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Turning off your light, and seeing how much you can do without a light is in fact one of the skills we do on the Night Dive Specialty course, and I try and get people to try on the Advances specialty dive. It's also one of the reasons I leave a big light pointing up, so that people will be reassured that they can see the light if they want to. Diving by the full moon and nothing else, and realizing you can see hand signals, and at least some fish, and your gauge and compass (if you have charged them at any point in the dive) makes turning on the light something you do when you want to, not something you have to do to feel comfortable. Since no one teaches the night dive anymore, I will run through some of the things I cover in a course to save people having to find out the hard way. Boat diving: 1. The light really wants to swing around on the wrist lanyard and slap you in the face especially doing a giant stride. Do something to prevent this. 2. Turn on the light before you get in the water. That way of you drop it, you can just swim to the light. 3. Once you jump in, find what makes the boat recognizable from the surface so if you get turned around underwater you can come to the surface, find the boat easy, set your compass and swim back to it. If you have to do that, make sure you know how to tell the boat you are just getting bearings and they do not need to send help to you. Check what it looks like underwater too. General 3. Think about whether using wrist lanyards in general is what you want to do, since it is likely you will put it on your right hand, and both your reg hoses are also there. It only takes one time managing to tie your primary and octopus hose together with a dangly lanyard on a heavy light to think that maybe, in retrospect, a different system might work better. 4. Some people like the shore person/car watcher to light their way from behind so that as they get further away they gradually get used to less light, and can start the dive with their lights off. 5. Right before you descend, assume that is the return point turn around and find some lineups (Can't find a link that explains this well yet) that are permanent: not house lights, etc. Either intentionally surface to see if you can distinguish where you are from where you need to be, or think about it hard. You will not be (necessarily) able to surface swim from point to point easily at night because intervening rocks easy to spot in the day might be hard to see at night. 6. Some people leave a breadcrumb trail of lights behind them the first time they dive at an unfamiliar point, and pick them up on the way back. This does not work when others are diving the same point. (Daytime story but, I have had a set of gear, a weight belt, and float that I left intentionally in the water all brought back by 'helpful' divers, that. This happens all the time with gear left behind for rescue classes or search and recovery classes to find. So the breadcrumb idea can fail specatacularly) 7. If you are not using the light to specifically look at something, turn it off, or you end up making random light signals. What some operators suggest is buddy teams sharing a light to make sure they stay in contact, and one person does not randomly signal. 8. Out of air is tricky, one the reason someone runs out of air on a night dive is losing their light, no longer seeing their gauge, and instead of surfacing they run to the nearest light. When they get there, they'll maybe just grab the reg out of someone's mouth. Another reason why #7 is popular with dive operators. No buddy separation.
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Dec 11, 2015 16:58
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Honestly having people share a light seems like a potentially really bad idea. If there's a problem for the person with the light, their buddy might have difficulty with signaling. If they have a problem it's also going to be difficult for them to let their buddy know. Likewise if the buddy without a light has an accident they will be almost impossible to find. A good compromise would originally be glow sticks on everyone's kit so even with lights off you can see everyone. Of course in basing this off learning night success in the UK where without a light you will see nothing underwater and mighty have difficulty seeing the shore properly on the surface. As dive manager you can also be a tremendous dick and turn all the surface lights off before someone surfaces. They will almost certainly think they've managed to get hugely lost.
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Dec 11, 2015 18:28
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We all attach a small strobe to our tanks just for that: https://www.google.it/search?q=divi...XW4DA0Q_AUIBigB We carry two lights (one with a goodman handle and a smaller one in your pocket if the main one fails) but as Pupdive says, if there are the right conditions you can dive without lights and in fact it owns, a lot. Plus, all computers have a backlight nowadays. When you dive in a group however either all have the lights on, or none does, otherwise your eyes can't get adjusted to darkness and you can't see poo poo.
