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Molokai March 9th in Motion  https://vimeo.com/61559187 Finally seas are laying down enough and the sharks are returning. Lets try to ring the dinner bell but not too loud mkay?
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Mar 11, 2013 21:17
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SlicerDicer posted:Molokai March 9th in Motion drat you and your never ending shark encounters. Just got back from 2 weeks in Cozumel. Saw about 8-9 blacktip reef sharks on this trip. Did a fair bit of lionfish hunting too and had some overly friendly nurse sharks looking for handouts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eqp5eYsoUo I'll try to post some black tip videos when I get done editing them. I don't really have anything too close up for them. Tried to entice them with lionfish but they weren't having anything to do with that. Probably best that I don't encounter real sharks to expect to be fed by divers, might not end well..
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Mar 12, 2013 05:21
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macado posted:
Wow. That's pretty awesome.
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Mar 12, 2013 07:56
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macado posted:drat you and your never ending shark encounters. I tend to go stir crazy without my sharks, glad you like them too. I hope that tomorrow my camera works better and I can telemacro and control my aperture LOL And sweet Nurse, I miss those things I havent seen them since I was 15
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Mar 12, 2013 09:15
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdXNKPBAS4w One of my old video's this time Manta's 2006 in the maldives.
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Mar 14, 2013 16:43
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So I am simply terrible at loading my 120cm spear gun. What's the trick to this? If I position the butt of the gun on my chest that I can't reach the bands! I screwed around for about an hour before giving up 
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Mar 16, 2013 06:02
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I booked a 3 dive boat trip off Oahu with Island divers on the 31st of March! About 2 weeks, so excited! 2 deep wreck dives and a shallow drift dive!! 
Tomberforce fucked around with this message at 06:51 on Mar 16, 2013 |
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Mar 16, 2013 06:48
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Orions Lord posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdXNKPBAS4w Thats pretty awesome!
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Mar 16, 2013 08:15
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QuarkJets posted:So I am simply terrible at loading my 120cm spear gun. What's the trick to this? If I position the butt of the gun on my chest that I can't reach the bands! I screwed around for about an hour before giving up The trick is you grab to bands with one hand by the wishbone and grab the gun by its butt with the other and push it onto your chest. From there you grab the band with your other hand, and then pull back. Like this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNjpemmzDoE Be VERY careful if you try to practice out of water. Its best to just pull it back but not onto the fin. Also Make sure its pointing into soft ground if you do load it all the way. If it shoots out of the water it springs back off the end of the line and can spear the shooter. Im not a tall person and I can load my new gun easily. 4 bands 150cm. I also just finished it and just wanted to show it off.  Speaking of manta rays I had one of those ~*' magic on earth '*~ days yesterday. Was spearfishing on a wreck in 60ft and this happened. He hung out for about an hour very curious and friendly.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mofDAhV4jMM
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Mar 17, 2013 16:11
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drat, that is one badass looking gun. Thanks for the tips, I'll try it that way. Maybe I also need to rig up some sort of loading pad (the "loading pad" on my wetsuit is super thin)
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Mar 17, 2013 22:22
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Good weekend of diving although pretty lovely visibility (<5ft). We haven't really experienced typical "good" visibility with all the recent snowstorms and weather systems this winter. Water temperature 38f. Did a scallop charter on Saturday with some friends and a wreck charter on Sunday. Found a couple old bottles from late 1800s while scalloping. Warrented Oval 7oz whiskey bottle. (c1890s) Sawyer's Crystal Blueing (c1890-1905)      
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Mar 18, 2013 02:50
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It's time I find things like that.
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Mar 18, 2013 16:25
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I've read though the thread over the last few weeks, and it's great. I did a (very) little bit of diving years ago but never got certified or anything. I saw how nice you all were to the earlier guy writing a piece on diving, and I was hoping you could answer a few questions for me along the same lines. I'm writing a story that involves diving in relatively shallow water (<30 feet, though this number is not important and can be adjusted for the narrative). Two relatively experienced divers (but not professionals) are making a few trips to the bottom to pick up packages of gold weighing around 30 lbs each, and then returning to a boat on the surface. This is an illicit operation by amateurs, so no winches or submersibles are in play. From what I gather, diving up and down at that depth, assuming you aren't staying submerged for long periods of time, wouldn't cause much in the way of decompression issues. Am I wrong? On the other hand, if one diver were to stay on the bottom for 20-30 minutes or so while the other goes up and down, would the one on the bottom have issues if he needed to ascend quickly due to an emergency? Finally I know sound travels well under water. From about what distance would you expect to hear a smaller motor boat tearing along at full speed? Would 30 lb packages be difficult--but not impossible--to bring up? I've researched this but it's always good to talk to people who know what they are talking about. Any other issues that you can think of that would pop up for this kind of work? Anyway thanks for reading my dumb questions. I'll go back to looking at pictures of sharks and stuff. Great thread.
