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Your brain is your life support. Gear is just tools. I've bought gear new. I've bought gear used. None of our little three person dive team has died yet, nor have we had any significant gear failures. ScubaBoard has a thriving used gear marketplace. I think that says a lot about the safety of...

I'm not really a fan of equipment solutions to training problems. In the situation you describe, Sue or Kim would have dumped their air, gone head down, and finned down to the bottom to retrieve their pocket. How did her weight pocket happen to just fall out? To remove the weight pouch on...

Perhaps you should re-read the original question. It wasn't about SAC rates, it was about NDL.

That is correct. Neither Hotel Cozumel or the southern resorts are fancy. They're mid-level resorts.

Movement of gas into the tissues is not a function of respiratory rate, it is a function of the difference between the partial pressures. As you descend, the partial pressure of the gases you're breathing goes up. As it goes up, the gases move into the tissues faster, until the partial pressure...

El Presidente and the Cozumel Palace, with our preference between those two going to the Palace. We also like the Hotel Cozumel, if you want to stay in town, and Secrets Aura or Sunscape Sabor if you want to go south to the beaches. For diving, it's Aldora. Always.

I don't think four-a-day is excessive, depending on the profile. Four dives off Bonaire, where you can easily have a wonderful dive in 40-60' isn't going to result in a great deal of nitrogen loading. Especially if you dive nitrox. I'm talking shore dives, of course. Or a liveaboard. We did 10...

It doesn't really matter, because you're making a big mistake if you think the TSA goons actually know the TSA rules. I've been told "You must put those batteries in carry on" and "You cannot take [the same batteries] in carry on" by different TSA goons.

When you get down to it a good back inflate, like the LadyHawk, is an awful lot like one of the "fancy" BP/W setups with the padded harness. The only real difference is that you can't swap the wing to use doubles.

I put my lights, regs, and computers in carry on. I always, 100% of the time, get pulled out for "random" special attention. My carry on is always opened and usually swabbed while I am given a free colonoscopy and a good groping. On one occasion, I was told to remove each of the regs from it's...

Aldora can accommodate both DIN and yoke regulators. When you check in, they collect your gear, and they'll note what sort of regulators you're using and provide tanks to match.

A BP/W is certainly an option for pretty much anybody. Sue is fairly well endowed, and finds her SP LadyHawk quite comfortable.

This. There are only two times I can think of off hand when you actually need a knife while diving; braining something you've shot, or sticking it in the sand to use as an anchor in really strong current. For everything else, a cheap pair of trauma shears ($5-6 on Amazon) and a line cutter such...

Depends on the op. We dive with Aldora Divers on Cozumel more than any other shop. Some of the staff there are familiar with tech gear. Some are not. Those that are, set up my gear. Those that are not, leave it alone without the need for me to say anything. I check my gear regardless. I did, one...

We will be there at roughly the same time, staying at Coco Beach.

Add us to the list for the half-off coupons! :) We love the Aldora folks. During our recent trip, we did have one 62 minute dive (particularly heavy currents...) but other than that, our typical dive profile was about 80 minutes, with max depth of 100-110'. The longest was 88, and we called it...

Well, no... the cenotes are generally low- to mid- 70's. I hope that was a typo. :) All of the cenote tours that are available to OW certified divers are carefully planned so that divers stay within the cavern area. You are always within sight of outside light. Most are exit points, and those...

We've done about 100 dives in the Cancun area, 40-50 around PDC, and a couple hundred off Cozumel. Cancun has wonderful diving. The reefs are healthy, vibrant, and active, with tons of fish. Rays, turtles, sharks, schools of 30-40 barracuda, swarms of various reef fish... The reefs are shallow...

For us: No pickup at the resort pier, and a much longer boat ride to the usual dive sites.

This would definitely fall into the category of cutting off your nose to spite your face. Four people spend $400/pp at your US dive shop to get certified. Perhaps 80% of the course (class work and pool sessions) is done in the US, so about $80/pp or $320 of it is for work done in Mexico. So...