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eriktown posted:What islands are you visiting? I've only dove on the Big Island, but I've done it quite a bit and enjoyed it. Kona has historically tended to be less touristy than Hilo, but I'm not sure if that's true anymore. Strong recommendation for Big Island Divers, though, if you do go there, particularly their "black water" nighttime pelagic dive. When I was there a few months ago, it felt like Hilo was less touristy than Kona. But I didn't go diving in either location. And they're both awesome places I live in Maui, the diving out here is great kind of no matter where you go. Molokini is a fantastic dive spot if you can get someone with a boat. I've heard that the Big Island is really good, too, especially the night diving stuff out of Kona. Trivia posted:Yeah I think I'm just spoiled. Oh, you're coming from Japan? My understanding is that flights between here and Japan are just more expensive for a number of reasons, as opposed to here and the mainland or Japan and the mainland. Tourist season starts sometime in December, so that might also be a big factor (especially right around Christmas)
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Sep 26, 2014 06:14
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There has been an accident a few weeks ago in the formiche islands (close to Giglio Island, where the Costa Concordia nearly sank) where 3 expert divers died during a seemingly normal and easy dive. The results of the tanks' analysis are in, and it was carbon monoxide. The dive shop's on board compressor had a malfunctioning filter, and refilled the tanks while the boat's engines were running. The sad part of this story is that there was nothing the divers could do to prevent this, but I was present when my tanks were filled with nitrox last weekend. DAN sells a carbon monoxide sensor, for those interested.
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Sep 26, 2014 07:05
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Jesus Christ that's such a hosed up way to die. I've pretty much given up on Hawaii. For the same or less price I could easily go back to Palau, or Philippines, or Malaysia, or any other SE Asian country. Though it may turn out that I'll go to Okinawa. Everything is still up in the air. The reason I first thought of Hawaii was so as to meet a friend from San Fran. Doubt that'll pan out however.
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Sep 26, 2014 07:18
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When I went to the Maldives on my honeymoon, I saw 0.00 whale sharks and the resort didn't bother putting any friction strips on their dock, so it was covered with slippery algae scuzz, resulting in my slipping while doing a giant stride entry and snapping my tailbone clean off. The 30+ hours hours of flying home were fun, I can tell you. 
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Sep 26, 2014 15:07
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Cippalippus posted:There has been an accident a few weeks ago in the formiche islands (close to Giglio Island, where the Costa Concordia nearly sank) where 3 expert divers died during a seemingly normal and easy dive. We bought one ( co sensor ) for just this reason about 6 months ago
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Sep 26, 2014 16:55
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Just did my first two open water dives today! In Square Lake here in Minnesota. Visibility wasn't great but it went smoothly, and all the skills felt pretty easy! Even got to bring my GoPro to get some pictures when I was waiting on the other divers.
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Sep 27, 2014 21:41
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Did anyone see the diver that broke the depth record at something like 1000 feet in Dahab, Egypt? I've found a bunch of news articles about it but I'd love to read an actual description of the dive itself (descent, decompression stops, etc.)
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Sep 29, 2014 15:35
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kaishek posted:Did anyone see the diver that broke the depth record at something like 1000 feet in Dahab, Egypt? I've found a bunch of news articles about it but I'd love to read an actual description of the dive itself (descent, decompression stops, etc.) Here's a more in depth (  ) article about it:http://www.h20diversdahab.com/world-record/ Frozen Pizza Party fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Oct 3, 2014 |
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Oct 3, 2014 22:04
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70 tanks used during the whole dive, that's impressive.
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Oct 4, 2014 10:55
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He should have taken a Suunto computer on the dive and said how it reacted. But holy poo poo, I read that last week and can't even fathom that dive.
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Oct 5, 2014 04:31
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Depth for depths sake just seems like unnecessary and egotistical stupidity to me. Record or not.
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Oct 5, 2014 05:49
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Tomberforce posted:Depth for depths sake just seems like unnecessary and egotistical stupidity to me. Record or not. Most records get broken just for the poo poo of it *shrug*.