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Mar 18, 2013 17:13
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Under 30 feet is less than 1 atmosphere of pressure and you can generally dive indefinitely at that depth. For reference, I heard a rule of thumb that you can stay at 60 feet for 60 minutes, though obviously you shouldn't be trusting your life to that. An emergency ascent from 30 feet will generally be relatively safe if they're properly trained and don't panic, i.e. exhale the whole way up and watch for obstacles. It's so shallow though that unless they lose all air or accidentally drop weight they could probably make a leisurely ascent; otherwise, it's so shallow that it would be over pretty quick. I haven't done any recovery stuff, but you can lift a surprising amount of weight using lift bags and spare air; the concern would be the bags floating away or else someone snatching them when they surface. 30 lbs would be a bit much if they're trying to carry it themselves to the surface and compensate with their buoyancy, but it might be possible if they carry extra weight down and leave it, using the gold as ballast on the way up. EDIT: Thanks for the clarification, Crunkjuice. I've obviously never done any recovery stuff, I just look at pretty fish 
DarkHorse fucked around with this message at 19:21 on Mar 18, 2013 |
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Mar 18, 2013 17:37
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DarkHorse posted:I haven't done any recovery stuff, but you can lift a surprising amount of weight using lift bags and spare air; the concern would be the bags floating away or else someone snatching them when they surface. 30 lbs would be a bit much if they're trying to carry it themselves to the surface and compensate with their buoyancy, but it might be possible if they carry extra weight down and leave it, using the gold as ballast on the way up. Using lift bags properly, there is no worry about them floating away or someone stealing them since you have control over the bag the entire ascent. With only 30 lbs all you'd do is get it neutrally buoyant and lift it yourself, bleeding air as you ascend to control its ascent rate. You'd never let a lift bag have a free ascent to the surface. Thats just dangerous and a good way to destroy your lift bag. 30 lbs is no problem to move with a lift bag, and even without one i could do it since i've got a 45 lb bladder in my bcd. It'd be a little extra effort/danger, but nothing crazy. Boats sound loud as poo poo underwater. I don't know the distance, but big engines sound like the end of the world when you are anywhere below them. Also, since it travels so much faster in water than air, sound generally hits both your ears at about the same time so it makes identifying where the sound is coming from very difficult. I'm sure someones done experiments with microphones and such, but for the average diver its, "oh, theres an engine. Lets roll out a surface marker before i ascend". There is always a chance of an injury/emergency when you go underwater, even in 30 feet. It is, however, extremely minimal at that depth. You could go up and down a lot and not really have problems. Its not smart diving, but at that depth, its hard to hurt yourself.
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Mar 18, 2013 17:59
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Yeah like everyone else said look up "lift bags" and the various ways they are deployed. Your character might have a second tank just for that, or he/she might have a free hose from the tank on their back. At 30ft deploying one manually (just blowing into it) is do-able for smaller bags because you have less to worry about as far as deco. Decompression sickness will not play a role at 30 ft, you can dive forever at that depth. Motors underwater: you can hear them from a good ways off. It's always hard to know as a diver because most of the time we have no idea which direction it's coming from or how far away it is. It also really depends on the boat. Maybe do some googling on that one but if I had to throw a number out there, a small-ish boat with a 250hp outboard engine can probably be heard from 1000 feet away. Bishop fucked around with this message at 22:49 on Mar 18, 2013 |
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Mar 18, 2013 22:47
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Not all boats are loud underwater at all times. Some new outboards can be almost silent when going slow enough. But any boat engine under and sort of serious power is going to be easily audible from like bisop said 1000+ feet away. I once had an Fish&Game Officer sneak up on me while I was freediving in his big center console boat. I was down for about a minute and when I came back up he was unknowingly right next to me and I heard a voice say "hey there". Scared the poo poo out of me. Im still not sure how he snuck up on me, I think he motored in close at a low speed and then drifted the rest of the way in. But that day I realized it was possible to not hear a motor boat. You can also tell very easily if boats are getting closer/further by the sound. Here is a few seconds of a boat going by very fast about 150 feet away from me. Its even louder in the water. You can hear it getting louder but sadly i stopped filming before you can hear it get quieter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrHvo5cysN8 IM FROM THE FUTURE fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Mar 19, 2013 |
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Mar 19, 2013 01:03
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Holy poo poo. For any new divers out there, pick your instructors carefully and never be afraid to thumb a dive. (Original page has been taken down due to an impending lawsuit. Here's SSI's rebuttal.)
