on how to create the Emergency Plan or the Map. There’s also not a lot of guidance online!
Ah, Rescue Scenario #7! This is an assessment for Rescue Diver too. When I did it over ten years ago, I had to pull a fellow diver onto shore. This time, I had to tow the diver to a boat. I can barely remember my Rescue Diver training, but I feel like this time the assessment was so much easier.
I’m never going to live down the fact that I couldn’t tie the damn bowline. I was doing so well, but it was like all my practice and skill disappeared the moment I got underwater. I got water in my brain or something hah! And don’t even get me started on the 5 Point Ascent/Descent…
And the struggle didn’t end there. The next part of the course felt like a complete disaster. Nothing I did was right, and anything I thought I did well wasn’t good enough. Endless issues, endless frustrations. The stress kept building until it basically turned into a negative feedback loop: the instructor would get stressed, which would make me stressed, which would make the instructor stressed, which made me stressed… you get the idea. It was miserable, to be completely honest.
Oh boy!!! This is a long one because there’s so much that happened and so much to say about it.
A dive shop I visited told me about their Divemaster program, and I figured, why not do it now when I have the time and the motivation! Divemaster used to be a dream of mine as a kid, but as an adult I put the idea on the back burner . I have some chronic pain issues, so working a very physical job was probably not in the cards for me. I also had been enjoying just taking Specialty classes, and didn’t feel like I needed a professional rating.
Despite my many reservations, I decided to go for it. I thought if anything, it would make me a better diver. Plus, if I got in enough dives, it might be a cheap way to fill up more of my logbook!
Now that I’m done with the course I have mixed feelings about my training. Spoiler Alert: I passed! But I didn’t enjoy the experience. We had to figure out the training schedule as we progressed through the course, which made everything difficult because we had such a limited timeframe. As much as I like to think I’m spontaneous, I’ve discovered I learn a lot better when academic activities are streamlined and mapped out in advance (as much as possible).
All things considered I did get the certification, and after a lot of thought and rest… I think I did indeed become a better diver. And I did get in a ton of dives for cheap once I did the math.
Divemasters, once certified, can run and assist several programs. I have personally never met an instructor who had a divemaster as an assistant–it’s probably not cost effective– but that is a career option. Another career option is leading dives as a solo guide, and that’s been my experience.
Equipment! I love scuba equipment. Every time I walk into a shop, I want to buy *everything* even if I don’t need it. I just love all the tools! I needed to buy a few things for the course, and my wallet wept… I mean good grief, who knew a simple dive light could cost so much! Why is my beloved hobby so expensive!?
My course experience was unfortunately marred by some weird behavior from a potential instructor. Happily, I was able to switch to another instructor, but the last-minute nature of the change, the drama, and the fallout contributed to an already stressful learning environment. It’s a great reminder to really check the people who are going to be taking care of you. Plus, never accept bad treatment!
I found the eLearning to be pretty easy. The final module covers the harder topics, but you get access to reference material for the final exam. I was afraid the test was going to be extremely hard because everyone I talked to spoke about it fearfully. I’m terrible at taking tests, but with a little dedicated study I passed with 95%. Not too shabby.
Like I said, it’s an expensive hobby! There are so many costs associated with this course that aren’t talked about–I could barely find info online!– so if you’re considering taking the course yourself I hope this cost breakdown helps you plan/budget.
Nobody EVER believes me when I tell them I need extra weight. I’m buoyant! I’ve had a surprising number of Divemasters and Instructors comment that it looks unprofessional to wear a lot of weight. I think that’s dumb. I’d rather look unprofessional than not be able to get under the water, or shoot up to the surface at the end of a dive.
Ah… the gear exchange! Nightmare!
I do not panic under water. I haven’t ever been in a life-or-death situation that I can remember, but I really don’t panic when I’m diving. This is the first time I’ve done that! I was overexerting my lungs, clearing the ill-fitting mask, then having to hold my breath… it was a recipe for disaster.
For all that I internally panicked though, I somehow kept it together enough that the instructor didn’t realize I was panicking at all. According to him, I was very calm and everything was going great when I suddenly signaled to abort the dive. He was so confused on the surface.
Oof, I cried my eyes out after. I felt like I could barely breathe the rest of the day. It’s upsetting to me that I can consciously understand that I am not in danger, but have my body do its own thing and decide there’s a life-threatening emergency happening. I learned some interesting things about myself that day.
ow… I was trying to show another diver something cool on the reef, and I didn’t even feel my hand touch anything! There was just a sharp, painful burn on my finger. I thought it was a jellyfish at first, but when I examined the wound later it looked like a nasty 2nd degree burn. I correctly guessed fire coral was the culprit.
Fire coral is horrible! The pain lasted a week, went away, and then came back worse than ever. Sea water, isopropyl alcohol, steroid cream, and vinegar are all said to help the burn but honestly nothing worked as effectively as I hoped it would! With time it’s definitely healing, but wow. That sucked.
Divers aren’t supposed to wear gloves on this particular reef, but I think I could have gotten away with it without getting in trouble.
I ended up not wearing gloves because… I was doing my Divemaster course! I was having enough trouble managing everything going on around me, plus attaching/reattaching the 6 different tools clipped to my BCD that I had to constantly remove and use… it was just easier without gloves.
Well, it made handling my tools and BCD a little easier, but was it really worth it when the trade off is a multi-week burn…?
I visited Playa del Carmen in the Riviera Maya (Mexico) for a few days, and saw a dive shop advertising bull shark dives. It was a little expensive– the cost of two dives in one– but it was well worth it. The sharks get in your personal space, which I loved. I would feel something jostling my fins, and every once in a while a shark would cruise overhead a little too close and bump my head.
Something else was getting up close and personal too…!
This is a crazy one, folks! I had some scuba theory I had to learn, and I think drawing it all out helpped me remember the principles.
I accidentally drew on both sides of this paper. Marker bleeds through this brand of drawing pad so no colors this time!
I didn’t even get to the Haldanean Model before I ran out of time. I had a limited amount of time I could study, and drawing was just taking too long!! Modern recreational dive planning tables are based on a LOT of research and theory developed over decades. Haldane was a man who theorized that different organs in our bodies absorbed and released gas at different rates, when put under pressure. Lungs absorb a lot of gas fast; brains are the opposite and take up gas relatively slowly.
Ol’ Hal (that’s my nickname for him now) made a chart and some calculations for determining how fast a diver will become saturated with gas (nitrogen gas for example) and how quickly the diver will release that gas.
This information isn’t very practical. Nobody needs Haldeanean (how many different ways will I incorrectly spell this…?) tissue compartment gas saturation tables to dive. You can use your dive computer and/or dive tables that someone else already programed and designed.
It’s probably useful to know because understanding the theory and details behind why something works can help a person understand the whole thing better. Or maybe someone at PADI really likes Ol’ Hal and doesn’t want his name to be forgotten. Maybe it’s both!
