Be A Diver

[fisheyeview]

What made you become a diver? Tell your story here.

 

[fisheyeview]

Like a lot of people from my generation, I grew up watching Jacques Cousteau, and reruns of Sea Hunt. I would watch in fascination as the crew of the Calypso explored the depths, or Mike Nelson fought some battle beneath the waves. It wasn’t until later in life that I learned that Sea Hunt was shot in the springs outside of Ocala Florida.

I drove my parent’s nuts with talk of diving the oceans of the world. I think my dad finally had enough. One day my dad arranged for the son of his secretary to come over to the house with his gear. Doug was a dive instructor for the Navy. So, at the age of six, I was strapped to a steal tank with a double hose regulator, and lowered into the pool by the valve. My dad thought that this would satisfy me.

A couple of times a year Doug would come over and we would dive together. We worked our way up to diving the lake I lived on.

I kept pestering my parents about it. Finally, at the age of 15 which was the minimum age at the time, I took my PADI Basic Scuba class. My certification dives were on the Benwood Wreck & French Reef in Key Largo. I bought all my gear before I started the class.

I went through a lot of different hobbies as a kid. I never stuck with any of them for very long. I’m sure that my parents looked at all of my gear, and thought “Great! More crap for the garage after he gets bored with it.” Well, I never did get bored with it. 30+ years, and thousands of dives later, I still love to dive. Since I was fortunate enough to have been born and raised in South Florida I get to dive year round.

 

[rstofer]

When I was young (12 or so), I watched Sea Hunt and I would sometimes see those old 2 hose regulators and tanks at the sporting goods store. There was no money for such things way back then and no real path for a kid to get certified. So, I did a little skin diving around La Jolla when I was 16 or 17.

I took a position in Singapore back in '87 and I couldn't transplant ANY of my hobbies (dirt bike racing, hydroplane racing, shooting sports). So I was wandering around, bored, and I stumbled into a dive shop. Within a month of my arrival I was working on NAUI OW I. During the next 4 months I took OW I, OW II, Advanced Open Water and Rescue.

I made 13 dive trips to Malaysia, spent a week on a liveaboard near Phuket and spent another week in the Maldives over the next 15 months. I was wet nearly every week.

Richard

 

[captain]

As a young boy in the early 1950's I was fascinated by anything related to water. Every summer my parents would spend a week at the beach and I always had my kiddie mask and fins swimming around in the surf. I would read all the National Geographic articles about Cousteau's adventures. We lived about 30 miles from downtown New Orleans and had to go into the city to shop. There was a store not far from where we parked the car called Roland's Army Surplus and Sporting Goods. The owner, Roland Reviere was a diver and one of the very first to bring scuba gear to New Orleans. He sold U S Divers gear and everytime we went to the city I would go to the store and stare at all the equipment and read the catalogs.
My brother who was 15 years older than me had built a swimming pool at his home in about 1955, it was the first and only pool in town at the time. I had graduated from my kiddie mask and fins to a real Squale mask, snorkel and Churchill fins and would spend hours in the pool with them. In 1957 I convinced my parents to let me buy a tank and regulator and I bought a Voit VR-2 with green hoses and mouthpiece and a Voit tank with green webbing harness with my odd job money. I spent many more hours in the pool practicing clearing hoses and mask, doing ditch and don, all the things in the instruction manual.
From the pool I went to Lake Ponchatrain which was a couple of miles from home. It was great to be diving in a real body of water even if visibility was only 6 or 8 feet on the best days and only 15 feet deep but it was real diving where I could see fish and crabs and maybe stumble across a long loss wreck or other treasures.
I graduated from high school in 1962 and my brother had a general hardware and sporting goods store and I went to work for him. I put in a diving department and became a U S Divers and Voit Swim Master dealer.
In 1967 I bought my first boat, an old 18 footer that opened up new diving opportunities such as the gulf oil rigs. Not being able to rent tanks without a certification card while on a trip to Puerto Rico to visit relatives lead me to taking the YMCA scuba course in 1970.
In 1969 with a new wife and a child on the way the store could not support two families so I took a job with Union Carbide Corporation at its' local chemical plant but I remained part time at the store running the scuba department until my brother closed the store in 1973. I kept the left over stock which included a DA Aqua Master double hose regulator that is now converted to a Phoenix, and the U S Divers Cyclone air compressor which I still use.
I put away the two hose regulators in the early 70's and made the switch to a single hose. I spent the 70's and the early 80's diving the Florida keys, Destin and the Louisiana oil rigs with a trip or two to Cozumel.
In 1983 my diving buddy and I decided to start a dive charter boat business out of Grand Isle, Louisiana. We ran the business until 1988 but working a regular job plus the charter boat took a toll. I had become somewhat burned out with diving and working at two jobs and for 9 years I had no desire to dive. In 1997 my wife and I went on a cruise to the Caribbean for our 30th wedding anniversary and I decided to bring my scuba gear along. That trip jump stated me diving again.
About 4 years ago while surfing the net I stumbled across vintage diving and as they say the rest is history. I dusted off my Aqua Master and other old gear that had been in the closet for 30+ years. I am now active in the vintage diving community and most all of my diving is done with vintage double hose regulators.
I