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Mar 20, 2013 09:32
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Bloody hell. Thanks for the warning I will remember this story.
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Mar 20, 2013 11:06
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Thanks for all the input about recovery!
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Mar 20, 2013 13:32
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Mr.AARP posted:Holy poo poo. For any new divers out there, pick your instructors carefully and never be afraid to thumb a dive. This is pretty unbelievable. I've seen some lovely instructors that get confrontational before, but nothing like this. When i was a DMC i went to the water just to cool off and noticed a young girl about to jump in (13-15). She looked nervous so i assumed she was doing open water. Her regs were all hosed up. Octo was on the left side of the first stage, and it was looped around her tank valve to her right. Her primary was on the left, and her low pressure was on her right going around the tank valve to her inflator. I stopper her and said "hey, i think someone built your reg wrong. The hoses are all backwards". Before she responds some dude (her instructor) starts screaming from the water 20 ft away "don't loving tell my students how to do anything. I'm the instructor and she's in my loving class" at the top of his lungs. Everyone starts looking. I just say "ok dude", cool off then return to my class. 30 seconds later this dude is huffing and puffing at me from the stairs and starts to lay into me about how a student has no business blah blah, the regs are correct since in an over head environment you would could give air in an emergency in any orientation, and more general bullshit about how i know nothing and he's been cave certified since dinosaurs walked the earth or some poo poo. At this point my instructor comes over, asks for his instructor number so he can report him to PADI for being such a goddamn idiot. My instructor sticks up for me saying as a DMC its my job to notice unsafe things, how that girl was taking an OPEN WATER CLASS and should not be taught overhead enviroment techniques, led alone dumb ones like that. They get into it for a while until the park owner comes over, and tells that dude he's never allowed to teach at that park again. The instructor is still sticking to his guns, trying to yell about me to the park owner and the park owner has to get a park ranger from the next park over to come and calm this guy down. The instructor got so angry, he packed up all his poo poo and left. The girl was still on the platform and the his class was in the water, uncertified and unsupervised. My instructor got them out of the water and told them all to bitch like hell to the diveshop. He explained, with the park owner what happened, and everyone understood what an rear end in a top hat they had instructing. All their gear was set up like that too. I found out later that instructor was fired from his shop. He tried to get a job at our shop, and from what my shop owner told me, he was laughed out the door by the employees. tl;dr - Always talk to your instructors beforehand. Send them an email with questions or something. You can get a sense of what type of person he is pretty quickly, and that should help you avoid and really bad situations.
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Mar 20, 2013 22:00
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Am I missing something in that story? Did she use a different regulator for the pool training than the open water? Also that story made me want to go dive with some sea otters. I'm kinda glad that my first Open Water dive was a "no skill" dive. We did a pool session for the basic skills, then went out to the ocean, where we were told to just work on our buoyancy and breathing and how the equipment worked on like a 30' dive. TLG James fucked around with this message at 23:20 on Mar 20, 2013 |
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Mar 20, 2013 23:18
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TLG James posted:Am I missing something in that story? Did she use a different regulator for the pool training than the open water? The entire class was using the same regulator setup. Every single hose, for whatever reason, was crossing the tank valve in the back. It was absolutely retarded. He was a terrible instructor.
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Mar 20, 2013 23:53
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Crunkjuice posted:The entire class was using the same regulator setup. Every single hose, for whatever reason, was crossing the tank valve in the back. It was absolutely retarded. He was a terrible instructor. I was talking about the long story, but your story was just as bad. I'm glad my instructors were all dutch.
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Mar 21, 2013 01:53
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Hey, newly certified SDI open water diver here. I just did my first dives on Sunday: a wreck at ~65 ft and a reef at ~50 ft. I had a lot of trouble getting my ears to equalize going down, but was able to eventually. I'm a little concerned because my ears still feel a little muzzy and aren't back to normal. Should I be concerned that I hurt them? (Totally worth it if I did, it was absolutely amazing, and I am excited for my next dive)
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Mar 21, 2013 04:56
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Inamorata Issabelle posted:Hey, newly certified SDI open water diver here. I just did my first dives on Sunday: a wreck at ~65 ft and a reef at ~50 ft. I had a lot of trouble getting my ears to equalize going down, but was able to eventually. I'm a little concerned because my ears still feel a little muzzy and aren't back to normal. Should I be concerned that I hurt them? If by muzzy you mean feels kind of clogged and hearing is weird? You might have some gunk in there and it may just need to be cleaned out. If not and its pain? Doctor time.