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Dec 11, 2015 19:35
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MrNemo posted:Honestly having people share a light seems like a potentially really bad idea. If there's a problem for the person with the light, their buddy might have difficulty with signaling. If they have a problem it's also going to be difficult for them to let their buddy know. Likewise if the buddy without a light has an accident they will be almost impossible to find. A good compromise would originally be glow sticks on everyone's kit so even with lights off you can see everyone. Of course in basing this off learning night success in the UK where without a light you will see nothing underwater and mighty have difficulty seeing the shore properly on the surface. If one person of a buddy team is having trouble, the person with their hand also on the light should have no problems seeing there is a problem with their buddy. If they cannot notice when the person they are basically holding hands with via a light is having problems, there are some bigger problems involved. Night diving like deep diving should be thought of as "can immediately touch my buddy separation distance" diving (or should be planned like the solo dive it is, with the prerequisite solo certification, and full redundancy on every diver). There is no way to distinguish one light from the next if you are down beam. The only way to never be down beam is to share a light, in many conditions. And by share a light, some even mean both hold it, together. Some just mean be looking at the same stuff since that's the only way to communicate effectively at night anyway, unless you are diving without lights. It's not how I train divers generally, but if I am on a boat that runs one active light per buddy team, I'm all in with their methods (Each diver should still have one main, and one backup each, of course). Captains who require that method are usually the captains that are actually watching for irregular light motions and will send help if they see a wildly swinging light. And then the diving crew gets to the person 'in trouble' who has just turned on their light that's on a wrist lanyard. And then just started watching what their buddy is pointing at, leaving their dangling light to do a good imitation of a diver signalling for help. **** Glow sticks always sound like a good idea, until they are used in practice. And then the boat with an alert captain takes off after a glow stick drifting away, assuming it is a non-responsive diver in trouble on the surface, and fishes a loose glow stick out of the water, and has no idea what to make of it, and then glow sticks look like one more of the "people do this because people have always done this" that is all over standard diving practice. Glow sticks are bobbing lights, and nothing else. Especially when it routine for fishing nets to have them attached in many places. Are those glow sticks marking divers? Were they marking divers? Did divers get caught in fishing nets? pupdive fucked around with this message at 01:57 on Dec 12, 2015 |
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Dec 12, 2015 01:41
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MrNemo posted:As dive manager you can also be a tremendous dick and turn all the surface lights off before someone surfaces. They will almost certainly think they've managed to get hugely lost. On a dead serious note, because this is an ongoing issue in diving: [soapbox] If I was ever working on a boat where the captain thought illegally turning off the lights on a dive boat at night was 'funny', I'd take it up with the local equivalent of the Coast Guard and do what I could to see that they lost their captain's license. We do have a say when the Coast Guard investigates accidents, and we also have a say when we direct put in claims against captains being endangering divers under their care. It would be really really 'funny' if the 'funny' captain got his own boat run into and sunk because he was not using running lights, and some divers run over and killed for a laugh. And I really see no difference between a captain doing that on a dive boat, and the person tasked with shore duties doing the same. Ha. Ha. I will never understand why divers reach some arbitrary point in diving where they think being a dick and hassling divers they see as somehow 'lesser' is in anyway appropriate. I could destroy basically any divers confidence in their abilities in about 10 seconds by causing the right combination of gear problems, and they'd probably never dive again, if they manage to not panic and kill themselves. I am not sure what that would prove though, other than to show that people dive for fun, and if people in charge of their safety go out of their way to make it not fun for divers, the divers will quit, and those idiots will be out of a job. loving with divers is just stupid, and I am glad I work in a country with hair trigger liability laws that allow us to sue people and companies into non-existence who do idiotic things that endanger people. I am sorry for you, that you apparently do not. [/soapbox]
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Dec 12, 2015 01:55
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Woah, this got a bit weird. Sorry I didn't realize there was a dedicated night dive course and yes, signals are different because they have to be. Just do a night dive, it's fun and if a captain turns off the boat lights he's an idiot fucker and if someone disables you in 10 seconds either he closed your tank valve or snapped off a QD or you're James Bond in moonraker or thunderball I'm not sure which
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Dec 12, 2015 03:08
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pupdive posted:
This is almost every sport known to man. In sport I have participated in I have found people who rant, brag, bully or generally and act like jackssses. I think you can split any population of people into subgroups (assholes / not assholes) the percentages would almost always be equal. The difficult part in adventure sports is that those attitudes can kill people. We should all have the courage to look out for the new people. I have been blessed with good mentors in skydiving and rock climbing and hope to find the same scuba diving. (Forgive the grammar sentence structure I'm phone posting. But to be honest it would suck if was at a computer)
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Dec 12, 2015 15:41
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pupdive posted:On a dead serious note, because this is an ongoing issue in diving: I'm sure you'll be glad to know this has only ever been done to the least experienced and most nervous divers I can find, definitely not something done to an experienced diver on a shore dive in perfectly calm summer conditions. Diving is defintely not something people do for fun and should never involve teasing, name calling or jokes as there is no way to judge appropriate safety conditions for these. Likewise putting food dye in someone's gloves may provoke them to panic and believe they've got terrible frostbite when they come out of the water with blue hands and their first response might be to amputate their own finger before anyone can respond. Diving is a dangerous and deadly sport which should be approached at all times with a mindfulness of the various forms of legal liability one has. Thank you for reminding me of this.
