So why did you do it?

[Bert van den Berg]

My older brother was in the USA Air Force and stationed in Athens. Brought home a spear gun for me when I was 16 years old. Learned to dive and later got into scuba when certification was not required to rent SCUBA. Dived for many years before finally getting certified.

 

[stretchthepenn]

I grew up in the deserts of Arizona, and during my middle-school years, my family took extended summer vacations to escape the worst of the heat. My parents would stuff me in the back seat of our Mercury Marquis coupe with a plastic basket full of books, and we'd trek across the country to the Midwest, where we'd visit all the family members we barely ever saw or heard from otherwise.

On one of those trips, I came down with chicken pox. I, the Plague Child, must've been the modern version of Typhoid Mary, shedding virus particles and coating every McDonald's bathroom, roadside rest stop, and presidential museum from Arizona to Michigan with disease. But I digress...

We were at some relatives' house when I actually fell ill, and there I stayed for roughly a week while I scabbed up and unsuccessfully tried to stifle the urge to scratch myself raw. The limited time I spent awake was dead boring. Mid-'80s daytime TV stank (what kid gave a crap about Phil Donahue or soap operas?), so I raided the bookshelf of my relatives' long-grown children, where I snagged a book called Young Skin Diver. The story grabbed my attention, and I thought that this scuba diving thing sounded awesome. I already loved to swim at the local pool, and I particularly loved swimming underwater. If I could actually breathe while down there... Wow...that would be soooooo much fun. But it was just a fantasy. Home was six-plus hours away from the ocean; actually getting to scuba dive was as likely as my sprouting wings.

Fast-forward a bit over ten years. I was working as a lifeguard at a YMCA in SoCal, and the branch Aquatics Director brought in a scuba instructor with the idea of offering scuba classes. I figured this was a now-or-never moment, so I ponied up money that I really didn't have and took the class.

As it turned out, scuba diving was exactly as awesome as I'd read it was. I could hang out underwater as long as I wanted (or at long as my tank lasted, anyway) and putz around, looking at awesome stuff and just plain having fun. I loved the class, and I've been diving ever since.

 

[UFOrb]

I always thought that diving was something that other people did.

But after snorkelling during a couple of trips to Thailand, and my wife suggesting we did OW course as she had always wanted to, thought why not!?

Did the OW on Perhentian islands, Malaysia in 2011 thinking we'd do the course and a couple of dives and that would be it, chill and snorkel the rest of the time. I was very wrong!
We did as many dives as we could fit in on that trip, and were in Dahab, Egypt 6 months later for a 'dive trip' including AOW.

We haven't looked back since and now arrange all our holidays around diving, even with 2 kids now (the first arrived 9 months after the Dahab trip )

 

[Neilwood]

I started diving on a whim. Was on holiday with family and saw a notice about a try dive session later in the week. Thought what the hell and paid my money. Got told the basics about gear etc and jumped into in the heated outdoor pool (which only about 2m deep and fairly small). Got bored of doing figure 8 laps and decided to sit on the bottom and watch everyone else swim about. Loved the feeling I got from it - was so calming.

Fast forward a couple of years and I had a weeks annual leave at work, OH was on a trip abroad through her orchestra and I had some money in the bank. Decided to find a shop that would do the course mid week and I have never looked back.

 

[WeRtheOcean]

Well, I suppose this isn't really germane to the OP, which asks why people already certified and diving decided to do it. For me, the question is why HAVEN'T I done it yet? The answer: I'm usually poor. Scuba is one of several hobbies I would have already taken up if my financial situation was more stable.

Why do I want to? Because I was a nature loving kid who grew up by the ocean. Because I was a bookworm who chose books based on that first criterion. Because the saltwater section at the aquarium store had so much more colorful fishes than the freshwater section. Because I knew that what I found cast up on the beach was a pale shadow of what was hidden beneath the waves.

 

[Marie13]

Great Lakes wrecks.

 

[Prostardiver]

So here I was, teaching a martial arts class with a friend. After class I heard her and some of the other guys talking about a quarry. So I asked what the quarry was about.
It turns out that her dad owned a scuba shop and a quarry for certifying students. People also came in to swim and get stupid on the weekends.
So on my first trip to the quarry I watched as a Rescue Diver class brought a REALLY large man across the lake ans we died laughing as they worked to get him up onto the dock. They managed to do it with no help from the victim.
I started going to the quarry on a regular basis. When I helped her get a job at a civil engineering firm,her dad offered to teach me to dive.
Later, my job layoff synced with an opening at his shop and I helped out for a while. He also needed instructors so I agreed to get my NAUI card.
It turns out that the person who helps sort out your side kick is also the same type of person who teaches you to clear your mask. It was a relatively smooth crossover.

 

[togatown]

When I met my wife, she was already certified, and was planning a trip to Borneo the following year, and while there she was also going to dive at a place called Sipadan. Once it obvious she was the one ( pretty quickly, lol), I was in on the trip, and got certified. Needless to say, I was a bit intimidated to be diving for the first real time, at what many consider to be one of the pinnacle sites in the scuba world.

 

[maj2]

My parents used to have property near Tobermory, Ontario. I was always interested in the wrecks there, and would see the charters going out every day. Never did much about it though.
Around March 2001, my wife and I found a cheap last minute vacation deal to Cozumel. While there, I decided to do the Discover Scuba program to try it out. I was sold. Signed up for an O/W course as soon as we got home, and was certified in May at Gilboa Quarry in Ohio, and spent the summer getting to know those Tobermory wrecks that I had always wondered about..

 

[Dredgy]

I’m not certified yet (live too far away from a school, so have to make a dedicated trip) but I’m probably the first person on here who didn’t particularly want to get into it.

I’m a strong swimmer and snorkeller which I enjoy - and I travel a lot so I occasionally scuba dived on “discover” dives if the mood took me but I never really liked scuba so much - usually dodgy foreign operators in poor conditions. I’ve never been inclined to take it up and get certified.

Then late last year I got a call to work on a series in Africa, which will include a fair few underwater sequences, and I said yes. So now I have to not only learn, but become a good enough scuba diver to direct a film shoot underwater, in 6 months.

I’ve bought most of my equipment and am very much loving that aspect of it. Am interested to see how I enjoy scuba when I get good at it.