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It’s nonsense. I’ve never seen a panicked diver calmly place their mask on their forehead - if they’re removing their mask, it’s getting ripped off and flailed around or dropped. As some have said, the real danger is it accidentally sliding off and dropping it. That’s a pain in the ocean. I...

What a heartbreaking post…my thoughts are with his wife and family.

Divers can exit the water from the swim area, but it’s not really a place for diving, especially if you are there on a busy weekend. If you’re concerned about weights, I’d suggest heading to nearby Fanning Springs State Park and doing a dive there first to check your weights etc - most of the...

As someone in north central Florida, I’m excited for a new dive site that is *not* in southeast Florida/the keys. The panhandle already has great caves (JB, Twin, Hole in the Wall), and the Oriskany, adding this new one will really make it worth a little road trip out there. And, if the ocean...

Martin Edge’s “Underwater Photography” book is incredible - highly, highly recommend. Shoot up, zoom with your fins!

Fanning Springs, Florida - took a group of Discover Scuba Divers out for their first time in the water.

Yep, I teach a large intro-level survey course…students tend to either fail OR make an A/high B. If you don’t come to class and don’t engage with the material, you aren’t going to pass. But the course is set up so that motivated students who do the work can and should walk away with the basic...

It is!!! I’m a Reed alum.

Yep the relative pressure change is greater when shallow, which means gas expands and compresses more rapidly. It’s the relative difference (not the absolute difference) in change in pressure that makes buoyancy “feel hard” when shallow. You’re more stable at depth, even though there’s more...

I love LP50s for doubles and sidemount. I’m mostly diving in caves, so it is normal for us to bring two sets of tanks if we are planning two dives. But. We also cave fill, so double LP50s is like bringing 150cf of gas….considerably more than a single 100cf tank, plus you’ve got that redundancy...

Hey there, you might have better luck on the local Facebook groups. If you're looking for a guide, "Just Wet Rocks" and "Spring Run Diving" both offer guided cavern dives in the High Springs area.

No. I’m full cave/cave DPV etc, dive the Florida caves a few times a week; most of my cave dives are 90-120 minutes, and I have done the vast majority of them wet. A drysuit is nice, but it’s not necessary per se - even in Florida.

I’m a professional educator (not in scuba), and one of the things driven home to me all the time when watching dive instruction is that just because someone is a good diver does *not* mean they will be a good instructor. That is, the dive skills are necessary but insufficient to be a good...

This is a good tip. I am also a petite woman, with a custom suit from DUI - hips keep me from fitting into off-the-rack sizes. I specifically got an older DUI ring system because some of the newer ones (and other brands’) are too broad for those of us with small frames.

Yep, Chris Brock is donating the training, it's a joint prize package from him and Dive Rite. He's been a pretty generous sponsor for the conference; I won a Nomad Ray he donated to the raffle last year. Speaking of which, just bought my conference tickets and one for each of the raffles, see...

Yes, seeing multiple posts about this on other sites from folks unable to register for SB.

I don't think there are any caves that far south suitable for DPV training; most of the more southern caves are exploration projects (or otherwise closed to the public). If you can make it up to the High Springs area, lots of great instructors - Ken Sallot, Bill Oestreich, Joe Bosquez, etc.

I suspect it’s this. I rarely end a dive with cave-filled LP85s below 2000psi and almost never below 1500psi. I find that AL80s in sidemount get quite floaty quite quickly, while LP85s (at least at my end pressures) do not.

Personal preference, but I personally prefer the can lights. I like not having the option to drop my light into the abyss, and the canister keeps my long hose tucked away. I sometimes use the cord to hang my light in convenient spots when my hands are full; handling the cord isn’t a big deal at all.

The long hose setup really evolved in cave diving, where the purpose of the long hose isn't to prevent a panicked diver from ripping the reg out of your mouth, but to allow you to share gas in passages that may require you to move single-file down a passage (that is, one in front of the other)...