 

[Lobstah Slayah]

I've always wanted to dive since I was a kid. I never could afford it. I've done a lot of snorkling but never took up scuba. This year I figured it was now or never. I signed up for OW class and since August have been on 20 dives. I'm glad I didn't wait any longer. It's my new passion in life!

 

[scubadiver888]

I always liked the water but as a swimmer. I'd seen movies and shows with scuba divers but never an opportunity to go diving myself. One year there was a tank at the Canadian National Exhibition with two scuba divers in it. The crowd was so large I couldn't get close. I guess there was always a thought in the back of my mind that I might like to try scuba diving but it just didn't present itself.

I was never much of a traveller but my fiancée (now wife) was. She introduced me to the Caribbean and all-inclusive resorts. The resort she picked had an intro to scuba diving (now called Discover Scuba Diving). Pool session was free, open water portion was $50. Feeling adventurous I gave it a try. The pool session was a lot of fun. The open water session almost resulted in serious injury.

For two years I had ABSOLUTELY no intention of doing scuba diving.

For our honeymoon I spared no expense and booked a super-all-inclusive resort in Jamaica. It was great. It also had a 5 star PADI dive centre on site. Discover Scuba Diving was totally free. My wife, who does not go into the water, knew how much I liked being in the water and how much I liked the pool session previously. She encouraged me for two days to just watch other people take the Discover Scuba Diving course.

Listening to the instructor he was much more serious. He explained things and actually made me realize how little training I got the first time plus how much worse things could have been. I did the right things for all the wrong reasons previously.

On the third day I gave it a try. I told myself I was just going to do the pool session. I didn't tell the instructor I had previous experience; I was afraid he might think he doesn't need to spend as much time with me. He was very reassuring and taught me way more than he really needed to for a Discover Scuba course.

I was feeling so good during the pool session plus they assured all of us there would be two instructors and a diver master for a group of 6 (i.e. one DM or higher for each two students). Everything that went wrong with the first attempt could not go wrong here. Remember that they don't know about my first attempt; their standard operating procedures were extremely safe.

After my second open water I was hooked. I knew this instructor would give me the right knowledge to be able to stay safe. I told him I was there for two weeks and he said for $250 he could certify me as PADI OW.

For the next few years I continued to travel to the Caribbean. Every time we went my wife was sure to book a resort were I could do a little scuba diving. I'm now at a point were a little scuba diving is not enough. I'll dive twice a day almost every day when I travel now plus I've taken training locally and started diving at home as well.

I'm now trying to pick out which island I want to retire to so I can work part time at the local dive shop.

It is amazing how the right instructor can make all the difference.

Thanks to Haldane 'Spider' Henry (my OW instructor; somewhere in Jamaica) and Candace Marston (my current instructor; Happy Diver's Den) for making diving the best thing ever! And for my wife for making me do it!

 

[ScubaSam]

A colleague found out I was headed to Australia and New Zealand for a 3 week vacation, asked if I was going to dive the GBR, at that time I’d never even snorkeled before then so I said no I’m not a diver. He told me about the Discover Scuba course so when I was at the GBR I tried it. I freaked out at the first attempt because I did not trust the reg to give me oxygen, water was coming into my mask (I wear contacts) and the sound of breathing underwater terrified me so instructor called the dive, told me to snorkel and try again at the next site. I suited up for the next site determined not to return to the states and tell everyone that I chickened out of diving GBR. So at the next site I was more determined, pushing pass the weirdness of hearing myself breathe underwater and getting the Darth Vader voice outta my head saying “Luke, I am our father” and I relaxed and I FELL IN LOVE with the coral and the marine life. The assault of brilliant colors from the coral and the marine life was breathtaking. It was like unveiling a curtain into new unexplored world. I have said this before somewhere on other threads, diving is as close to going to another world without actually leaving Earth. Scuba humbles me and shatters all my preconceived notions about my abilities and myself.

When I got OW, I said, that is it, I never need to go pass 60 ft. and I will only be a warm water vacation diver. So during my first post OW dive vacation, in Curacao where the viz is 100+ft., I found myself at 85 ft (no lectures here, please) because there is more to explore and decided to get AOW and EANx so I can do wrecks, go deeper, have less residual nitrogen and more importantly have the skills to do this. I did my AOW in Costa Rica where the currents and surges make you feel like you’re in a washing machine sloshing around the ocean and I LOVED IT.

