Holy cow, I've just been certified!!!

[nicodaemos]

Break out the bubbly ... I've just been certified. :grad:

I went down to Panama City to do the checkout dives .... Atlanta does not have much to offer except Lake Latrine. On Saturday, we dove off of the beach at St Andrews Park and focused on skills and getting used to the water. The visibility was very poor -- around 5-7 feet -- and there wasn't a lot to see even when you could. Additionally my mask kept fogging up. Depth wise we only descended to around 24 feet. Not that I could tell ... my rental regulator did not have a functional depth gauge on it. All the other equipment worked fine otherwise. Saturday night I started to wonder why people really liked this sport.

But things improved dramatically on Sunday. We dove the Black Bart, a sunken freighter, getting down to 60 feet. This day I had a working depth gauge, but my primary regulator would make this strange sound as I exhaled. I found breathing in this regulator to be hard and made a mental note to make ease of breathing the primary criteria for selecting a reg for purchase. Visibility was up to 25 feet and as an added bonus, my mask did not fog up all. The bottom time was very limited (5 minutes) as we descended very slowly to help some of the classmates deal with equalization. So all I got to see of the wreck was the 200-300 square feet of deck where our line was attached. Even so, it was very cool! There were tons of fish and marine life that I cannot even begin to identify. A plus for the future is that I always had plenty of air left over at the end of the dives. Hopefully this means that in the future, I'll have plenty of time to explore.

The second dive on Sunday was to a sunken bridge -- span 14. This one was to about 50 feet and also had a lot of marine life and fish. We saw a barracuda, huge schools of small fish (no idea what type) and a crab that looked like a daddy long legs spider. I think they said it was an air crab(?). There was a slight current and it was a lot of fun swimming around the metal superstructure.

Anyway, after the dives on Sunday I now am hooked on diving. I have even more respect for the experienced divers on this board. This is still a scary sport to me .... going down to 60 feet I could no longer see the boat .... or the surface. But I've managed to keep the fear at bay while I continually get more comfortable in this alien environment. The marine life is spectacular!

Hope to see you out there diving.

-Nico

 

[chrispete]

Congratulations on your certification!

 

[Uncle Pug]

Way to go Nico.

 

[crab]

Please forgive my conspicuous ignorance, but is there really a "Lake Latrine" in Atlanta? There are no similarly named lakes in my part of the country, but they might as well be named as such.

 

[art.chick]

Of course there is a Lake Latrine; it is similar to Duck-poop Quarry and Runoff Bay!

Nico, your clever allusion is a delight to read! Nevermind the residual fear of the depth; we all have primal fears to conquer in this sport. I congratualte you for remianing calm with a hard-breathing reg; those things can be tuned to breathe hard or easy - depending on how much u hate freeflow (mine is the opposite extreme -grrr!) Anyhoo, hope 2 c u on the bottom!

 

[jbd]

and welcome to the underwater world. Nice dive report also.

 

[emeyer36]

We were at Hathaway Bridge Span #14 weekend before last and just for your future underwater "fish" watching. Those clouds of small fish are called Silversides and are actually a bunch of small fish of different species that school together for protection. You will notice the more you watch them that they tend to swim in very tight formation and that there are usually some larger fish swimming around on the outside, waiting to pick off the straglers. My husband said they look like settlers in a wagon train (in the old westerns), circling to protect themselves from the Indians. The spider like crab was probably an Arrow crab, we saw several of them when we dove the span. Isn't it cool to see the underwater world outside of the aquarium.

My husband and I only started diving last year, we can't believe we waited this long to start. Everytime we go down we are more in LOVE WITH DIVING!!!

emeyer36

 

[nicodaemos]

Thank you all for your support!!! :yea:

crab, Lake Latrine is the scientific name of the lake some know as Lake Lanier.

emeyer36, yes you're right. It was an arrow crab (pic). I was laughing while reading your message describing the silversides and the larger fish. That's exactly what I saw -- the cowboys and indians metaphor is very appropriate.

Meanwhile I'll keep doing the special diving exercise :cluck: Uncle Pug recommended.

 

[JDostal]

Have fun and congrats!

Don't worry about being nervous...you'll get used to it, and eventually even start enjoying watching the surface and the boat fade away into that deep blue color, seeing your bubbles float up....you'll start feeling at home down there soon enough - and when you come back up, you'll always be wishing you'd be back there

 

[scuba_junkie]

Good job on your OW!! Its a lot different when you can see more than 2 feet in front of your face eh? I still have not had the opportunity to do any salt water dives, only fresh water wreck dives... I am still hooked!



Dive Safe!
Erich