Scuba Diving Acronyms

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Thanks for this. I enjoyed reading the comments too! What does sticky mean?
 
... What does sticky mean?
That it was stuck to the top of a forum. This sticky thread stays visible at the top of the threads in the Basic Scuba Discussions forum.
Kind of like those yellow stickies used to post notes ubiquitously.
 
SFA (sweet F*** all) -- ie. we spent 40 minutes looking for mantas and saw SFA

my dive buddy and i have also developed some hand signals to help communicate with each other. we both really like cool coral formations so we we decided to make a "C" with our hand and move the hand up and down twice for 2 C's. the first time we tried it out she inadvertently made the motion near her face and i flooded my mask i was laughing so hard.
 
I'm a bit new to Scubaboard, but not to scuba. I've noticed that there are a lot of acronyms, many of them common in the world of scuba, but a few that seem to be specific to Scubaboard (or scuba-related forums), and I've seen a few people ask what specific acronyms mean. So, I thought I'd start a list, so that new members (and maybe even some not so new members) have a place to go to find out what some of those acronyms are. I've left out some acronyms I think are obvious (like OW), but if you find a scuba-specific acronym (LOL, IMHO, etc. need not apply) in a post and don't know what it is, or you don't think it would be obvious, post it. I'll add it to the list if I can.

AAS - Alternate Air Source
AGE - Arterial Gas Embolism
BM - Backmount (as in wearing tank on the back, as oppoed to sidemount)
BP - Back Plate
BP/W - Back Plate and Wings
CA - Certified Assistant
CESA - Controlled Emergency Swimming Ascent
DM - Divemaster
DCS - Decompression Sickness
DCI - Decompression Illness
DIR - Doing It Right
LDS - Local Dive Shop
LOA - Low On Air
MSD - Master Scuba Diver
OOA - Out Of Air
OOG - Out Of Gas
SCUBA - Scantily Clad Underwater Bods Aplenty
SOP - Standard Operating Procedure
SM - Sidemount (as opposed to backmount)
SMB - Surface Marker Bouy
SS - Stainless Steel

If there is a better place for this, perhaps a moderator could move it (and let me know where it went :D).
 
Such abbreviations may save time when typing or handwriting, but often it is clearer and nearly as quick to say the words. When I started diving we managed with next to no acronyms. For example, back then a diver's inflatable lifejacket was a diver's lifejacket (or merely a lifejacket if it was clear which sort is meant), and not yet another set of initials to learn.
 

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