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MrYenko posted:Hawaiian waters are cold, compared to the Caribbean. I wear shorts and a rash guard in Florida from April or May until November or December. I wore my 4/3 full wetsuit and booties in Hawaii, because I’m a weak baby man. Squashy Nipples posted:As a fellow cold water diver, I hear you... but cold water diving is just a much bigger investment in time and money, training and equipment. Diving on vacation is just loving easy in comparison. Luceo posted:I'm also in Kona and just got back from my second time doing the Pelagic Magic dive at Jack's Diving Locker. You're tethered to the boat over 3-5000 feet of water at night watching the pelagic life come up to feed. Fantastic time full of alien critters, highly recommended. sharkytm fucked around with this message at 13:52 on Oct 22, 2017 |
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Oct 22, 2017 13:42
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Squashy Nipples posted:South Shore, about an hour and a half (without traffic) to drive to Cape Cod, about an hour and a half to Cape Ann. I'm inland, near Brockton, so it's a drive to the South Shore beaches, so most often I just drive to Cape Ann to dive. We end up diving in Plymouth or Woods Hole mostly because of proximity to work or friend's houses. I'm pretty much over New England diving, especially compared to Hawaii, Dominica, or Cozumel. My wife dives for work (science), and we're not shellfish eaters, so lobster diving isn't our thing. We've dove a couple wrecks in the area, including a Hell Diver in Buzzard's Bay.
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Nov 1, 2017 03:31
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I did Point Lobos in a 7mm farmer John. I was fine, but my wife was blue after an hour. If I did it again, I'd go dry.
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Jan 21, 2018 03:38
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EugeneDebsWasCool posted:Brain fart. J snorkel not j valve haha. Like a Cressi Gringo.  slight difference
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Feb 15, 2018 15:31
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Also, avoid tech and wreck divers. IME, they're usually macho men and really dorky dudes.
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Mar 21, 2018 23:51
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Collateral Damage posted:My tech diving group isn't exactly macho. Dorky I'll concede though. I swapped the types. Tech is usually dorky, wreck is usually macho. I'll bet the ratio of Doria divers is 25:1.
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Mar 22, 2018 00:03
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DeadlyMuffin posted:Hunters are more macho than both, in my experience No doubt. Especially vertebrate hunters. Around here, there's a fair number of female lobster hunters.
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Mar 22, 2018 12:06
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let it mellow posted:we both dove with 3 mil full suits and I never once enjoyed pissing my suit as much as I did the second dive Great username/content match. Yeah, sometimes you're the bug, sometimes you're the windshield. I've had to bail on a couple really cool dives because of vis issues. No point risking your life to see a WW2 dive bomber if you can only see it 6" at a time.
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Jul 22, 2018 16:00
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That's a hell of a shot.
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Aug 4, 2018 00:52
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DeadlyMuffin posted:Thank you! I'll do some reading and maybe hit you up some time next year. I've spent very little time on the east coast, I should fix that. If you want to visit the Cape, give me a buzz. My wife dives for work, and I'm always looking for an excuse to actually GO diving.
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Sep 7, 2018 20:37
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It all depends. In a higher volume environment, you'd expect structured schedule and official classroom classes. In a low volume situation, the instructor may just do a one on one class because they love doing it. Ask for more details, and if you're looking for a more structured class, then say so. No point conjecturing.
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Aug 10, 2019 14:23
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The lack of an escape hatch was a serious oversight, but the vessel passed its safety inspections and met all USCG requirements. All the lobster boats I've ever worked on have an escape hatch, and most of those only sleep 2-4. It's a real shame, too, everything I had heard about those trips was awesome. I can only imagine what the crew/captain are going through. The guilt must be incredible... and the media isn't helping. All the comments are basically "What, was this a slave ship, why were the passengers locked belowdecks?" That misunderstanding by the Coastie on the radio (about the boat being locked somehow) is being taken out of context, and I really just hope that the survivors can get through this ordeal with their sanity/dignity intact. The accommodations like exactly like every other bigger vessel like that that I've been on. Bunks 2 or 3 high, packed in tight. There's nothing wrong with that, assuming a disaster like this doesn't happen. I expect we'll see some changes in exit requirements once the investigation is over. The deck layout shows both escape paths being basically next to one another. On most of the larger work boats that I've been on, there's full firefighting gear, but this vessel must not have been big enough to require it. Plus, with only a 5-person crew, that doesn't leave many hands for firefighting and evac. sharkytm fucked around with this message at 18:05 on Sep 4, 2019 |
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Sep 4, 2019 17:58
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Sorry, the deck layout shows two companionways, next to one another. Several news reports have said there was no escape hatch out onto the deck. https://www.truthaquatics.com/conception/ Two companionways, both leading to the gallery. No hatch marked. sharkytm fucked around with this message at 21:25 on Sep 4, 2019 |
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Sep 4, 2019 21:22
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DeadlyMuffin posted:The bunk map doesn't show the emergency exit. I mean no trespass. I just went off the deck layout on the website and news reports. I'm sorry you lost dive friends, they're hard to come by. It's a tragedy for sure.