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Oct 9, 2014 01:27
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All of you were right about rescue class being fun. We did our pool session tonight, final lecture tomorrow, and then scenarios/final exam on Saturday.
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Oct 9, 2014 05:59
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Yeah, I was never bored during the course, and it was exciting honing / learning new skills. Ask them to make it hard for you.
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Oct 9, 2014 07:31
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For recreational diving and during pool dives what type of wetsuit is recommended? I own several types of wetsuits, a short sleeved one (short sleeves and short legs) that is 3mm, a long sleeve short leg wetsuit that is 5mm, and then kind of like coverall wetsuit that has velcro that goes over your shoulders and is sleeveless but long legs that is 5mm.
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Oct 10, 2014 06:11
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Ideal Paradigm posted:For recreational diving and during pool dives what type of wetsuit is recommended? I own several types of wetsuits, a short sleeved one (short sleeves and short legs) that is 3mm, a long sleeve short leg wetsuit that is 5mm, and then kind of like coverall wetsuit that has velcro that goes over your shoulders and is sleeveless but long legs that is 5mm. Depends entirely on where you dive and your personal cold tolerance. Assuming a heated pool to 27 degrees c or so a 3mm shorty will be fine. Rec diving outside, it depends entirely on where. In Australia I wear a 5mm in summer and an 8mm semi dry in winter.
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Oct 10, 2014 06:28
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Tomberforce posted:Depends entirely on where you dive and your personal cold tolerance. Assuming a heated pool to 27 degrees c or so a 3mm shorty will be fine. Rec diving outside, it depends entirely on where. In Australia I wear a 5mm in summer and an 8mm semi dry in winter. The pool should be anywhere from 22 to 27 C (I converted from Fahrenheit), and the ocean dives will be off the coast of Southern California between now and December.
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Oct 10, 2014 06:41
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Ideal Paradigm posted:For recreational diving and during pool dives what type of wetsuit is recommended? I own several types of wetsuits, a short sleeved one (short sleeves and short legs) that is 3mm, a long sleeve short leg wetsuit that is 5mm, and then kind of like coverall wetsuit that has velcro that goes over your shoulders and is sleeveless but long legs that is 5mm. Are you going to be diving in socal? Are your wetsuits diving suits or... some other kind? Socal you're going to be in a 7mm full with gloves and hood most of the year, but right now you can get away with a 5mm full. I have been diving in a few months but it looks like Catalina is around 72F (22C) right now which is about the warmest it can get here. At 72F you'd be toasty in a 7mm full (i.e. take off your gloves and hood) and probably fine in one of your 5mm suits. Socal water is cold, this year has been an exception due to the thing causing the superdrought.
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Oct 10, 2014 15:45
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Aquila posted:Are you going to be diving in socal? Are your wetsuits diving suits or... some other kind? The shorty that I have is not. The other two that I have (5mm with short leg and full sleeves, and 5mm pants with an additional 5mm long sleeve top) are diving wetsuits. This is as far as I know, how can you tell if they're specifically for diving? I have heard that they're designed to compress when you go deeper or something to that effect?
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Oct 10, 2014 21:05
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That's true for every neoprene suit.
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Oct 10, 2014 21:27
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Ideal Paradigm posted:how can you tell if they're specifically for diving? Designed for diving is mainly going to be zipper placement (most neoprene suits 'designed' for diving are going to have the zipper on the back). But you could also consider reinforced seams and / or areas with extra padding. It is all going to boil down to your personal preference. No one can tell you your exact temperature comfort threshold, some people need to wear 8mm in a heated pool, others are part polar bear and will wear a 5mm in water in the 50s (low 10s in C). Most people will be able to give you a range of temperatures and suggested thermal layers to wear in those temperatures. Short answer: If your wetsuit is comfortable* and doesn't interfere with your equipment, or your ability to dive safely then wear it. *Comfort being defined as adequate thermal protection (you aren't overheating during the dive, and more importantly you aren't shivering due to loss of core body temperature) AND the feel/fit of the wetsuit.