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Dec 12, 2015 17:53
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MrNemo posted:Diving is defintely not something people do for fun huh, ok! e: oh I just got the point of your post sorry let it mellow fucked around with this message at 03:25 on Dec 14, 2015 |
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Dec 14, 2015 03:22
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fwiw everyone should dive all the goddamn time there is no reason at all to not dive
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Dec 14, 2015 03:34
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Counterpoint: diving in cold lakes, during winter, with bad visibility. My friends try to convince me all the time that it's good training, but nope.
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Dec 14, 2015 07:50
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 Months ago I promised to upload pics. So here they are.  Chuuk's national flag.  I live in Japan, so it wasn't far to go. It was about 3 hours to Guam, and from there a 1.5 hour jaunt to Chuuk. Let it be known that Guam airport is awful.  Wreck map.  The airport is tiny, and there's only 1 or 2 flights a week I believe. People had massive coolers full of meat and produce; all brought in from Guam.  Welcome!  Chuuk is quite poor. The weather was also pretty miserable while I was there.  My lodging for the week, the S.S. Thorfinn. An old whaling vessel turned tug. Pretty comfortable I must admit!  Main living room. The food was good and snacks plentiful. The captain was also a pleasure to talk to. He'd tell me about Chuuk and the wrecks, and about the boat's history during meals. Very interesting dude. Oh, I was also the only guest on the boat for the entire week.  Though the weather was grey for the most part, I did manage this excellent sunset photo.  During World War II the Japanese fortified Chuuk Lagoon as their forward base in the Pacific, much like how the U.S. used Hawaii. Fortified heavily for a naval land invasion, the U.S. determined (correctly so) that the anchorage was highly vulnerable to air attack. Thus on February 16th, 1944, the U.S. launched "Operation Hailstone," a large scale aerial assault on Imperial Japan's logistics fleet. The attack took two days, and utterly annihilated the Japanese forces. Would you like to know more? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Hailstone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-qqTVsrxb4 ________________ Since I was the only guest, that meant I also had my own personal guide. Oddly enough, we also didn't see ANY other divers on the lagoon! It was really bizarre, but as a result it was just the two of us on the wrecks. I basically got to dive each wreck unspoiled by any other diver, with my own personal guide. It was loving baller. All of the wrecks in this post are in no particular order.  To be quite honest, I find sunken warbirds much more interesting than ships.     This was the first ship I dove on the trip. It was honestly the most beautiful of all the wrecks I saw (and I only saw about 16). Covered in coral and teeming with fish, it was a great way to start the tour.  Bow gun.  Forward engine order telegraph.  In one of the holds was the remains of a zero. Along with parts and engines.    A small salvager and tug. This was a night dive. Pretty eerie diving on a wreck in the dark. Slow and steady was the name of the game.  Engine room gauges.    The torpedo hole was gigantic. Big enough to easily fit a couple of side-by-side pickup trucks through.  Over 60 years in the ocean, rocked by tides, winds, and typhoons, really does damage to the ships. This one was quite shallow, and as such deteriorated much more than others. Slabs of iron and rust just sloughed off like dead skin.  Torpedo propeller.  Torpedo nose.  A submarine tender.  This kanji character means "quiet," "rested," and "peaceful."  Leaving the hold.  Those are periscopes next to my guide there.  A chilling reminder that there were people on board.   Sweeping around to the stern's propeller. This next dive was so murky and of such poor visibility that I had no choice but to turn it black and white.  This is a Jill bomber that didn't make it very far off the runway before it was shot down.   Machine gun and ammunition drum.  Drum detail.   Probably my favorite dive of the whole trip:  Rather unsuspecting just looking at the site map.  Going inside and turning a corner I see a catwalk.  Which crosses over the engine room. Really really loving cool. We spent the whole dive in here essentially, and I took a lot of video. It was a really cool space to explore; lots of interesting shapes and sizes.   Below the engine room looking back up the stairway. A tight fit I must admit.  Sky windows above the engine room.  A cool dive featuring vehicles and howitzer artillery.   Bridge telegraph.  A light tank on the main deck.  Remnants of a truck that didn't quite go overboard. Only the frame remains.   Many of the fleet's ships were pressed into service as tenders. Many were originally merchant ships that would make rounds in the Pacific. Hence why so many of them have non-Japanese names.  The contents of the hold were spilling out. Bottles were everywhere.  All that beer, wasted. Interestingly enough, a lot of the wooden crates are still preserved.   The "Million Dollar Wreck." This one was pretty deep. Bottom time was maaaaybe 5 minutes, I can't quite remember. This dive was the deepest I have ever gone, a max depth of 45 meters, though I may have gone down to 47 at one point. I was busy taking as many photos as I could. Too bad low light coupled with a cheap camera resulted in blurry photos. It does have a lot of tanks though.      