How did you start SCUBA diving?

[Eric Sedletzky]

It was a gradual evolution for me.
Once when I was a kid playing on a beach in 1966 I saw a man getting out of the water and I remember the all black wetsuit and the shiny metal regulator.
That stuck in my head.

When I was 13 me and my friends were down at the beach and there was a kid snorkelling. I asked what he saw and he said "here, try my stuff and take a look. I did and all I saw was sand and the side of a barren rock, but it was fun anyway.

My step dad had a boat and took us out fishing in the ocean. That was the first exposure I had to the fact that fish you catch are damn tasty.
That lead to me later in life fishing off the rocks. While I was out there losing tons of gear getting snagged on rocks and kelp I would see freedivers coming in with loads of fish and abalone so I came to the realization that that was something I needed to get into to get more fish and be more efficient.
So I went to the nearest dive shop and bought some gear to start freediving. I freedove for a few years and as I would go into the dive shop to get something I lost or broke I would see all the scuba gear hanging which planted another seed, so eventually I took a class and got certified.

Progression led me into tech diving, then after trying that for a while I decided I just wanted to do regular dives again because I was losing sight of what attracted me to scuba in the first place. I wanted to feel that magic again just like my first dives. So now I just do light recreational dives because they are the most fun and I realize it's not how deep you go but what you see and slowing down to take it all in. I felt with tech diving it was becoming all about the numbers, which would be fine if I was training for something, but just numbers as an end isn't for me, I need more than that. There realy isn't anything around here that requires going that deep so why do it? Not to mention it's damn expensive!


I also still freedive for abalone.

 

[formula1mb@aol.com]

Out of curiosity for abalone, how deep do you have to normally freedive? That's something I've always wanted to do but need to practice my freediving a little more.


Robert

 

[Divealpha]

Back in the -60's, I used to snorkel & freedive, and read all I could about diving. Unfortunately, I had ear problems, and the doctor banned diving. Almost 40 years later me and my wife was bored on a holiday trip, and both did OWD just to see if this was something for us, and, if my ears could handle it.. Short story, we're totally diving monsters now, and hit the water at every opportunity we have.. Been on liveaboards, different countries, and are always looking for some new equipment . Dry or wetsuit, doesn't matter, but our work keep us tied up a bit, so we usually do most dives in warm water...

 

[DCBC]

It was September 1963, I was 10 years old (turned 11 the following January). A friend of my Dad's was a diver. He wanted his son Jim (who was 9) to start learning SCUBA and wanted him to have someone his age to take-up the sport. Like many boys my age, Sea Hunt was my favorite television show and I couldn't believe I was given a chance to learn.

Training was one night a week, 3 hours per night usually for a six-month period. My Instructor (Ben Davis) attended the first NAUI Instructor course and was the first instructor certified outside the U.S. (NAUI #101). NAUI kept the first 100 numbers for U.S. Instructors. I worked at the course faithfully until I turned 12 and became certified in the Spring of 1965. For me it was a hard program. I struggled with the physical requirements of a 32 length swim test, treading water with my hands over my head for 3 minutes, bailout with full SCUBA equipment off the high dive platform and most of all: doff-and-don of fins, mask and snorkel in 18 feet of water (not to mention the 40 page exam with a 80% pass rate)... It all served me well in preparation for the NAVY Dive program 6 years later.

Thanks for the trip down memory lane.

 

[Paladin]

When I was a boy, way back when, one of my favorite TV shows was SEA HUNT, starring Loyd Bridges. In 1962, at the age of eight, I collected trading stamps (anybody remember those?) to get my first set of Voit snorkeling gear and taught myself how to snorkel. Three years later (1965), a friend of my parents (Harold) learned of my fascination with diving and, during one of our visits to his home, he took me out to his garage and showed me a couple of Aqualung double hose rigs that he'd had for a few years. He had been a Navy Frogman in the late 1950s and had brought the rigs home with him. I drooled over the rigs and fingered the two hose regulators (DA Aquamaster). He asked me if I wanted to buy one but I didn't have any money. Then he offered to give me the rig if I would cut and trim the grass on his property for the summer.

Every Saturday, I would spend the day working, then go into the garage to look at the Aqualung rig. Then, two weeks before our agreed upon time was up, the rig disappeared from the garage. I asked Harold where it was and he wouldn't tell me. He just told me not to worry about it.

Two weeks later, I finished cutting and trimming his property and went in to close the deal. There, in his kitchen, was the rig. The regulator had been serviced and looked like new. The tank, however, was not the one I had contracted for. In its place was a US Divers 72 that was only a year old. Over in a corner was the other rig. It, too had been refurbished. Although we had not discussed it previously, Harold was including SCUBA instruction in our deal.

Harold took me on a couple of shallow dives in the river then, over the winter, we went over the "head work" of diving. I learned the science of SCUBA, how to read the Navy dive tables, safety procedures, equipment maintenance, etc. In the spring, we went out to the river and I began to learn the skills I would need to dive safely: Emergency ascents, buddy breathing, how to clear the mouthpiece of a two hose regulator, calculating air consumption and timing my dives (we had no SPGs), using the J-valve on my tank, etc.

Harold was not a diving instructor, nor was he certified himself. He taught me what he had learned in the Navy and we filled our tanks from his compressor. I dove with him and some of his buddies for the next eleven years. Then, in 1976, Harold suffered a heart attack and died suddenly. Before I had an opportunity to speak to his widow about his equipment, she disposed of it. Without that compressor, I could not fill my tank.