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Sep 5, 2019 01:46
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DeadlyMuffin posted:I didn't mean to snap, it's just hitting me pretty hard. No offense taken. The situation just plain sucks.
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Sep 5, 2019 18:04
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Booked a 9-day trip to Bonaire! So psyched, and really need a vacation. 6 days of diving, 2 days of donkeys and hiking.
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Oct 3, 2019 03:05
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Ropes4u posted:We always make time for a trip through the park, it’s a nice way to relax from the constant diving. We're from New England, and my wife dives for work in the summer. In a harbor that's max 15' deep, polluted from Nitrogen runoff, and mostly she's counting eelgrass blades and taking sediment cores: AKA weighted 10# heavy and being really bored/tired/sick of being wet in scum-filled water. She's gonna love it. Donkeys and desert hiking sound like a solid break from all the stress of beautiful, self-led, low-key diving.
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Oct 3, 2019 03:13
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Anyone have experience with the Mares Puck Pro? The reviews seem positive, and my wife needs a beginners computer. Nothing fancy needed.
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Nov 2, 2019 17:16
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MrNemo posted:I've seen poor reviews on usability and some reports of weird Deco results. That's anecdotal but the single button design would put me off anyway. I think a zoop is similar budget and has much better feedback. My first computer was an Aladin, which was solid and a Geo 2 was the replacement after I lost the Aladin. I'd recommend either as alternatives. I actually don't mind the 1-button design. Deco isn't anything she'll be doing. The Zoop is quite a bit more expensive ($240 vs $175), but I'll see if she's got a preference. She dives for work, but very shallow, and the computer probably won't even register she's diving. This is for recreational, where air is more the limit than NDLs. Thanks for the info though. I may be in the market for a computer as well, we'll see.
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Nov 2, 2019 20:21
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Icon Of Sin posted:What’s her job, out of curiosity? I’ve done pool dives searching every square inch under the waterline for leaks with an ink syringe, I’m hoping she’s not doing anything so boring underwater She's an AAUS-certified scientific diver, and a marine biogeochemist. Her diving mostly consists of 4 activities: 1. Collecting sediment cores. Weight 10# heavy, lie on your belly the bottom and push in a 4" ID polycarbonate tube, then dig under and cap the bottom. 2. Deploying/recovering porewater peepers. Same as above, just with a 1x12", 18" tall block of plastic with a membrane over it. You have to assemble it under water, so installing 50+ 6-32 screws while sitting on the bottom. 3. Collecting eelgrass plants for tissue analysis/photographing/science poo poo. Carefully extract the plant and rhizome from the sediment, avoiding blue/green crabs, jellyfish, and mantis shrimp. All by feel, of course, because you've stirred up the bottom. 4. Counting eelgrass blade density. Literally counting blades of grass. Toss a .25m² quadrat off the boat, then find it and count. All in a harbor that is 12' at its deepest point in the channel. Most of her work is in ~2-5' of water. The seafloor is mostly sandy mud, with some sandy spots where they don't need to collect samples. Diving for work sounds fun... At least in the pool, the viz isn't poo poo, and there might be spare change on the bottom.
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Nov 2, 2019 21:09
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DeadlyMuffin posted:I have a friend with the Aladdin Sport who likes it. I believe it has Bluetooth too. For $435, it better. Well out of our price range.
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Nov 2, 2019 22:30
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Cool, I've kind of stayed away from a used computer, but it's worth a look. I see plenty of very dated computers with regs/consoles on eBay, but I don't want to buy something that's 10+ years old, and unsupported by the MFR. She loves her job. She's only diving ~15 days/summer, and spends the rest of her time running her 15' skiff or in the lab doing chemistry, so it's a nice mix. Sure, the diving isn't anything to write home about, but it's a means to an end.
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Nov 3, 2019 20:03
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Squashy Nipples posted:A hood. Once you put a hood on, and it fills with water, you are basically deaf. Sea spiders, obviously. If you can't tolerate water in your ears, diving probably isn't a great hobby.
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Nov 7, 2019 14:16
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Icon Of Sin posted:Ding ding ding! Because gently caress THE REEF and gently caress OTHER SPECIES! Jesus, people are dumb. What's so hard about using a speargun? Lionfish don't exactly swim away IME.