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Mar 21, 2013 05:36
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Inamorata Issabelle posted:Hey, newly certified SDI open water diver here. I just did my first dives on Sunday: a wreck at ~65 ft and a reef at ~50 ft. I had a lot of trouble getting my ears to equalize going down, but was able to eventually. I'm a little concerned because my ears still feel a little muzzy and aren't back to normal. Should I be concerned that I hurt them? If you've just been trying to Valsalva (pinch and blow) I recommend combining this with a Toynbee. Pinch, and then blow and swallow at the same time. (inset innuendo here)
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Mar 21, 2013 08:26
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Welp, my brand new Oceanic OCS dive comp has gone wonky (some of the LCD "blocks" on the screen are blank) and i haven't even had a proper dive with it yet! Only used it twice in my little condo pool to test it out along with my new lavacore top and to swim some laps, and the pool is not even deep enough to activate the dive mode. Gonna bring it back to the shop on Saturday and see what they can do for me. It was fine even up to the second pool session, i only noticed it the day after.
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Mar 21, 2013 11:26
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TLG James posted:I was talking about the long story, but your story was just as bad. I'm glad my instructors were all dutch. Yes they made everyone sit in the sand and her regulator got clogged. She was never told how to clear it.
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Mar 21, 2013 16:35
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I have another small question: am I supposed to have a buddy if I pay for a boat ticket to go diving? I don't have any friends who dive, so I would hate to go in to buy a boat ticket and be told I can't.
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Mar 22, 2013 16:55
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Inamorata Issabelle posted:I have another small question: am I supposed to have a buddy if I pay for a boat ticket to go diving? I don't have any friends who dive, so I would hate to go in to buy a boat ticket and be told I can't. You should be fine. There are usually some other solo divers on a charter, and if not, you can just stick with the boat DM. If you're really concerned, you can always call the dive shop/charter and ask.
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Mar 22, 2013 17:17
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Mr.AARP posted:Holy poo poo. For any new divers out there, pick your instructors carefully and never be afraid to thumb a dive. Crunkjuice, your story is nuts too. I've had instructors mess with me really hard before but that was well beyond the open water level and the entire point of those dives was to stress me. I hate the mentality some OW instructors where they want to seem more like SEAL instructors than somebody teaching you how to do something safe and fun. OW should not be a class where they gently caress with you. As far as Crunkjuice's story, I don't care if this guy was the ghost of Sheck Exley; "overhead" or "cave" should not even be in the vocabulary of that class. Both those instructors probably scared some people away from diving because of their attitudes alone. As far as never being afraid to thumb a dive, I usually try and give a little spiel when I dive with new people that boils down to: "I don't care if you decide that me having brown hair is annoying you, thumb the dive for any reason no questions asked". The idea is that many people go well beyond their comfort zone because thumbing a dive is embarrassing. Maybe laying it out there pre-dive helps. This can be tougher during a class though because unless you live near the instructor you have to get all of your dives/skills in within a limited period of time. Fleeting question: is there a hand sign for "Are you doing a drill?". That way if you saw some people that are not in your group gas sharing or whatever, you would know if you should assist or not. This would be really useful at the busier quarries/springs where there are many different groups there at a given time. Bishop fucked around with this message at 20:15 on Mar 22, 2013 |
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Mar 22, 2013 20:01
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jackyl posted:We have our first couple of 2013 trips planned! Long weekend in Bimini coming up thanks to a free companion ticket we had to use and an awesome hotel deal, so any ideas there would be appreciated for shops. We're currently looking at Neal Watson's place since we are staying there, but any advice is appreciated. We will only have two days to dive though, since our free ticket was domestic only, so we're going to Miami and taking the ferry over and back. A lot of those sites look shallow and awesome, which could be good for pictures!....Also, anyone have input on this? Also the Compleat Angler bar/hotel is a place Hemingway used to hang out at so you must hang out there and have a drink. E: whoops! It burned down and the owner died in the fire so ignore that last suggestion. We have lost an international treasure 7 years ago. Bishop fucked around with this message at 20:54 on Mar 22, 2013 |
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Mar 22, 2013 20:45
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Bishop posted:Fleeting question: is there a hand sign for "Are you doing a drill?". That way if you saw some people that are not in your group gas sharing or whatever, you would know if you should assist or not. This would be really useful at the busier quarries/springs where there are many different groups there at a given time. When its a crowded day at the lake/quarry, as a divemaster you're priority is to your students. If you go to intervene in another emergency, you may have just left uncertified divers underwater without supervision. Obviously if you're just leading a tour, its a different situation. If i see something odd, i'll go, tap the shoulder and give the ok hand signal and make them give it back to me. If its a big day of training, a solo diver laying on the bottom could be a dm for a rescue class, not necessarily a real victim. I think of it as each situation is different, but the best you can do is ask if they are ok, and if they respond that they are, leave them on their way. You'll be able to tell how panicked they are by how they react to you, but the one trick i've learned to gauge someones panic level is to look them dead in the eyes. You see that wide eye stare and you know somethings up.