The hold used to be filled with mines as well. Through the years people would steal them, gut them, and re-use them for dynamite fishing.  Bow gun.  Bow.  Strangely enough, this wreck is memorable to me because of the bathroom.  Picture in the hold.  Eerie.  Seeing things like urinals, or sinks, or dishes reminds you that these places were once inhabited. For me, it's the little mundane things things that trigger those thoughts. Who was the last guy to piss here? Did he wash his hands? Who used those dishes last? Who washed them? Who put them there? The mind kinda wanders.  This guy was an ammunition tender.  Large shells for battleships.  Contrary to rumor however, the shells were most likely not intended for the battleship Yamato.  Fuel drums. The contents are long gone, leaked out into the lagoon. Only wisps of oil remain.  Safety stop.  This guy came out during the day to scrounge. Watching him sure made the 10 minute safety stop go by quickly.  ________________  "The greatest airshow on Earth." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYo-j3fpkLo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QRN4K3inDA Trivia fucked around with this message at 08:52 on Dec 15, 2015 |
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Dec 15, 2015 08:50
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Cool pics and videos! Is your dive travel always alone? Is the boat the dive operator?
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Dec 15, 2015 11:35
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Just so there's no confusion, none of those vids are mine of course. I have videos but lack a good editing software that lets me color correct and stabilize. Anyone have any recommendations? In this case Thorfinn was the dive operator yes. They're very freelance-y though, as the captain told me that he's often called to host scientific research crews as well. He does the dive operations between larger jobs (sometimes salvage jobs contracted through the U.S. government too). I often dive alone unfortunately. Diving, like good food or a delicious beer, is something that should be shared I think. Unfortunately it's quite expensive, often prohibitively so. Many of my friends have loans, mortgages, and other forms of debt. Mostly I think it comes down to a difference in life outlook. Convincing them to drop thousands of dollars on training, flights, and dives is a really tall order. Take all of that and then arranging for simultaneous holidays is often a Bridge Too Far. I consider myself quite lucky to be able to do all this. I did have a couple of successes though. I convinced my girlfriend to get licensed up to advanced (even though she's still pretty poor at it), and also convinced my best mate here to get it as well (years of being nagged at by me and another guy finally convinced him). I went with him and his wife to the Gilis last year, and he finally understood what the appeal was (it's not just the diving!). It's with him that I'm going to Komodo.  How can you see something like this and not fall in love?
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Dec 15, 2015 12:42
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I'm just gonna randomly jump in to say night dives are my absolute favorite dives. Utter relaxation even without a light, two instances of which I can remember, both buddy's and my own light died during the dive, including the backups so we finished it in sorta light darkness, it was great especially because you see subtle things you don't with a working light and the other when I gave up my light for a slightly panicky buddy whose light died.
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Dec 15, 2015 13:35
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Trivia posted:I convinced my girlfriend to get licensed up to advanced (even though she's still pretty poor at it) Is your girlfriend Japanese? You said you are coming from Japan, so I ask. More importantly, I ask because the state of Japanese dive training is pretty amazing (and not in a good way). Not saying anything about Japanese divers in general though. There are some amazing Japanese divers. The Japanese tech divers I have dove with in specific have always been amazing divers, not least because many Japanese women apparently add air to their tanks throughout the dive, rather then using air from the tank. I say its the Ama heritage. Arbitrarily small tanks are just not an issue which lets Japanese people tech diving in mixed teams able to use incredibly small tanks which makes them graceful even in doubles and stages because they do not have to load up with the big tanks. **** Also don't sleep on Saipan for being easy to dive from Japan and nice diving. I have no idea what the state of flights is like, but there is some flat stunning shore diving there. 105(?) steps make Grotto maybe a pass for some people, and Obyan is tricky the first time, and car break-ins are a thing. It's not Palau/Peleliu, but logistically it's much easier with slightly more nightlife. I think you still have to pass through the Guam Airport though nowadays. pupdive fucked around with this message at 15:12 on Dec 15, 2015 |
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Dec 15, 2015 14:45
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YouTube stabilizes the videos for you (it asks before doing it). Just upload them there.