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Nov 8, 2019 03:19
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Kesper North posted:I figured the issue was not killing lionfish fast enough with just spearguns, but I know very little about spearguns. Is it possible to reload and use them more than once in a dive? And yes, you can reload a speargun. It's just a bungee cord and spear, or a compressed air tank. Some use springs. All are re-loadable. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TOuMYztnE4 Kesper North posted:Yeah, I guess we can add lead poisoning to the list of reef woes Squashy Nipples posted:The most effective Lionfish hunters I've ever seen use a simple three-pronged hand spear and a "Zookeeper" (a game bag built like a big sharps containers). Icon Of Sin posted:I work with a guy like that. He brought back 19 lionfish on his own, on a single dive. Our record for a day is somewhere around 75. I did the math on it randomly and it worked out to a lionfish encounter every for 90 seconds of dive time...so as one diver found, speared, and put away a lionfish, the other was already tracking another and moving towards it. Hopefully the push to put lionfish on restaurant menus is successful, and commercial fishermen can figure out how to target them without impacting other species. sharkytm fucked around with this message at 16:24 on Nov 8, 2019 |
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Nov 8, 2019 16:05
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DeadlyMuffin posted:Edit: hell, you wouldn't even have to feed them, just go get a new one Umm... Not cool. Killing them quickly is one thing, starving them to death is just cruel.
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Nov 9, 2019 04:59
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Whatup from Bonaire. It's as nice as everyone says, and everyone should go at some point. Today was day 1, so we slept in, did a buoyancy check and baseline dive at yellow submarine, then went to Bachelor's Beach, driving past about 15 trucks parked at North Belnem, and did a nice 45 minute dive by ourselves. Great vis, a little wave action at the entrance/beach, 88° surface, 84° bottom.
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Nov 17, 2019 22:27
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let it mellow posted:Something special.... see if the three seahorses are still there on the return That's the plan. We're gonna drive the park too, probably at the end of the week. Our 12km-on-the-odo JAC truck is hilariously underpowered but it's fun to thrash around in. The brake light switch sticks, so you have to pull up on the pedal when you park or the lights stay on. I think we'll hit Something Special tomorrow. Today is Tolo and County Gardens. We dove The Lake twice yesterday. First in the usual pattern (counter-clockwise), and then by swimming across the deep side and exploring the backside of the second reef, then crossing the lake near the middle and spending more time in the back reef. Saw a couple of cavorting puffers, a monster green moray, and a bunch of barracuda and a small turtle in the shallows. It was sunset when we exited. A+, would dive again. Icon Of Sin posted:@sharky: you’ll see this when you do a night dive there. The tarpon are going to be borderline brushing you as they use your flashlights to hunt. No concept of personal space, shame, or regret. It’s cool to be that close to a big fish, though
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Nov 19, 2019 12:54
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DAN is absolutely worth the money. Are you clear on quarantine and testing requirements for the Maldives? COVID won't be over, and if you book a trip knowing that, you may not be able to get reimbursed. I'm of the opinion that going someplace exotic for your first trip is actually a bad idea, but I'm sure I'm in the minority. I've seen several newly-certified divers have bad times in exotic locales. They either are so concerned with checking their air and getting used to being in the water that they don't enjoy the dives, or they're blown away by what they see and forget all their training. I hope you have lots of local diving lined up so you don't show in the Maldives with 6 dives and barely any clue what you're doing.
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Apr 5, 2021 15:16
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orange sky posted:As for covid, I'm vaccinated and cancelation is possible until the last minute, so I'm good in that aspect. That's good. Being vaccinated means nothing, thanks to people making fake vaccine stamps and completely trying to game the system. Being able to cancel is a good idea, you have no control over what the US or any other intermediary country decides to do as far as passenger travel/traffic. I got caught with this at the beginning of the pandemic, I was headed to the UK on March 15th, 2020. It took 3 months of calls/emails/tweets to get refunded for everything, and even then, I could only get my airfare turned into a non-refundable travel credit with Virgin Atlantic. That's $900 that I probably won't be able to use or ever see back. You may not see any exclusions, but I guarantee you'll have a hell of a time getting medevac/barotrauma/chamber time covered. And yeah, not $1,000s, a full blown major accident would be ~$25k+. A diver I know in Bonaire had her husband get bent on their second dive in Indonesia. He had some sort of undiagnosed heart condition that caused him to get bent on that trip, and then again on the descent during the flight home 2 weeks later after recompressing and thinking he was out of the woods. Total medical bills would have been $20k+, but he had DAN coverage. I've heard of far more expensive problems, too. DAN is VERY cheap insurance, and covers all sorts of additional stuff that's dive-vacation-adjacent. Please get as much training and time in the water as you can before you go. Buoyancy is seriously important, as is learning how to handle a variety of scenarios. If you're learning to dive in dark/cold water, you may have problems estimating distances/depths in the Maldives. There's no substitute for experience.