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Mar 22, 2013 21:02
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Crunkjuice posted:the one trick i've learned to gauge someones panic level is to look them dead in the eyes. You see that wide eye stare and you know somethings up.
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Mar 22, 2013 21:09
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Bishop posted:Yep this is spot on. When you've got somebody that may be panicked get eye contact and you will intuitively know how far gone they are. Problem is... what if it's a real emergency and the people involved are just good divers? Especially with popular caves, I could see this being a problem because there are always other teams of divers in there and classes going on. I havn't been involved with many underwater emergencies, but when something goes wrong, a professional goes to deal with it and he becomes king of the water. I've brought up a panicking student from another class, and when the instructor came over i waved him off and pointed at his students. I took the diver up, and he got his students. I apologized to him for taking control, but i told him plainly "i had control of the diver at that point". When theres lots of good certified/professional divers, there can be a scramble for everyone to want to contribute in some way but that can be counterintuitive. There needs to be one chief and a bunch of indians, not a bunch of chiefs thinking they know best. If you see something wrong, assert yourself and take control. That being said, if i theoretically pull a guy out of the water and hand him off to an instructor with O2 waiting, i'm out and the instructor runs the show from there. I would then make sure all divers got out of the water safely, and leave the rest of the emergency situation to the professionals on shore. Caveat of this is if you are confident in your skills, your certifications, and what the situation is. If you are a DM and your shop owner/head instructor converges and starts barking orders, i'd probably relent. If its some random who i don't know, not necessarily the case. Its all on a case by case basis and by the divers you are with. Its a judgment call.
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Mar 22, 2013 21:20
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Mr.AARP posted:Holy poo poo. For any new divers out there, pick your instructors carefully and never be afraid to thumb a dive. All kinds of problems with that story. Not least of which he claims to have spent 14,000 hours underwater. Any time someone puts that fourth (or fifth) digit in their dive experience, I call shenanigans. A full time instructor diving four dives a day, and never taking a day off, would have to dive 13 years to accumulate those hours.
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Mar 23, 2013 04:22
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Unless they seem to be naturally OCD, I distrust people that know exactly how many dives or underwater hours they have logged. I know for sure that I have no idea exactly how many dives I have made with a margin of error of around 200.
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Mar 23, 2013 05:12
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Not to say 14,000 is an accurate number, wikipedia says 13,000. Also, not all of that is scuba. He's a coast guard certified submersible pilot with over 900 dives in the SeaMagine SeaMobile. Holds longest distance traveled by a diver (52 miles in 9.5 hours). Been diving for over 35 years. Aaaaand was a combat diver for 15. I'd say the guy has some sea legs. Crunkjuice fucked around with this message at 05:43 on Mar 23, 2013 |
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Mar 23, 2013 05:29
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 17:35 |
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Bishop posted:Unless they seem to be naturally OCD, I distrust people that know exactly how many dives or underwater hours they have logged. I know for sure that I have no idea exactly how many dives I have made with a margin of error of around 200. Well I have somewhere around umm 400 hours on my rebreather give or take 50.. but thats easy to calculate as I know how much how often I dive :P Ohh and I dive WAY More than most people and deeper than most too! At my rate I am going now I will be 75 by the time I hit 14,000 hours.. Read 45 years from today. and I am OCD with Sperg RAGE https://vimeo.com/62296488 There is 3 new videos besides that one at vimeo if you wish to check out too
SlicerDicer fucked around with this message at 05:58 on Mar 23, 2013 |
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Mar 23, 2013 05:53
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