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Dec 15, 2015 19:16
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That's good to know. I assume it does nothing for color correction though?
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Dec 15, 2015 22:32
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Thanks for the effort post on Chuuk, Trivia. One of the places I'd like to go visit to wreck dive. The most used post edit programs for videography are: Vegas Pro, Adobe Premiere/After Effects, and Final Cut Pro X (Mac Users). Most serious videographers skew towards AP/AE, but the lay person will be fine with any of them. They all have colour correct. Personally: I used Vegas Pro 12/13 until a few months ago. I wasn't impressed with the quality of my videos so I switch over to adobe premiere/after effect users . I haven't made any videos yet, so I can't compare, but every youtube/vimeo I've seen created with AP/AE and even Final Cut (for Mac users) were better quality than Vegas Pro. Vegas Pro doesn't have native support for GoPro recording formats, which I'm using. There are a few additional little things that bugged me about Vegas Pro that pushed me enough to make the switch. For stabilization - The best way to reduce shakiness is to practice.  Using a camera tray with handles helps tremendously. Both VP and AP/AE have stabilization software built-in much like youtube's stabilization. One trick is to use the highest resolution (ie greater than 1080x1920) and crop it to 1080 or 720 HD in post edit.
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Dec 15, 2015 23:05
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Yeah, I kinda farted around with After Effects with some older footage, but it really didn't offer me what I was looking for. Maybe I'll have luck with Premier. Crop and center is the name of the game of course.
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Dec 15, 2015 23:17
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Gorgeous, Trivia, especially the warbird ones and that husk photo. Thanks for the new wallpapers!
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Dec 15, 2015 23:23
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Glad you guys like them. All that effort when probably no more than 20 people will ever see that post. A labor of love. It's kinda criminal that I go through all that trouble and only use a cheap digicamera. gently caress if I'm going to spend several thousand on a good setup though.
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Dec 15, 2015 23:56
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Trivia posted:Glad you guys like them. All that effort when probably no more than 20 people will ever see that post. A labor of love. As someone who used to rock climb and skydive alone i completely understand the go explore it alone mentality. That trip is epic and you are lucky to have gotten some beautiful memories and photos along the way. How were the guides? What depth were the majority of the wrecks? Im going to show your post to my wife as a hint to our next trip.
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Dec 16, 2015 00:55
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Trivia posted:Glad you guys like them. All that effort when probably no more than 20 people will ever see that post. A labor of love. I had plenty of diver friends that rode the UW digital photography wave of the mid-2000s. The problem back then (and even now to a certain extent) was that the tech was constantly evolving - I dropped $850 on an ikelite case only to have my canon camera clonk out after only a year, which Canon didn't produce anymore.  My rich expat dive buddies had no problem dropping +$6K on setups, only to use it for a year or two, then drop another +$6K for a better setup. I was lucky enough to be their model and get some drat good photos that are now on my wall. Now with the GoPro, people can get in to UW vid/photography at a cost effective price point. I've only dropped around $1K for a decent setup with multiple accessories that will give me great raw vids and photos. Unfortunately, you're still screwed if you're into macro photography.
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Dec 16, 2015 01:00
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Ropes4u posted:How were the guides? What depth were the majority of the wrecks? My guide was a local, and his English wasn't the greatest. That really wasn't the issue though, in my opinion. He wasn't a bad guide, but he wasn't great either. I've had some very good guides that I still remember to this day. Guys who explain what you're doing, where you're going, why you're doing it; on top of all the little things they show you. No, instead it felt like this guy just kinda went through the motions and showed me things 'cause he felt he needed to show them. There were often times where he'd show me things and I didn't quite understand what I was looking at. Also he was a terrible photographer, but I can't really blame him for that (there were maybe 3 photos of me that were worth saving). If you're going to dive with a camera and a buddy, my god teach them how to take decent pictures before you're underwater. https://blog.katchup.com/rules-of-composition/ Most of the wrecks were somewhere between 22 and 27 meters I'd say. The top of the superstructure was usually around 15 I"d guess. The shallowest one I think was maybe 10 meters under water. Deepest that I went on was the San Francisco (though there are others, as shown in the Jacques Cousteau video I linked).
