Welcome to scubaboard and to the DC area. There are lots of divers and diving in the area - if you are interested in meeting local divers, you could check out the Mid-Atlantic Bottom Feeders section on this forum, check out local dive clubs -
Olney Scuba Adventure,
Atlantis Rangers,
Patowmack Divers or
Ocean Rovers or get more involved at a local shop which offers dive opportunities. I'd guess that taking a dm class counts as getting more involved
.
As far as dive sites - there are several local quarries.
Lake Millbrook is the closest.
Lake Rawlings is the warmest and
Dutch Springs is the nicest. There are a couple of other ones like Bainbridge and Guppy Gulch, but I see no reasons to drive there from our area.
There is pretty good ocean diving within 3 to 4 hours from our area - Ocean City, MD or VA Beach and just a little farther north gets you to New Jersey diving. I have done both OC and VA Beach as day trips from Rockville, MD. This is not warm water diving and a very good day has about 40ft of vis - 15-20ft would be more average. But it sure beats quarry diving. There are lots of good wrecks right off our shores. If you like low vis diving, there is also
the U-1105 - MD's very own shipwreck preserve, you should be comfortable in no-vis diving before you try it. There is no need to go too far for ocean diving if you can take water temps in the mid to high 50s - which is warmer than most of the local quarries at depth anyway.
The shop with which I am affiliated (Virginia Scuba) does monthly trips from May to November) to NC which has fabulous diving. We go out of Atlantic Beach on a 40+ft six pack. That is almost always high vis warm water diving.
Anyway, as you can see, there are lots of diving opportunities in the area. In addition to the above mentioned sites, there is a volunteer diving program at
the National Aquarium in Baltimore (our written test for new divers is on Jan 7) and two local underwater archaeology groups,
the Maritime Archaeological and Historical Society and
The Institute for Maritime History.
If you haven't settled on a local shop for your divemaster class, we are having a DM orientation at 1 PM on Jan 6. This is a chance for prospective DM candidates to meet our instructors and get more information about our program. Our DM program is run by a PADI staff instructor and will be followed by an AI class for interested, qualified candidates. If interested, you can pm me for more info, check out our website -
Virginia Scuba or just give us a call at (703) 369-0098.
Hope to see you in the water soon,
Jackie