What did you learn from your very last dive...

[Soakedlontra]

I took my nitrox and AOW courses this weekend and did the pool portion at GT. Although I do not want to jump on the bandwagon, because I am not Fully converted yet, I loved the BP&W I swam with. I was not ideally setup for me since it was my Instructors setup, but let me just say that as a new diver who is used to jacket style BCs, and the roll you can get, this had no roll, and I was able to control my bouyancy completely different than using the Jacket style BC.

I still have a few things I need to loook into as far as what is best for me as a setup but am definitely leaning towards the BP&W setup. I will still be testing stuff out.

After about 30 dives with jacket style BCDs and borrowed BP/Ws there was no doubt in my mind that I wanted to get my own BP/W . I haven't regretted it yet.

 

[bamamedic]

What did I learn from my last dive?

Caves are not a benign environment! Things can get dicey very quickly...and sometimes ignorance really is bliss; at the time, watching the silt billow up, I had no idea how bad of a situation that could've turned into. I sure found out once we surfaced, though! Let's just add that to my list of "Things not to do in a cave"

I have got to improve my pull-n'-glide technique. I'm tired of raw fingers

 

[Belowwego]

If you run out of gas breath out someones a$$

 

[Cavs42]

^^huh?^^

I learned that Giant Pacific Octopuses dont like being filmed and will try to steal your camera if you're close enough. Luckily, I kept hold of the camera, and was rolling for the whole thing.

 

[WVMike]

That I am finally going to use the dry gloves that I have had for a few years.

 

[KY_BOB]

My last dive was my first time in a drysuit. I learned that they are very warm but also very expensive.

 

[TSandM]

That the cost of stubborn independence can be unacceptably high.

 

[InTheDrink]

I learned:

Cold hands = warm heart.

 

[spt29970]

I relearned the lesson that a dive master needs to listen to his clients. On my last dive in Cozumel a month ago, we were diving at Yucab, which is a nice shallow site. Cozumel is a fine place for photography, but with the current, it is hard to do macro. Yucab is a great place for this since it is one of the few sites that is pretty still . The DM asked our group what we wanted to do on this dive, and I told him that I was really looking forward to staying in one place so that I could concentrate on macro photography. The rest of the group agreed that was fine. The previous week, we had done plenty of deep dives and swim-throughs. On our last dive it was time to take things easy. The DM was on the boat with his son and wanted to play with his scooter. I thought it would be fine, he can scooter around and my wife and I can stay put. After about 10 minutes the DM got bored and scootered up to me with his slate. He had written "The current has changed, we can do a swim through, UR choice." There was no current that I could feel, so I made it clear that I wanted to stay put. He signaled "OK." About 5 minutes later he scootered back and motioned to me that we were all going to the swim-through, and no, no one else on the trip really wanted to do another swim-through. Grrr.

I got some nice photos from this trip, but needless to say, no decent macro shots. More at:

Cozumel 2009 - a set on Flickr

 

[piffle]

Underwater photography is not as easy as I thought. Looking at the camera lcd screen, controlling bouyancy, and keeping an eye on my computer was tougher than expected.