Does commercial ruin recreational?

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Ready4Launch

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Location
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For those who are commercial divers, do you even do any recreational diving? Do you no longer enjoy recreational diving because you're underwater so much already and wish to breathe fresh air and see the sun?

Second question ... is the job market for offshore CDs and welders still in the doldrums?
 
For myself, diving commercially absolutely ruined my recreational diving. From my time in the GOM to working inland, the last thing I wanted to do was sport dive. In the winter months here in Maine, I would scallop and urchin dive, for a number of years that was the only time I would use my recreational kit. I
no longer dive hard hats or urchin dive and my interest in recreational diving has grown immensely. It’s gotten to the point that I’ve become borderline obsessed with SCUBA....
 
My friend, @DanaHunt, does both. He's passionate about the water whether he's wearing a facemask or hardhat.
 
For those who are commercial divers, do you even do any recreational diving? ...
I understand your post is mostly referring to UW welders, but there are plenty of us commercial divers in other non-welding dives. Just for me it's work, week in and week out from August thru March. I take the whole month of April off not touching water and just tear down all my gear to do maintenance or rebuild / replace items. During May to July I'm a recreational diver but only go out a 1/3rd as often. Sometimes I'll bring a camera but mostly just turn sideways and get off the main sites to explore and take notes. It's also a time to take dive vacations and jump in a cave or go keys diving with a tiny AL80 and enjoy looking around.
 
Some of the commercial work I did way back in the 1980s was harvesting spiny lobster for export to the USA. We only exported the tails, so the head/body of the bugs was leftover for our nutritional need. I ate bugs boiled, broiled, grilled, chilled, in a house, with a mouse, in a box, with a fox..... absolutely ruined lobster for me. If I have eaten three lobster in the intervening three decades, that would be stretching it.

I still love sport/recreational diving, just not too enamored with bugs anymore, so yea, commercial work ruined at least one aspect of recreational scuba for me.
 
I dive for research, which is a far cry from commercial but is still "work diving." When I was doing a lot of diving for work, I wouldn't dive for fun in cold water. When I'm diving less for work, I'll dive more for fun.

I think diving is part of who I am. My ideal death is being eaten by a tiger shark (or other tropical marine predator) while diving at age 90.
 
When I was working as a commercial diver, the last thing I wanted to do on my day off was be underwater.

A lot of us got the attitude that if it wasn’t paying at least $500-1000+ per day, there was no way we were getting into gear.

I was pretty friggin happy when I traded my SL27 hard hat to an ITT for a BUNCH of Cave and Tech Instructor classes. I don’t miss any aspect of the commercial world at all.
 
When I was working as a commercial diver, the last thing I wanted to do on my day off was be underwater.

A lot of us got the attitude that if it wasn’t paying at least $500-1000+ per day, there was no way we were getting into gear.

I was pretty friggin happy when I traded my SL27 hard hat to an ITT for a BUNCH of Cave and Tech Instructor classes. I don’t miss any aspect of the commercial world at all.
I still like the $1250 a day. Price went up when you were elsewhere.
 
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