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I love the Bare Evoke line, and have their suits in 3mm, 5mm, and 7mm versions. Pricy but awesome suit.

Local here. All the good ocean diving in Florida (that is, worth it for a visitor!) is in Jupiter and south. If you don't want to go do a day of drift diving in Jupiter, you're looking at the north central Florida freshwater springs. There's a good map of them here. I like the springs, and...

Love the gar there! Ginnie isn’t deep enough to notice a big difference in NDLs on nitrox, so if you want to go nitrox, I’d probably just do that.

Ah so cool you got to see the manatees! A lot of my freediver friends like to bring their freedive fins when snorkel drifting Rainbow - it’s VERY shallow in most of the river (3-5’) but does drop down to 20-25’ at several spring vents. And yep, Troy and Royal are still brown. Orange Grove is...

Troy and Royal are currently brown; the Suwannee River is up, and has browned out a lot of the Suwannee springs. You could substitute Orange Grove, assuming conditions hold.

Boots are helpful on single steel tanks (that can’t stand on their own), or if diving on boats/pools that need protection from your tanks. I wouldn’t boot doubles or single aluminum tanks otherwise, but if you do, just be sure to rinse well so it doesn’t build up rust/corrosion etc.

I get cold in those temps too, and have switched to a 5mm. I will add layers to the 5mm at the end of a long dive day, and am starting to chill again.

It’s a pretty standard/basic 7mm…depends entirely on your personal comfort level. I get cold easily and am in a 7mm for anything below 80, and prefer to be dry if it’s much below 75. Others are fine diving wet in a 7mm down into the 50s. I personally dive a Bare Evoke for my 5mm and 7mm suits...

I can’t speak to the Castoro but the Cressi Fast are really nice budget suits - we use them for classes and our research participants. Warm and stretchy enough to fit a wide range of bodies.

Eagle’s Nest (and Buford, nearby) are advanced sites. The Nest is cave only, and an advanced cave at that, Abe Davis or equivalent recommended, at trimix depths. Definitely not a place for open water divers. There’s a good map of the open water dive sites here - in addition to DD, BG, and...

We’ll be there tomorrow; if we head up that way, I’ll keep an eye out for it.

So, I’m local to the Florida springs, and I would say *most* of my buddies are women diving single steel tanks in shorties or 3mm wetsuits. They are not overweighted. But. They also aren’t wearing any additional ditchable weight. I can swim up double HP100s from 30’ deep in a wetsuit in...

Sad to hear - condolences to him and his loved ones.

Depends on your feet. My feet like the Aqualung SuperZip booties. Other brands don’t feel right to me anymore lol. If you can try on at your LDS, do.

Yes - reminds of the shift in stats showing that most cave diving accidents today occur among trained and certified cave divers. Because so many people have training today, and most cave dives are conducted by certified cave divers, most accidents happen to them. But the relative risk of...

When I did my OW training (ten years) ago, we first learned the skill in the pool at about 10’ deep, then did it “for real” on the checkout dives.

Gotcha! Missed your post in there somehow. But agreed.

I prefer to go a little farther up double lines and run a jump to the passage angled back behind you on the left (in blue) and just take that line to the bone, but either way works!

Scuba isn’t allowed in the headspring at Rainbow unfortunately.

I somehow never knew there was a whale bone in there - probably too busy looking at the floor floofs. Anyway, great excuse to go pay them a visit soon!