Covid's impact on your diving ...

[CAPTAIN SINBAD]

How has Covid impacted your diving or your diving business?

My own diving took a nasty hit. I was on my way to becoming an SSI Assistant Instructor but Covid lockdown interrupted that journey. All trips that I was planning to be on got canceled. I had to modify my game and started to do some practice dives in the quarry managing stage bottles and timed ascents. We have to get something out of it right?

Prior to Covid, I was radically opposed to solo-diving. This was the first time I considered it as dive buddies were a lot harder to find. I also considered getting into Cave diving earlier than my intended schedule because while boat charters get canceled, caves stay there.

It was also very sad to see that a lot of dive places in the Caribbean were struggling and had fund raisers. Shops were also taking a hit. I wanted to put a group together to see how we can keep businesses afloat by doing online seminars for a very nominal price. Bring diving celebrities on these paid online sessions just to keep the industry alive.

Id love to hear your experiences and your plans for 2021.

 

[Jcp2]

Dive vacation canceled March 2020.
Dive vacation canceled July 2020.
Dive vacation canceled August 2020.
Dive vacation canceled December 2020.

Can now play basic guitar and speak simple Spanish. Also routinely run 7 miles.

Regulators used to inflate car tires x 4. Bolt snaps and bungee used to put up deck party lights.

 

[BlueTrin]

I was doing TDI deco procedures earlier this year, I had only one last dive to do which was blown due to very strong winds.

Then in March, I flew to the Canary Islands.

I was still in the taxi from the airport with my wife, her mom and baby son, when the dive centre texted me: “no diving tomorrow, watch the news”. Spent the next 10 days in lockdown in Spain mostly in a hotel room.

Did quite a bit of UK local diving in summer, was very nice. It was not so easy to get bookings because most boats run at half capacity to leave some social distancing and many people were keen to dive locally as flying was a bit of a risk. When I asked the skippers how they were doing financially, many of them were saying that they were struggling with the boat capacities being halved.

Failed TDI deco procedures last month, I guess I had forgotten some stuff in the meantime and I need to train more.

Now we are in the second lockdown in the UK, so I guess I’ll train to pass Deco Procedures at some point in winter or 2021.

Also need to do the GUE Fundies class again at some point now that I improved a bit with my trim and buoyancy: I may be able to get more out of the class now than before.

All the diving trips I had this year were cancelled and I went to dive in the UK closer to home instead for long weekends. These were the diving trips I had booked for the year and that I couldn’t do:
- Lanzarote
- Lochaline in Scotland
- Cabo de Palos in Spain
- Cyprus to dive the Zenobia wreck

 

[Mod63]

Madeira im May -> blown out
Raja Ampat in December -> blown out
did get in some diving in Austria during the summer
will go to Cuba in December
Sudan in May 2021 -> booked
Egypt in October 2021 -> booked
multiple trips to Austria in 2021 -> booked

 

[CycleCat]

I got scuba certified BECAUSE of Covid. It was something I have wanted to do for 40 years but always put off. We had to cancel two trips to Mexico this year so in an effort to salvage some kind of vacation time we alternatively decided to finally get certified since it was an option while staying close to home.

 

[rhwestfall]

Total dives in 2020: 1

Curacao - cancelled
Picton (Lake Ontario wreck diving) - cancelled (border closed)
Tobermory - cancelled (border closed)
St. Lawrence River - cancelled
quarry dives - cancelled (again, can't get across the border to the quarries)
Local River drifts - cancelled (by order of RCMP which threatened to confiscate out boat and jail us for being in Canada with the border closed)

probably should have taken the time for an extensive equipment maintenance activity, but wasn't motivated.....

great year...

 

[Kimela]

We managed to get a trip in at Anthony's Key in February - yay!
Key Largo in June
Cozumel in September.
Cozumel in October.
Cozumel in December.
I've gotten in 52 dives this year (not counting next month) and I owe my sanity to that! And my crazy husband!!!

 

[irycio]

No dive trips this year and was hoping for a liveaboard in Egypt between quitting one job and starting a new one.
No diving between January and May.
Did Fundies in May and June.
Was in water on avg once every 1.5 weeks to keep fresh, though I still have not developed a love towards diving in Swiss lakes. It's great to have the option though, even if there's nothing really worth diving for .

 

[DiverGirl1972]

We had just gotten back from our Socorro liveaboard trip at the end of February and the shutdown started shortly thereafter. We didn't realize (obviously) at the time that would be the last diving we'd be doing for a year or more. It was a dream trip for me, so I'm grateful it wasn't impacted.

We were fortunate (I guess) to not have any future trips booked at that time, but we would have travelled in July and we'd definitely have a two-week trip nailed down for January '21 at this point in the year. For now, my bf and I have decided that dive travel is on hold and low-vis, cold water local quarry diving just isn't appealing as an alternative at this point.

For now, I'll have to live vicariously through others on this site!

 

[Marie13]

Local quarry didn’t open in early April as usual. Didn’t open until early June. Made the run out to OH a number of times to dive at quarries there.

I was unemployed from late March until early August so I did some weekday diving at the local quarry once they opened as well as on the weekends.

Did awesome wreck diving in the Straits of Mackinac in late July before I started the new job. Had a few other Great Lakes dives.

Been diving a lot locally. I’ve been running all over the Midwest this summer/fall and my season isn’t over. I’ll be diving all winter in the region.

So aside from the local quarry opening late, pretty much unaffected by the plague.