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Dec 16, 2015 02:53
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Bangkero posted:For stabilization - The best way to reduce shakiness is to practice. The biggest underused trick to post processing away shake is to shoot in whatever the camera's native mode is (which is actually square video on the Intova). They kind of bury that in the manual. But diving with it every day will make a huge difference. Shoot a dive worth of video and watch that night to see when the shake are the worst. A tray helps some people, but you can use your arms effectively as a tray with a little practice. No tray makes the camera easy to take on every dive and put away. Sometimes the bigger setups become divers taking their camera rigs diving, rather than a diver going diving. The biggest thing (as you see with many divers shooting still photo by getting negative and planting themselves rather than just being neutrally buoyant and still mid water) is that neutral buoyancy (and balance) are foundations for the best shooting, especially for video. Photographers enthuse about the GUE Fundies class because they suddenly are able to take better pictures. The real secret of the GUE class, though, is that the required equipment set up makes balance automatic, "Don't use gear to solve a skill problem" notwithstanding. People who dive in typical tropical wear with rental gear (shorties in particular) will have trouble getting a rig set in rental that balances itself, and have to learn some different finning/diving techniques to make their way to the balance that comes naturally from the 'GUE' setup. NASE has a good article about the tropical conundrum. The whole article is worthwhile, but the relevant section is: http://scubanase.com/blog/start-with-the-right-equipment/ It's railing against teaching methods, but it also does some good explaining about why spring suits and over weighting are an issue for students and their instructors. It's also worth pointing out that NASE (just like GUE) is espousing a gear solution to solve a skill problem, but (unlike GUE) they are being upfront about it. Instructors can teach balanced neutral divers in tropical gear, though. It's an experience and mindset issue, not an equipment issue. Or as the refrain goes, it's the instructor not the agency that matters. pupdive fucked around with this message at 03:24 on Dec 16, 2015 |
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Dec 16, 2015 03:19
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Holy poo poo on the Chuuk post. That's a bucket list thing for us so thanks for confirming that it is great!
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Dec 16, 2015 03:35
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pupdive posted:But diving with it every day will make a huge difference. Shoot a dive worth of video and watch that night to see when the shake are the worst. A tray helps some people, but you can use your arms effectively as a tray with a little practice. No tray makes the camera easy to take on every dive and put away. Sometimes the bigger setups become divers taking their camera rigs diving, rather than a diver going diving. Not using a tray is fine for shooting UW pics (I'd say it's more for attaching lights and strobes), but we're talking stabilization for videography. Having a tray is a significant ergonomic help to stabilize video, even for divers with the best trim. It moves your hands away from the axis origin so that any tilt angle or jolts of your hands will have a reduced effect on the lens. This is especially for shooting macro or upclose.
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Dec 16, 2015 07:21
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So I went to FL to dive in some springs last week. Ginnie springs: Devil's Ear entrance, which has some strong current coming up out of it:  Down in Devil's Eye, looking up at the trees from ~25 ft:  The next 2 are from within the entrance to the Devil's Eye cave proper; go much further than this and you meet a sign with a Grim Reaper on it that says "YOU WILL loving DIE HERE WITHOUT CAVE DIVING TRAINING".   Looking up out of Little Devil's entrance:  Where Ginnie Springs meets the Santa Fe river:  Hey, that's me!  Blue Grotto: RAWR! Virgil the turtle wants to check out my camera:  Looking back at the entrance from ~50ft down:  The one decent pic I got out of Devil's Den: 
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Dec 18, 2015 02:21
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Trivia posted:A fantastic post. Thank you for this phenomenal post. I have often thought about one day going to Chuuk, but it seems so far away and so costly to get to that it does feel unlikely I'll ever get there. You took fantastic pictures, and as a regular lurker on this thread, I really appreciated the effort you went to in putting the post together. Out of curiosity, what is there for medical support? Is there a hyperbaric chamber on the island? Given the depth some of the wrecks sit at, I figure if I go, I will go with a technical rating. Is there much support for technical diving? I shudder to think what the cost of helium is in a place that is so isolated.