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Apr 5, 2021 21:25
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Ramrod Hotshot posted:, Bonaire (this would be my first choice but my guess is it's kind of resort oriented), Where did you hear this? Bonaire is basically "get your tanks, load them into your JAC truck, go find a site with no one around, go dive". I'd email Dive Friends and let them know you're coming alone, and I'll bet you they'll be able to find you a buddy pretty quickly. My wife and I went in November '19 and it was spectacular. We'd have happily added a like-experience third diver.
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May 16, 2021 02:42
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Ramrod Hotshot posted:wow, Bonaire sounds awesome. https://sunwisebonaire.com/location/seaside-apartments/ This is where we stayed. They're nice apartments, although street noise was a bit of a problem for my wife. The locals run 2-stroke bikes and quads on the road behind the apartments, which is the side the bedrooms are on. That said, Yellow Submarine (DFB location) was literally across the side street and was a max 3-minute walk door to door. I'd stay there again in a heartbeat. We stayed 9 nights, at $129/night including taxes and whatnot. Your dive shop was probably going to "Captain Don's" or "Buddy Dive", maybe Delfins. They're as close to resorts as Bonaire gets. We rented a truck with full insurance for $582 including taxes, left the windows down, keys in it, and it unlocked whenever we parked, and had zero issues whatsoever. It was a stick-shift Chinese pickup, which I actually liked driving. Automatics were more money and even slower. Diving with Dive Friends was great. $200 each for 6 days of unlimited tanks of Nitrox. If you check back in this thread, Suitcase Pimp is the goon who worked there (but not since COVID). He would be a good person to contact about the situation on the ground there now, assuming he's checking his messages.
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May 17, 2021 11:26
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SuitcasePimp posted:Full Disclosure: My wife and I dove with sharkytm and his wife on our days off and almost killed them in insane current at White Slave. We seriously drifted back to the exit in 1/8th the time once we turned it. Fortunately they are great divers so we just got out, regrouped, and went somewhere else! LOL. What up.  That dive at White Slave was hilarious. The struggle to get anywhere, then just cannonball back to the beach. How's things? My wife looks like she's smuggling a beach ball. 2 more months until we're officially parents...
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May 18, 2021 00:15
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SuitcasePimp posted:We're doing well, life looks a lot different for us than it did when you were here but I imagine that the pandemic had that effect on a lot of people! Relevant to the dive thread, you may remember our absolute trash Chinese pickup that was rusting away but managed to drive almost every time, the one with the scrap sheet metal welded into the shape of a bed by a blind drunken child. We got rid of that and now have not one but 2 Hiluxen... one of them being a mint green carbureted 98 that is totally insurgency ready. You can't kill this thing, I love it. I'm glad things are going ok, congrats on the technical. Just need a surplus Russian AA gun to mount in the bed. Ropes4u posted:My wife suggested a quick trip to Cozumel with the local dive shop. Is the diving worth the effort?
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Jun 12, 2021 20:43
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Yoke, and if you must, buy a DIN adapter.
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Sep 24, 2021 12:22
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MrYenko posted:Your regs, tanks, and BCD are life support equipment. Treat them like it. Agreed. It's literal life support equipment. The repairs and maintenance are actually very easy to perform if you have the right tools and training. I've done my share of rebuilding poo poo that's much more complicated and finicky. I worked on underwater robotics for a decade, and build deep sea cameras/oceanographic systems for a living. I have a huge shop filled with every tool imaginable. I'm an avid DIY'er. I've watched my SCUBA tech work on my gear. It's not hard, certainly not for the very basic Sherwood stuff I dive. Guess what? I don't service my regs. It's cheap insurance to have the shop rebuild them every year (if we're going diving).
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Oct 3, 2021 13:22
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Ropes4u posted:Just got back from two weeks in Bonaire, felt good to be back in the water with the fishes. We were there 2 years ago. Everything has changed so much in our lives that it feels like a lifetime ago. I'm glad you enjoyed it!
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Nov 15, 2021 14:18
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Ramrod Hotshot posted:Other than the convenience of shore dives, what is the best part of Bonaire diving in terms of what you can see? Healthy/diverse reefs, macro life (nudis), pelagics, wrecks, or just lots of cool fish? It's the laid back nature of the island, the lack of big boat charters, the general cadence of shore diving with so many sites so close, and the well-protected reefs. I'd go back in a heartbeat.
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Dec 13, 2021 13:13
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Trivia posted:"Convenience of shore dives" doesn't quite describe what you're getting, I feel. What that really means is the absolute freedom to go where you want, when you want, and to do in the water what you will. For you the customer, you are actively exploring. You're not following some guide who safely shows you where to go; instead you get the joy of pure discovery. Agreed. It's complete freedom.
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Dec 13, 2021 20:06
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Demon_Corsair posted:Just did a few dives on the pacific side of Costa Rica and it wasn't spectacular. But it was so nice being back in the water after 2 years. And when people ask why Bonaire is so nice, I'll point them to this post.
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Dec 23, 2021 16:35
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