How you met scuba diving

[AfterDark]

When I 1^st watched Sea Hunt at age 5-6? I was fascinated. Eight or nine years later I took my 1^st breath underwater in a pool. I was hooked. Then I did my 1^st ocean dive and I was amazed! Forty four years later I’m not done being amazed.

 

[PSUSCUBA1313]

In seventh grade I went to the national scout jamboree and 10 minutes in a 4 ft deep pool was enough to get me hooked. The summer before going to college, my aunt took a grad class trip to Hawaii. The prof wrote an undergrad version for me. Scuba was on the itinerary, so I got certified before the trip. One of the first things I did when I got to Penn State was find the scuba club and I've been an active diver ever since.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

My wife (at the time) and I used to go down to the local YMCA after work ... she'd enroll in exercise classes and I'd head into the gym to play basketball with the guys. Since basketball isn't as conducive to an overweight, middle-aged guy as it is to younger, more fit guys, I'd often hurt myself trying to keep up. One day as we were walking out of the Y ... well, she was walking, I was limping ... she was giving me a hard time about it and telling me I needed to find something safer to do. About that time I noticed a sign on the wall that said "Learn to Scuba Dive", and the date for the first class just happened to be my 49th birthday. Without giving it a lot of thought I said "OK, buy me scuba lessons for my birthday and I'll give up basketball". It never occurred to me she'd take the suggestion seriously. Well ... 13 years and 3300 dives later, I haven't since then touched a basketball (although it now looks like I swallowed one).

Three months later she also took up scuba diving ... when she came to the conclusion that if she wanted to see me on the week-ends, that's what she was going to have to do. We've been divorced for nearly 10 years now, and yet we still travel and dive together. In fact, we'll be spending a few days on a liveaboard in Canada together in a couple weeks. She'll soon be coming up on her 1,000th dive ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[jongles]

I was chasing a girl. I have to really concentrate now to recall her name but I'll never forget that feeling of my first dive.Ningaloo reef Western Australia crystal clear water healthy reef and me breathing UNDERWATER!!!

 

[PhilaDallas]

Went to Cozumel on a vacation and did a snorkeling excursion. Saw the divers down below and both my wife and I thought that it would be a whole lot more fun being down there. We got certified 6 months later in a pool and did our checkout dives a few months after that in Cozumel. Recently bought our gear and are looking forward to doing some local diving prior to heading back to Cozumel in May. My wife took to it super well while I had a few problems with buoyancy and SAC.

 

[TSandM]

I drank too much wine at an auction, and bought a trip to Australia. On the way home, my disgusted husband said, "Well, if we are going to go to Australia, you have to learn to dive.". (He had been certified many years earlier, but had not been in the water for a couple of decades.). I agreed to do the pool and classroom work in Seattle, but told him he'd have to take me to his father's house on Maui to do the open water dives, "because I'm never setting FOOT in Puget Sound, it's too danged cold!". Well, I got Mau-maued by my classmates to join the group here, nearly ended up hospitalized for hypothermia the first day in open water, and we know how it all turned out . . .

 

[ColoDale]

I married into a diving family in 1997. My father-in-law was an instructor. It was expected that I do it. However the diving bug bit hard and I can't imagine not doing it.

 

[edwardjohnson]

Haha I love all of your stories!! They make me so nostalgic of my first dive...I can almost imagine your first times as well and they are making me giggle like a girl.

I was chasing a girl. I have to really concentrate now to recall her name but I'll never forget that feeling of my first dive.Ningaloo reef Western Australia crystal clear water healthy reef and me breathing UNDERWATER!!!

This is one of my fav haha

 

[GrumpyOldGuy]

Similar to Dr Bill, just a couple of year behind him, I Watched early Cousteau documentaries 60s and was hooked as a kid. I free dived, played with some home-brew surface supplied gear (dangerous). As soon as I had wheels and little money saved I was certified as a teen. Dived my brains out in So Cal. Only wife and kids pulled me away for a bit (and living in New England). Once the kids became old enough to be buddies, I returned to diving. Wife thinks I am nuts, tells me I am acting like I am 16 again. I tell her thanks for the compliment and tell her she looks like she was 16 (both of us are liars).

 

[tomfcrist]

My story is far less normal than the ones posted here. My grandfather was an abalone poacher. He taught me to dive when I was 8, so that I could stay in the water with his haul while he went ashore to scout for the fish and game guys. If they weren't around, he would get the truck and I would come out with the catch bags. At least he was a good instructor/dive mentor.