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Oct 11, 2014 17:28
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Rescue class is complete. Doing the scenarios in water with low vis and moderate current seemed like it was good training, especially when the victim's buddy panics then rips your reg out as he dunks you 
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Oct 11, 2014 22:19
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helpy posted:Designed for diving is mainly going to be zipper placement (most neoprene suits 'designed' for diving are going to have the zipper on the back). But you could also consider reinforced seams and / or areas with extra padding. It is all going to boil down to your personal preference. No one can tell you your exact temperature comfort threshold, some people need to wear 8mm in a heated pool, others are part polar bear and will wear a 5mm in water in the 50s (low 10s in C). Most people will be able to give you a range of temperatures and suggested thermal layers to wear in those temperatures. Short answer: If your wetsuit is comfortable* and doesn't interfere with your equipment, or your ability to dive safely then wear it. This was extremely helpful, thank you.
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Oct 11, 2014 23:12
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I managed to find a decent BCD on craigslist the other day, and I'm about to start looking for a 2nd hand set of regulators. The economics (and logic) don't really support my buying new stuff. Regs remind me of used motorcycles in that there seem to be a lot of 10-20 year old ones for sale that just sat in a garage and have barely been used. Were regulators from the 90s sufficiently different from the ones that they make now that I should favor newer ones? Mechanically they appear to be very similar. Based on my non-scuba mechanical knowledge, I would think they all would be fine as long as they have been stored clean and cool, and used properly. I wasn't sure if it was like most other types of sporting goods where the new, nice stuff is slightly better, but not enough for me to actually care or spend money on it. Not having air jordans never hurt my basketball playing experience as a kid, and I don't need a Porsche for my boring rear end ride to work. In a similar vein, which brands of regulators are easiest for me to get the parts, tools, and specs required to service them myself? (yes, I have the appropriate background and knew what regulators were before I started scuba)
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Oct 14, 2014 05:41
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Hows it going everybody, I am informing you I am still ALIVE. I wonder if bishop is still around? I wanted to say hi when I was in Florida
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Oct 18, 2014 04:02
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Jimmy James posted:In a similar vein, which brands of regulators are easiest for me to get the parts, tools, and specs required to service them myself? Short answer: Servicing your own regulators is a "bad idea"(tm). Long answer: No current regulator manufacturers will allow sale of repair parts/kits to end users. If you do manage to track down an 'official' repair kit from somewhere know that manufacturers crack down pretty hard when they find retail outlets running a side gig of reselling parts kits, as in you no longer are an authorized retail partner, and legal action may be following. So that 'official' kit you found may be fraudulent and of substandard parts, you have no way of knowing. One explanation I can give you is this: it boils down to liability reasons entailing mainly the manufacturer doesn't want a non-certified technician servicing life support equipment. I would also point out that regardless of your comfort / mechanical inclinations you don't actually want to be servicing your own life support equipment unless you ARE a certified technician who does service on the order of several tens if not hundreds of regulators a year. I can give you several reasons to support this point: 1) You aren't receiving technical bulletins from the manufacturer's engineers describing specific service points to watch out for and specific service steps to take in remediating problems. 2) Since you are only partially familiar with the workings of your regulator, you aren't versed in the finer points of what is and isn't important during servicing (is this crack cosmetic, or does it cause serious failure in my regulator?) 3) Since you are not an authorized technician and don't have access to the manufacturer specified repair parts you don't have any way of knowing what the tolerances are on the repair parts should you think about tracking down individual replacement parts(not all o-rings are created equal). Is it basically a cartel? Yes. Does it suck? Yes. Can you avoid it? Nope. I appreciate your enthusiasm for trying to save a little bit of money when buying your equipment, and buying used isn't the worst plan in the world. Is there any reason you are looking to buy your own equipment? What is your budget for buying a regulator? What is your annual use case for diving? For example, based on your stated desire to save money, unless you are diving more than about 3 trips a year (say less than 10 dives total per year) my honest recommendation would be to rent equipment.