That same year, I learned of a new dive shop that was opening in my town and went right in to sign up for the certification course. I told the shop owner of my experience and, instead of the usual three week course, he just had me take the written test, then had me go out with his next class to have me demonstrate my skills. After a weekend of diving, he gave me my Basic SCUBA Diver C-card. For Christmas in 1976, my parents gave me a new, vinyl-coated Healthways steel 72 with a Sherwood J valve. I continued to use my old double hose DAAM regulator for a couple more years until I bought a single hose Aqualung Aquarius regulator.

In 1992, I upgraded my certification to Open Water Diver because the parameters of my old certification had changed and Basic no longer meant what it had when I got that first certification.

I stopped diving in 1993 when my first wife and I were divorced. I remarried in 1996 and my new wife had no interest in SCUBA. I returned to diving in 2009 because my two sons expressed an interest in the sport.

 

[Rich Keller]

I was always a water rat growing up so when my cousin wanted to take up scuba for a merit badge I was all in. I already had a mask, fins and snorkel. We bought tanks, regs and a book on how to use them and started diving in 1970. He made a few dives and went onto to something else, I stayed with it for 42 years now.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Out of curiosity for abalone, how deep do you have to normally freedive? That's something I've always wanted to do but need to practice my freediving a little more.


Robert

We freedive anywhere from 5 feet down to about 35 feet.
Most abalone are found in the 10 to 20 foot range.
Once you get the dynamics of freediving down, depending on your adaptability that could be an hour to a whole season, there are abalone everywhere.
How I like to train new freedivers is first just have them relax, take just a gauge and get them used to diving down and looking and gauging a few to get an idea of how big a legal one needs to look underwater, this is before attempting to pop one off with an iron. I like to weight them light in the beginning so they are more comfortable on the surface floating around and breathing up. Once skills are developed and the comfort level goes up we can progress into more advanced techniques and turbulent water where there tend to be bigger abs.
We use specific freediving suit like Picasso or Yazbeck and long blade fins like Picasso Black Teams which are great for around here because they are cheap and rugged and grinding them around into rocks doesn't destroy them like it would a high end blue water fin.
I recommend getting the right stuff right away just because it makes freediving so much easier and more enjoyable.

I like to spend hours in the water and all I take now is a 9" or 10" gauge (I still have a 7" with me by law) and I look for the big ones.
Haven't gotten a 10 yet but my day will come. Maybe this weekend?

 

[Bexny]

Had a wedding to attend in Sydney, Australia so thought I'd finally get certified - why not the Great Barrier Reef? From then was hooked and here I am today

 

[Laurie S.]

I've always been a fish in the water, and did synchronized swimming and endurance swimming when I was in high school. I always was interested in scuba diving, but living in Michigan at the time I really didn't pursue it, although my cousin got certified there, probably 30 years ago, at least. My parents would have freaked and so I didn't do anything about it. Then, after losing my mother in 1998 and my father in 2008, I finally was free to really do what I wanted. I planned a cruise for December 2009 and was going to do discover scuba while at a couple ports. I went to the LDS and asked about equipment and maybe some lessons. They said, why don't you just get certified now? I thought about it for about five seconds and said yes. No reason not to.

I got my OW over Thanksgiving 2009 and went on the cruise as a certified diver (had to change my excusions, LOL). I was a Specialty Diver by January, a Stress and Rescue Diver by February, AOW in May, and Master Diver in July 2010. I love it and now have 154 dives and am just waiting to receive my Divemaster card. Once that's official, I'll be continuing on into the Assistant Instructor program.

BTW, I love it so much I bought a house in San Carlos, Mexico and a boat, which is now down there. And, my cousin? He hasn't been diving since he was certified so many years ago.

 

[therbert]

I created what a lot of people now call a "bucket list" when I was still in my single digit years, and as far as I can remember, diving was at the top of that list from the time I made it. We lived in the Bronx, NY at the time, and it never really occurred to me that snorkeling off Orchard Beach wasn't the best thing in the world. My Dad moved the family to Houston in 1973, when I was 11 years old, and during the occasional late-summer trips to Galveston, the water would clear up and the sargassum weed would come to shore with all the life that it carries, and I would take a breath and swim underneath, and watch all that activity for as long as I could, before I had to come back up for more air. So many things to see -- the schools of tiny jack fish, the sargassum Filefish and triggers, and the crabs. I even remember seeing an anglerfish once.

Once I got out of high school, it seemed my life revolved entirely around the ocean. I worked in a marine aquarium store full time, went fishing on my days off. In '83, a buddy and I went on vacation to Florida, and went snorkling in Blue Springs, which was near my grandparents house in Debary. We both enjoyed it, but he thought it was WAAY too cold. That must have sparked an idea in his brain, because the next day, while we were visiting Epcot, he walked into the American Express travel office and bought us both a three-day trip to Paradise Island, Bahamas. He told me I could pay him back later, he wasn't snorkling in that frigid spring water again.

The first afternoon, we walked from our hotel on the harbor side of the island to the beach on the other side. as we came out of the trees onto the beach, I remember him saying, "man, we are there!" I don't think either of us had ever seen water that blue, or that clear. I know I hadn't. We walked down the beach to a little patch reef that was protected by a jetty, and we spent literally hours just floating there around that tiny, and I mean tiny, reef. I don't think it was more than 20 feet on a side, but there was so much to see! Wrasses, butterfly fish, blue tangs, all living in that tiny area.

The next morning, we hired a boat and guide to take us snorkeling on a real reef, and that sealed the deal. No more snorkeling for me, I was going to fulfill that promise that I had made to myself years before, to learn to dive.

We took our classes in February of '84, and did our OW dives in March in a sand pit south of town. That August, after saving up the money, three of the four of us that had take our classes together went to Cozumel, and spent 6 of our 8 days there underwater. Been diving ever since, with time off in between as life has gotten in the way. Just coming off one of those "times off" now, getting the gear serviced, and planning a trip to the Keys in January, after an aborted trip earlier this month.