Question Recreational Divers: What are the biggest problems you face in this sport?

[SKS22]

Living in Northern VA and money!

It's a long drive to quarries/lakes with decent viz. Even longer drive to Ocean City or VA beach, which don't offer great conditions, but at least it's the ocean.

Everything has gotten more expensive and SCUBA is no different, but SCUBA was already expensive to begin with. Nowadays I find myself doing more shore diving on vacation instead of boat diving. I've recently noticed that some vacation destinations have some sort of cartel going on. None of the dive shops will rent cylinders to shore divers. Those, of course, are the places with the most outrageous prices for boat dives. In those places I free dive instead. Back in the day I thought calling apnea free diving was because of how free it felt to be under without gear. But now, it's all about the $ savings in my mind.

 

[pauldw]

Diving solo, having trouble getting out of the drysuit afterward, and needing to wedge the wrist ring in the door jam to be able to pull my arm free.

 

[Jai Bar]

Diving solo, having trouble getting out of the drysuit afterward, and needing to wedge the wrist ring in the door jam to be able to pull my arm free.

My first solo was in winter, water was 13 Celsius. I had hard time closing the back zipper, whatever I tried it wouldn't go up more than halfway. Frustrated, I extended the zipper line and tied it to a high fence and tried to pull myself away to close the zipper. Some people walking on the beach thought I was suicidal and began to talk me out of it. Was so embarrassed didn't ask them to help me with zipper.

The dive was short and cold, also placed cylinder on mask and broke it.