What are you willing to do to keep diving?

[BoundForElsewhere]

to be honest, i'd probably suck a dck to be scuba diving right now.

To quote Chris Rock... "I only smoked enough crack to know what dck tastes like."

Truth be told.

 

[StefinSB]

I am sure they are there. Unfortunately, the Goleta area usually so murky that you wouldn't see a whale next to you.

 

[Hethen57]

@Eric Sedletzky , I know the rock you are talking about and I have wondered about diving it as well. Old timers that I have spoke with said the viz is generally poor, but there are a few days out of the year where it is really great. Some folks from our local dive shop went there by boat recently and said it pretty good. I think this is generally the area you are referring to off of Shell Beach.

 

[Divin'Papaw]

Been going to shallower reefs in our own boats....

Plenty of good stuff, filmed this Saturday. Biggest tiger shark I've ever seen in the wild.

Watch "sharkturtle 3" on YouTube

Wonder if that Tiger killed the turtle or is just scavenging it? The turtle doesn't appear to have any boat strike injury to the shell. Most likely the Tiger got it which does happen. They also frequently get away. I volunteer at a local Nature Center with a turtle rehab center (Gumbo Limbo in Boca Raton) and we regularly get turtles in for rehab that survived shark attacks. But sometimes the shark comes out on top as well. Nature at work.

 

[MaxBottomtime]

@Eric Sedletzky , I know the rock you are talking about and I have wondered about diving it as well. Old timers that I have spoke with said the viz is generally poor, but there are a few days out of the year where it is really great. Some folks from our local dive shop went there by boat recently and said it pretty good. I think this is generally the area you are referring to off of Shell Beach.
View attachment 593941

It looks like a nice reef on Google Earth.

 

[Ministryofgiraffes]

I’m willing to get on a plane and go to Cozumel for 9 days...and I did it...last Friday...

 

[Glenn Hines]

I trained in the Caribbean & have only dived there in Decembers (about 30 dives now). I don't think cold water diving would be fun for me; I'm miserable when I get cold. Last summer I drove to South Padre Island thinking it would be a good mid year dive location - how wrong was I. One dive shop that was geared to local tech & nothing to do or see offshore - I swam but didn't dive. Considering the Florida keys this winter otherwise back to the Virgin Islands.

 

[divinh]

I'm a warm water, vacation diver. Once I was certified, I dove in shorts, until I got chaffing from the BC, then I added a t-shirt. Once I got stung by a bunch of tiny, unavoidable jellyfish, I intended to wear wetsuits all the time and got a lycra undersuit to make don/doffing easy, but found myself too warm, so have been diving with the lycra only. Essentially, I prefer the freedom of no wetsuit, but have added more exposure protection due to undesired incidents.

I have considered a few times to do cold water. Every time I've gone to the local diver meet up, other divers have said it wasn't worth it. Of course, that's when the option of going to warm water was still available... and maybe they weren't very cold tolerant. Given that I don't mind four dives a day, over multiple days, in shorts, in warm water, I wonder if I could do two cold water dives in 3mm?

With things as they currently are, I'm okay with waiting to travel again, to dive in warm water. Even if I feel that I could be personally fine, I'd rather not be an unintended carrier. I would rather hold off now so that perhaps travel will be safe so that it's more like before.

Maybe in a year or two, if things are about the same, then I'll just go for cold water...

 

[-JD-]

I live in the Philadelphia area, I have never been to Dutch Springs, and likely, never will.

I came to hate Dutch in Septembers when the viz gets down to arms-length. Since my dives in Nockamixon on Memorial day (where viz was approaching hand-span) I'm going to be liking Dutch a lot more .
On the other hand, near end of season, viz in Dutch becomes disorientingly good.

 

[jonhall]

I'm still willing to wait now in order to keep diving later. Miss it a lot and think the odds are in my favor to not get it, but those are just odds - no guarantees. I'm going with, it only takes one time in wrong place at the wrong time around the wrong people.

Wish the wait would only be until early next year (still have a Caribbean trip scheduled for January) but expect it to be longer. Agree with @divinh - I can wait - more important to see granddaughter growing up.