Newbie Diver Mistakes-Don't do what I did

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Side question: If you live in Tampa, I'm curious as to why you had never been in the ocean up to this point?

:focus:
 
Greetings TracyN glad you are fine and all you lost was a camera / weight pocket.
Most all of us have had dives where things did not go perfectly and usually the reasons behind them point straight back at us!
The lessons we learn from those are to be heeded very seriously because they point to our personality / mentality or what we must never allow ourselves to do again!
Conservatism, dive planning, and sticking to the rules is a must for all divers new or experienced does not matter one bit!

My buddy last a camera on his first wreck dive due to a complication that being new environment he struggled with.
It was a expensive lesson but he will not dive anything that he has not trained with in a controlled setting.
Gain your experience slowly and train purposefully in safe conditions and WITH A BUDDY!
You do not have the required training or experience to be SOLO diving and do not attempt this again until you do!

Thanks for sharing your story I am sure that many before have not had the courage to do so and if it stops just one person from doing the same you were a success!
We are all a family here and I appreciate the manor in which the other posters have reacted as well.
We all are human and need to be looked after from time to time.

CamG Keep Diving....Keep Training....Keep Learning!
 
One valuable lesson that can be learnt from this is not to try too many new things at once.

This was your "first real open water ocean dive". Big enough step on it's own as no doubt there would have been some apprehension etc. You also added a camera to the mix. Two things to contend with.

Slowly slowly. Introduce things one at a time. Get comfortable with what you are doing/using before adding/changing something else. That goes for equipment too

HTH
 
I have redeemed myself! Salt Water #2 went great. I learned from my mistakes . Today it was very apparent how unfocused I was last week. We went to the Sheridan Wreck and it was pretty cool. My first deep dive since certification. I met two awesome dive buddies and we are planning on doing a shallow shore dive tomorrow.
 
Good on ya Tracy...! Diving with someone with experience can help your learning curve as long as the experience is that of a skilled diver... :wink:

Be careful, lee
 
Thank you for having the courage to post about this, and for gracefully taking the criticism here.

I think the biggest lesson here is that, as a new diver, an awful lot of the mechanics of diving are still requiring a great deal of bandwidth. When you add a lot of distractions, important things like navigation, buddy awareness, and gas management can slip. I really believe that new divers should keep their lives simple until things like buoyancy, gas management and situational awareness have become fairly solidly established -- THEN do more challenging dives, or add things like cameras.

And as far as "same day, same ocean" diving goes . . . I think sometimes it's quite hard, as a new diver, to stick to what you have been taught, when you see that no one around you is doing it. I remember being bewildered by people diving without doing any kind of buddy check, when I had been taught this was an important part of diving. I've eventually learned just to be a PITA about it and stop worrying what anybody else thinks, but as a novice, it's hard to have that much conviction. The bottom line is that, especially as a newbie, you should dive with a buddy, and you should do what you need to do to make sure you have one BEFORE you get in the water.
 
Side question: If you live in Tampa, I'm curious as to why you had never been in the ocean up to this point?

:focus:

Probably because she doesn't live next to an ocean, but a gulf! Although she's probably more inland, closer to the springs, based on the dives she did. Florida is not a small state.
 
LoL! I have been doing the springs because they have been easier to access and there really isn't a lot of places to dive in the gulf. Plus I want to get more experience before I take on more challenging dives. I still have much to learn. I got a good lesson today when my tank blew an o-ring during a dive. Fortuately it was a shallow shore dive. There is a good reason why they make you take your BCD off in the water during class. :) The swim to shore was not fun.
 
Wow Tracy, sounds like you are getting a lot of the worst case scenarios out of the way early in your dive career :)

Hopefully you don't have to repeat them too often!
 
3 years ago I lost my camera slipped off my wrist .Went out and purchasedd clips , Lanyard with clips , and any type of device that u clip one end on to your BC and the other end to camera .and u never remove the side attached to BC .This shoudl give u some sort of idea what I talking about .This devices can be purchased at any dive shop

36" Quick Release Coil Lanyard with Brass Clip and SS Split Ring
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/

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