Diving, Snorkeling and Fishing Thread

[CraigC]

Instead of taking other threads off topic, share your water adventures, experiences and related peeves here.

Personally, I have been diving, both snorkeling and scuba, since I was 11 years old, taught scuba for 12 years, and I'm an out spoken advocate for responsible underwater hunting. When I was making a living in recreational scuba, I also held a 50 ton, Master of Near Coastal steam ticket and drove several dive boats up to 24 passenger. I was "Salt Life" before the saying became popular!

Anyway, we can have some fun with our sea stories or be stone cold serious.

 

[Dawgluver]

Good idea, Craig. We have a few waterfolk here.

All the fish talk reminds me of swimming with the whale sharks off Holbox and Isla Mujeres in Mexico. What majestic animals. We didn't see the manta rays that often accompany them, but the sharks were enough.

As far as morays, I managed to join a snorkel group (not ours) in either Cayman or Bonaire, can't remember, where I watched a diver pull a green moray out of its cave. It was the size of a man's thigh! Apparently they were friends, as the diver had no fear of it. We see lots of eels and occasional morays when snorkeling, but I'm not going anywhere near sticking my hand near one's face.

 

[CraigC]

It is a real shame that some dive operators have to exploit animals for profit. I am totally opposed to shark feedings as a means to attract business. There is one operator that has had fatalities during shark feeding trips from the US to the Bahamas, and is still in operation.

Did you ever drift the Santa Rosa Wall in Cozumel or get to Palancar Reef?

 

[Dawgluver]

I hear ya on the fish baiting.

You've been to Cozumel! Some of the best diving/snorkeling in the world! We've snorkeled Palancar a few times with the little boat tour, it's lovely. We're surface skimmers, so have not dove Santa Rosa. We usually just pack our snorkel gear in the trunk of the rental and pop in wherever we want.

 

[CharlieD]

I started scuba and snorkeling when I was about the same age 11-12. Loved it, loved it, loved it. But then when I was 18 one of my bodis got buried and the rock . Stuppid accident. My mother freaked out and got rid off all of my equipment. I still tried to sneak out when I could. But then I grew this huge bird and there was no equipment in Soviet days I could find for the bearded guy. Missed it a lot, especially here in the States where you are free to go anywhere in the world.

 

[Dawgluver]

Charlie, with your direct flights everywhere, if I lived in MPLS I'd probably be going somewhere every month!

DH has a moustache, he just shaves it down a bit from his nose to make sure his mask seals. No vaseline or other stuff needed. Lots of divers have full beards.

 

[GotGarlic]

You guys are going to love this story

DH and I went to an all-inclusive resort in the Maya Riviera in 2004. On Christmas Day, after enjoying a cocktail at the pool, we saw a sign and decided on the spur of the moment to go snorkeling that day. We went over, paid our money, and an hour later, we were practicing in the pool. Then we were taken to a reef where the dive master gave us basic instruction on how to manage the equipment.

We only went down about 30 feet, but the dive master had not set my weight correctly, so I was dragging on the bottom. I tried to adjust it and shot to the surface! The dive master then apparently turned off the mechanism, or so I was told later.

I had a great time. DH had trouble equalizing pressure, so he didn't have as much fun Found out later that what we did was fairly dangerous, but hey! We were on vacation in Mexico!

 

[CharlieD]

Charlie, with your direct flights everywhere, if I lived in MPLS I'd probably be going somewhere every month!

DH has a moustache, he just shaves it down a bit from his nose to make sure his mask seals. No vaseline or other stuff needed. Lots of divers have full beards.

Sadly because we are a hub the flights are more expensive here. Weird. I know. Because I am "religious fanatic" ?? I can't shave. And Vaseline doesn't really help. My mustache is pretty bushy.


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[Dawgluver]

Sadly because we are a hub the flights are more expensive here. Weird. I know. Because I am "religious fanatic" ?? I can't shave. And Vaseline doesn't really help. My mustache is pretty bushy.


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They have a new full-face mask. You can't dive down with it, but folks who have it rave about it. I'll see if I can find the link for you.

Here it is: https://www.amazon.com/Tribord-Easy...bs_lp_t_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=S1KDSS7WQWXZTW926RM7

 

[medtran49]

Craig had a stache too, but it has never been a problem. Maybe he had a secret?

Regarding cuda, we've had to go back to back a couple of times when spearfishing in the Keys because they've gotten a bit aggressive, but they've always given up and gone away.

The scariest thing for me was 1 time when we were diving in the Tortugas. I had previously had a barotrauma incident and sometimes had trouble equilizing so if I had trouble descending Craig would go ahead so he could hunt while I worked my way down. I was far enough above him that I basically had a bird's eye view. He was swimming through a school of fish that were swimming directly toward and around him. There was a reason for that. A HUGE bull shark that was nearly twice Craig's size was also swimming toward him and he couldn't see it because of the density of the fish school. Well, Craig and the bull shark basically ended up coming nose to nose. Must have scared both of them because each one veered off in the opposite direction like it was coreograped. My heart nearly stopped though.