Thought I would be afraid of night diving, but it ended up being my most favorite dive during AOW certification. Thought I would never do cold, fresh water diving, but during a trip to Riviera Maya, I did three cenote dives and again FELL IN LOVE with caverns and now want to eventually work up to cave certification. Last month, this self-proclaimed warm water vacation diver brought her first 7mm wetsuit, 5/3 hooded vest and started diving locally, with Dive NY, in cold, 0 – poor viz, water and LOVED IT, and still LOVE IT. I will get rescue certified at the end of this year and after that, “the ocean is the limit”. Therefore, in my diving future I have no limitations only possibilities: dry suit, doubles, full cave, tech, who knows where scuba will lead me. I am in love with scuba and I hope I never stop falling more in love with scuba.

As a side note, I have to give a shout-out to Scuba Board because without this forum I would have zero dive buddies. No one in my circle of friends or family dives nor wants to take up diving so thank you SB for bringing so many wonderful new diving buddies and friends into my life. I am a lucky diver, indeed.

 

[rollerboi]

The first death would be my own. Well, metaphorically speaking. I got married. We went to Playa Del Carmen for a week, and while we didn't dive, we did snorkel. I thought it was just the greatest thing. Didn't think too much of it, though - had other things on my mind.

The first time diving crossed my radar, it was by hearing that a friend of mine had died. More specifically, this friend and I were roommates for almost a year, but we parted ways in 2004. And then I find out he's died in a diving accident one thanksgiving, several years ago. I think this is when I first realized.. wait, people go UNDER the water... and realized that I could do it, too.

My wife and I were just beginning to plan a return trip to stay on Isla Mujeres for vacation last year, and we looked at each other and agreed that we should take a scuba diving class before we go, so we can have some real fun out there. So we signed up.

The very first night, while we were reading the manual in the living room, our dog got out, was hit by a car, and died. It was a very traumatic night, and we made the mistake of trying to block it out and go to class anyways. Since that, my wife's had to work hard to get over the association. Me, not so much.. diviing helps me forget everything else. It's my perfect drug.

So death.. and diving. Who wants to be my buddy? *grin*. Just kidding. If anything, it's taught me that we've got to be prepared for anything, and train for everything. I even was able to find out details on my friend's death from the fellow who did the investigation right here on scubaboard, learn from his mistakes, and get some closure. This place is great.

 

[SkipperJohn]

I was always fascinated with the water. When I was 10 my dad bought a boat. It was wood and required tons of maintenance. So many hours and weekends spent at the marina, I was often not helping but running around on the banks checking out the snails, crabs and other forms of life (those seaweeds with the bubbles of water used to amaze me).
But I got my fill snorkeling, boating and fishing. Until I bought myself an underwater camera, then an underwater digital, then I was gifted the new DC800 by sealife. I figured I could get great photos now of only I could change my perspective. A few weeks later I was certified.

 

[potato cod]

At the age of 7 I saw the Ocean Quest series on TV ('cuz I'm way too young to have seen Sea Hunt). The premise of this show was that a group of veteran divers recruited a former Miss Universe, taught her to dive, then took her around the world diving with great white sharks, ice diving, etc. I have only a very vague memory of the series now and no doubt would be stunned by its hokiness if I saw it again, but as a young girl it was a source of inspiration. I still dream of diving with great whites one day (but I'll pass on the ice diving--the cold terrifies me )

In college, I was able to take my Padi OW course through school at a great discount and loved it! Unfortunately, being landlocked and a poor student didn't lead to diving again until many, many years after my checkout dives in a MN lake.

On my second trip to Australia in summer 2007 I was headed to Cairns for a conference and I was determined to dive on the Great Barrier Reef. The most logical way to do this was to turn my husband into my dive buddy. I signed up for a refresher course, signed my husband up for an OW course (he had vowed to get certified while snorkeling on our previous trip to Oz), and booked us for a 3-day liveaboard trip. To be able to glimpse another world beneath the ocean, to experience first-hand the behavior and ecology of the corals and fish, to ponder the formation and evolution of ocean basins, ocean chemistry, etc. is a dream come true for a couple of scientists. My biologist husband claims that had he done this trip when he was younger he would have become a marine biologist rather than a terrestrial one. Now all of our vacations are dive-centric, we are doing our nitrox certification in a few weeks, and will be returning to the Florida Keys for our AOW this winter. It's great to have a new passion to share with him and with others we meet in our local and global dive community.