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Oct 19, 2014 02:20
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helpy posted:
My motivation for working on my own equipment isn't really to save money. It would be for fun. I'm an engineer, and I spec out and work with regulators and other equipment from time to time in toxic chemical service. I have an appreciation for what the significance of something being life critical. It's normally other peoples lives I impact, but I would probably take it even more seriously if it was my own life. I would entertain getting vendor certified if it was cheap, but it's not something I have to do. I'm getting my own equipment for the sake of having equipment I 'know'. Equipment where I know what kind of condition it in, I know how it fits, and I know what to expect from it. I've put in about 8 dive days in the past year, and I'm planning on doing about another 8-12 next year. It's around the break-even point for justifying buying stuff. I've had some bad luck with rental equipment too. I've had leaking and free flowing regulators. I've had hose leaks. I've had a tank o-ring failure. There is like a 40% chance(maybe more, it's only been like 16 dives), I'll find something wrong in my pre-dive checks or something won't work right during the dive. And in general, I feel like my regulator breathing performance could be better. I don't have a hard budget, but it seems like I would have a decent number of options for a used regulator set-up (1st, 2nd, octo, and maybe gauges) in the 300-400 dollar range. I'm looking at warm water diving mostly, being on the gulf coast. Absolute coldest temperatures I could see myself in on dive trips are in the 60 F range.
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Oct 19, 2014 03:41
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Jimmy James posted:My motivation for working on my own equipment isn't really to save money. I apologize for misinterpreting your post. I do think there are some people who are more than capable of servicing their own equipment, and you likely fall into that group. To expand a little bit on what I said about liability, the industry has made a decision regarding their liability to limit who has access to the supplies to work on equipment. They don't want a side business of shady individuals who don't know (or more likely don't care) what they are doing when servicing equipment for divers because if the result ends up in dead divers then the resulting lawsuits could potentially end up crippling the industry. One could also argue the manufacturers limit parts kits resale as a method to help protect revenue streams for retail partners (it helps keep local dive shops in business, you have to visit the LDS and spend money to get your equipment serviced). There are probably other factors or arguments to be made as to why the parts kits are protected and a lot of words can be typed debating the weird things the dive industry does, but the current state still stands: unless you are an authorized repair center, you don't have access to the parts, and you are really rolling the dice if you are thinking otherwise. All that being said, I wholeheartedly endorse learning about the equipment you are trusting your life to. The dive training agencies (PADI SSI TDI/SDI NAUI for example) have recognized this as something they can monetize and there are classes for equipment specialists (mainly your reg and hoses, but BCDs are generally discussed as well) and visual inspection procedures (hello there tank o-ring failure). If you more prefer a more autodidactic approach, I would direct you to this book. Jimmy James posted:I've had some bad luck with rental equipment too. I've had leaking and free flowing regulators. I've had hose leaks. I've had a tank o-ring failure. Your criticism of poorly maintained rental equipment is a valid one, and as an introduction to diving (with less than 20 dives) your initial equipment experience isn't doing you (or the industry) any favors when it comes to retaining you as a diver. Were your dives all with the same operator? If the answer is yes I implore you to seek out a different dive operator for future excursions. It sounds like the operator you had been going with was cheaping out on you. Jimmy James posted:I feel like my regulator breathing performance could be better. Regulator performance: This is going to be the difference between a lower end (generally cheaper, and as a result generally what is in a rental line; usually why divers will end up buying their own regulator) and a high end (generally more expensive) regulator. This will also be the difference between regulator design from the 90s and improved designs from recent years. In general, pretty much all (low and high end) modern regulators have similar performance to a given depth, I think it is about 60 ft / 18 m. Deeper diving is where the regulator design has the greatest impact and the high end regulators start to prove their worth. Jimmy James posted:a used regulator set-up (1st, 2nd, octo, and maybe gauges) in the 300-400 dollar range. Have you priced used at a local dive shop? I know not all dive shops are created equal, but there may be a LDS looking to rotate regulators out of their pool training or rental line and you might be able to get a deal. For new you are almost certainly running into MAP. If you buy from CL or anywhere other than a dive shop you are almost certainly going to have to take the unit in for servicing which will probably be 100 dollars minimum plus the cost of any parts needing to be replaced. You could jump onto scubaboard and look at their offerings, but again you would likely have to take the unit in for service.