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Dec 18, 2015 07:23
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I believe the closest deco chamber is in Guam, which is about 1.5 hours by plane away. Lots of ppl like to do tech diving in Chuuk. I believe it's only with tech specs that you'll actually be able to see human remains (if there's any left). The boat I was on had lots of experience with tech divers. The captain said he keeps a bottle of helium onboard for people who want to tech dive; the only caveat is that you buy the whole bottle once you crack it (helium leaks easily). I think it was about $1k a cylinder. The captain said that in his opinion doing the tech dives wasn't really worth it if you want to see a lot different wrecks. There are of course some deep ones, but the vast majority rest between 20-50 meters. An air diver can easily do 4 dives a day, whereas a tech diver may be able to do two (though iono how accurate this claim is). I was a bit worried before I went, considering I was only rated as a Rescue Diver with no wreck cert, and definitely no tech spec. It really made little difference in the end. I did about 4 dives a day (missed a full day from sickness, that really sucked). The safety stops were pretty long, and there were multiple stops at set depths. Evidently doing it this way ensured everyone came up in A-Group. There were times where my guide and I would be bobbing on the mooring line for about 10 minutes. I can't even imagine having to do it for hours.
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Dec 18, 2015 09:43
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Icon Of Sin posted:Cave stuff. Have you done cenote diving in Mexico? I'm going to be moving back to the states next year, and thought it'd be a good opportunity to try that after I get settled in.
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Dec 18, 2015 09:47
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Trivia posted:Have you done cenote diving in Mexico? I'm going to be moving back to the states next year, and thought it'd be a good opportunity to try that after I get settled in. I keep hearing about how cool they are, but I've never actually been diving outside of the US  Most of my dives are within 10 miles of shore, or in freshwater springs and quarries. I don't do boats very well 
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Dec 18, 2015 17:00
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Stupid question alert My SPG arrived and in the box was small tube that looks like a flow restrictor. My guess is this gets installed and helps prevent gauge damage when opening the valve and allowing pressure into the lines?
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Dec 19, 2015 17:22
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I know a guy trying to plan a trip do Cenote diving in 2017, I'm currently horribly torn about trying to sign up for that and seeing what it's like. I think my girlfriend might kill me as it's a 2 week trip and she doesn't dive (yet) though. This might seem a bit random but does anyone have experience or knowledge of diving in Argentina. From quick internet searches it seems to be pretty much restricted to down around Patagonia for anything that isn't diving in a lovely lake, is that accurate? I am currently considering relocating there for dumb life reasons and I'd like to know if it would involve pretty much giving up diving as a regular hobby.
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Dec 28, 2015 15:18
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Hello, I have questions about SCUBA (and other forms of) diving! Going to be taking a trip out to the US Virgin Islands/PR this summer, and my sister's fiance and I decided we want to go SCUBA diving while there, so we're planning on getting certified in the coming months. I was NAUI certified 20 years ago as a teen, and haven't been diving in ~15, so I don't remember anything (other than to take sudafed before heading down, and pee in the mask, spit in the wet suit) and want to go through the entire open water cert process again. What do I look for when seeking out a dive shop? What questions should I ask to make sure I'll get good value for my money? (not talking about cheaping out, but if I pay for one of the more expensive places in my area, I want to know the value is there) Is there any real difference between NAUI/PADI/SSI now? I remember there was quite a lot of beef back in the day. What gear should we purchase to bring down with us vs renting on site? The open water cert dives for my area (centralish Texas) appear to take place in a lake. Though I think there are some options to head down to the gulf. Will that matter? (I'm thinking the whole "remove and clear your mask" part will suck a lot less in fresh water) Any spots in particular we should plan on going to while down in the Virgin Islands? Anywhere that would also be good for snorkeling for our SOs that don't have any desire to go whole hog? I'm significantly... larger than I was 20 years ago, will finding an XXL wetsuit (or more likely a dive skin; I'm assuming it probably won't be cold in St Croix in July) on vacation be an issue? What other random advice will I not think to ask that I should know? TIA All!