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Oct 19, 2014 17:26
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Just chiming in with helpy: if you buy a regulator used, other than from a dive shop that you trust, you should expect to tack on an additional $100 (minimum) to the price for a full servicing. Even if it works perfectly fine when you buy it, it could still be close to being time for servicing and you probably wouldn't be able to tell.
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Oct 19, 2014 18:18
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helpy posted:Short answer: Servicing your own regulators is a "bad idea"(tm). HOG will sell the service kits for their regs provided you complete the HOG servicing course (a TDI course) at one of their distributors. I haven't heard anything bad about HOG gear, it's cheap and apparently works very well. Looks like a knock off of Apeks gear to me, but gets good reports.
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Oct 20, 2014 08:34
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Hi, so i'm going to panama for a university course this upcoming winter, and i will be snorkeling on both the pacific side and the caribbean side. I'm looking for a wetsuit that would fit me but not make me look like the blob. I'm 5'7'' and about 220 lbs, any suggestions? I'm also wondering what a good thickness would be! I'm not sure how much this pertains to this ask thread but i figured it would be a good start.
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Oct 20, 2014 18:02
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I don't have experience diving or snorkeling in Panama but I looked up what the water temperatures might be like on http://www.padi.com/scuba/scuba-diving-trips/scuba-diving-resort-vacations/panama-diving/ quote:Water Temperature: High 20s C/low to mid 80s F off the Atlantic coast. Pacific coast surface water temperatures are generally in the high 20s C/low 80s F, but drop to the low to mid 20s C/mid 70s F at depth. Unless you tend to get cold, I don't think you'd need a wetsuit for snorkeling at those temperatures. Maybe a rash guard so you don't get sunburnt.
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Oct 20, 2014 18:09
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I was thinking of using the wet suit in terms of buoyancy (i heard it's a huge help). Being out there for 6 hours at a time, I think the buoyancy will help a lot.
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Oct 20, 2014 18:15
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 You are not going to snorkeling for 6 hours at a time.EDIT: If you ARE, for some reason, going to snorkel for an outrageous amount of time, then even with those nice temperatures you will get super cold. I'd say a 5mm full length is not an outrageous choice for that kind of time. As for fit, it's unfortunately one of things you have to try out... Might want to visit a local diving shop for that.
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Oct 20, 2014 18:18
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basically, the course is extremely field work based ("lab" consists of 6-7 hours of field work) and I was extremely confused the first time my professors said that sometimes we would be snorkeling for the entire time. so until i hear more about the course, I'm going to assume my professors weren't exaggerating (even though it sounds like it) if anyone has snorkeled/dove around panama let me know I'd love to know the types of sea life to look out for regarding the wetsuit, i'm going to make a stop at a dive shop nearby when i'm home for thanksgiving and figure things out. Do dive shops regularly special order suits? or is what they carry what they sell?
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Oct 20, 2014 18:29
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I think you should ask your professors directly. Anyway I doubt you'll need more than 5mm.
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Oct 20, 2014 18:41
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another question I had: we have to take pictures for a biodiversity portfolio and I was wondering if you guys had any suggestions regarding good but somewhat cheap (300$ or less) underwater cameras, I've looked at gopros (wide angle lens) but not being able to see what I'm recording is a huge bummer.
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Oct 20, 2014 18:53
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Occams taser posted:another question I had: Well, if it helps, you can get an LCD for the GoPro that snaps on the back.
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Oct 20, 2014 19:32
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If price is any concern, then you might consider the SJ 4000. Much, much cheaper than the GoPro, works with many GoPro accessories, and has a built-in LCD screen. You can google around for footage - you should be able to find side-by-side comparison (SJ4000 vs GoPro) videos. I don't have one myself but I've heard good things.
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Oct 20, 2014 21:37
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I have one and I recommended it before and recommend it now. Used it even a couple of weekends ago, the case didn't leak even at 40m even though it's not supposed to go below 30. Image quality is excellent. Unless you want the top tier gopro, the sj 4000 is better and also a lot cheaper. Edit: it records video in HD and the pictures are up to 12 megapixels.
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Oct 20, 2014 23:44
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