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Dec 28, 2015 22:30
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quote:Going to be taking a trip out to the US Virgin Islands/PR this summer, and my sister's fiance and I decided we want to go SCUBA diving while there, so we're planning on getting certified in the coming months. I was NAUI certified 20 years ago as a teen, and haven't been diving in ~15, so I don't remember anything (other than to take sudafed before heading down, and pee in the mask, spit in the wet suit) and want to go through the entire open water cert process again. More for curiosity's sake, but if you want to find your old certification and use that to get into a refresher course instead of going through an entire open water class again you can find it here: https://www.naui.org/diverlookup.aspx quote:What do I look for when seeking out a dive shop? What questions should I ask to make sure I'll get good value for my money? (not talking about cheaping out, but if I pay for one of the more expensive places in my area, I want to know the value is there) Is there any real difference between NAUI/PADI/SSI now? I remember there was quite a lot of beef back in the day. Whichever agency you're certified in shouldn't be an issue, the more important part is that you can safely dive within whatever limits you've got (certification-wise). I'm thinking more like "not an active safety risk to yourself or others while underwater" before any other consideration. PADI has a rating system for their affiliated shops (more info and a store locator can be found here: https://www.padi.com/scuba-diving/about-padi/dive-center-resort/). I don't know if NAUI has the same, but I'd figure they do. I've never even seen a NAUI shop that I know of and have only ever met one diver who had her basic open water through them, so anything they do is foreign/unknown to me. I've only ever heard of SSI in passing, and I want to say it was in relation to some kind of tec diving course that someone was thinking about trying to get into. quote:What gear should we purchase to bring down with us vs renting on site? I'd bring my own mask and boots, and probably wetsuit if I could stuff it in my luggage. You should allow a day between your last dive and your flight home, so that's plenty of time to hang it up to dry before packing it up to go home. Knowing that you're the only person that ever had the chance to pee in the wetsuit you're wearing is worth a fair bit to me, at least Masks will fit differently to different people, if you've got one that fits you I'd hang on to it and bring it along. Boots are kind of in the same boat as a wetsuit for me, I don't want to wear footwear that other people have used (no matter the context). Freshwater will probably be a little easier for doing certification/recertification dives, I think. For the reason you already stated, and I get tired of rinsing gear a few times to get all of the salt water off of it. I live in coastal NC and the dive shops here take their students to freshwater lakes for their open water training dives, for what that's worth. I don't know their reasoning (or if there's even a consistent one), but that's how we work here. quote:Any spots in particular we should plan on going to while down in the Virgin Islands? Anywhere that would also be good for snorkeling for our SOs that don't have any desire to go whole hog? The water temp in the Virgin Islands looks to be around 82F year-round, which will feel a little cool (but not cold). I'd think a 3-mil wetsuit would be fine for that, but you could probably even get away with a shorty wetsuit or maybe nothing but a rashguard/dive skin (if you're not prone to getting cold very quickly). Random advice: don't forget your camera charger (and make sure you've got one that fits the outlets there, I don't know if they're different there than stateside), going on a boat and being seasick while hungover is so bad of an experience that it serves as its own punishment (personal experience ), bring cash to tip the boat's mates, don't forget your surface marker buoy/safety sausage, and rent/otherwise get a dive computer to track your no-decompression limits and dive time (these have become huge since I got certified back in '05, and are essentially standard gear for divers of all levels now).
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Dec 29, 2015 00:49
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I dove St. Thomas in October and the water was 84-86F. Didn't even wear a wetsuit. edit: Outlets in the USVI are the same, but they drive on the left with left-hand drive cars, for some stupid reason.
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Dec 29, 2015 03:11
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Fejsze posted:Hello, I have questions about SCUBA (and other forms of) diving! The USVI and BVI are warm enough that you can use a shorty or not, it all depends on how you dive. I got cold in Barbados with a 3.5 mil full and the water there was 82-84 depending on site. And when we dove the BVI I was plenty warm in a shorty that I don't even remember its thickness. But that was when we did discover/Scuba diver. So we were flailing around a lot. But that is irrelevant if this is your first dive in ~15 years and your physique has changed. Forget worrying about equipment and worry about picking a good dive shop. To pick a good dive shop, use trip advisor. Read the absolute top reviews for a shop, read the absolute worst reviews for the shop, decide which of those you trust and then read 10-20 recent reviews with a bias towards whichever ones you trusted. I'd recommend a shop but it was on Scrub Island in the BVI and probably the couple that was there then isn't there anymore. Spots in particular? Yes. Go to the BVI. There's a ferry from St Thomas and then water taxis or ferries all over the BVI. Check out Virgin Gorda, the Last Resort, the Willie T, the Soggy Dollar. All good times! e: fixed some phone posting poo poo let it mellow fucked around with this message at 05:49 on Dec 31, 2015 |
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Dec 31, 2015 05:11
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Soggy Dollar FTW, although I was there sailing not diving. At the End of November I was in the Maldives on a liveaboard (MY Mariana, with a Swiss guide which is cool for me), we only did 2 night dives, but both were special: Alimatha: there's a swarm of nurse sharks (20-30) and some rays at their jetty. You get swarmed by them so it's nothing for you if you're claustrophobic. After some time you start pushing them away since they seriously swim like 10cm from your head. The other was some wreck down there which I haven't done at night before that. Also super cool to see.
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Jan 3, 2016 00:17
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