I hope none of you that dive ever have barotrauma. It acutally happened the first time in a trip to the Tortugas on a live aboard. The vertigo was horrible, especially being on a boat and the resultant effects..., let's just say I've never spent so much time hanging off the side or over the loo EVER. We had boarded about 2 hours from home and I spent the entire car trip home with the car seat as flat as possible, with a visit to the ER as soon as we got home. And the vertigo lasted for WEEKS! I wasn't working from home at the time and had to get a coworker who was also a friend to give me a ride to work. I also never was able to descend easily and always had some vertigo on ascent afterward to some degree. I finally found an ENT who was a doc and a diver who told me off the record to use Afrin about 10-15 minutes before diving to help.

 

[Dawgluver]

Yikes!

Baitball, no way I'd ever swim through one, they're usually being herded by a shark or other predator. We watched a baby frill-head shark herd one. Really cool.

 

[Cooking Goddess]

I took diving classes in the early 1970s "just in case" I ever took a trip to the Bahamas through our company credit union. Never did, but had fun in the classes.

Let me make it clear that I was NOT fat during that time of my life. 5 foot and almost 7 inches, 125 pounds? Oh, how I wish... Enough of that, though. Still, I was pretty buoyant. I could not stay under during my qualifying test to actually be able to take the course. The instructor let it be know that we had to be able to perform certain skills to take class, one being swimming the length of the pool underwater. I'd get almost half-way across and pop up. Paul would send me back to the deep end to try again. When I was headed out with the last group he said "when you start to float, do NOT take your face out of the water. I just want to make sure you can swim the length of the pool without surfacing for a breath." OK. Last time in, no problem. Swam the length, reached the other side, stood up to get out...and saw all the other people who had started with me were out and had walked at least half the distance back to the starting end of the pool! Meanwhile, there's Paul with his booming voice saying "I have never seen someone hold their breath so long!"

 

[CraigC]

You guys are going to love this story

DH and I went to an all-inclusive resort in the Maya Riviera in 2004. On Christmas Day, after enjoying a cocktail at the pool, we saw a sign and decided on the spur of the moment to go snorkeling that day. We went over, paid our money, and an hour later, we were practicing in the pool. Then we were taken to a reef where the dive master gave us basic instruction on how to manage the equipment.

We only went down about 30 feet, but the dive master had not set my weight correctly, so I was dragging on the bottom. I tried to adjust it and shot to the surface! The dive master then apparently turned off the mechanism, or so I was told later.

I had a great time. DH had trouble equalizing pressure, so he didn't have as much fun Found out later that what we did was fairly dangerous, but hey! We were on vacation in Mexico!

I assume you took an "Intro to Scuba" or "Discover Diving" class? Learning to control bouyancy is one of the most difficult skills to master, especially on a multi-depth dive. Provided that the "Instructor" was actually a certified Instructor, from a recognized agency and the "Dive Master" was also a certified instructor, this is a common practice at resorts. However not after the student has been drinking.

The biggest mistake when equalizing is not starting at the beginning of descent. The greatest pressure change when diving/snorkeling in seawater occurs during the first 33'. Pressure doubles for the least distance traveled. This also makes bouyancy control more difficult in that depth range.

 

[GotGarlic]

I assume you took an "Intro to Scuba" or "Discover Diving" class? Learning to control bouyancy is one of the most difficult skills to master, especially on a multi-depth dive. Provided that the "Instructor" was actually a certified Instructor, from a recognized agency and the "Dive Master" was also a certified instructor, this is a common practice at resorts. However not after the student has been drinking.

Nope. Twenty minutes in the pool to see if we could breathe with the apparatus was pretty much all we got.

 

[RPCookin]

My wife is a PADI instructor - certified in 1985 (she has instructor certification - she hasn't been teaching now for 20 years). She lived in Cyprus for 2 years in 1989-90 working full time as a scuba instructor. I'm PADI divemaster certified (1989) and spent 5 years assisting teaching classes with a dive shop in Denver. I worked with students locally for almost 8 months before I made my first dive in the ocean in December of 1989. She and I met working at the shop after her return from Europe in '91.

Some of my best diving experiences:

Little Cayman (Bloody Bay) is my favorite spot in the Caribbean. The wall is spectacular, and the top is only at 45 feet so you can spend a lot of time cruising along the wall before you have to start up. It's the greatest feeling to swim through a tunnel in the reef starting about 40 feet and exit through the wall at 50 feet with the bottom about 2000 feet below. To me it feels like flying along the face of a cliff completely covered with coral and sponges, with fish and other critters everywhere. I've been there 3 times, twice on Aggressor liveaboards and once land based at the Southern Cross Club.

For large marine life my favorite was the Sea of Cortez. I've been on 2 liveaboard trips there out of La Paz. I've dived with schooling hammerheads, whale sharks, mantas. We named one site the eel condos because you could hang in the water and see 6 or 7 morays at one time hanging partway out of their holes. We saw schools of fish so large that they obscured the sun. Saw fin whales, pilot whales, dolphins and whale sharks all on the same day. And we spent more than 2 hours on a shallow dive at Los Islotes playing with juvenile sea lions... just like big puppies.

The Philippines was beautiful for seeing marine life that was so different from the Caribbean.

Some photos:

Scorpion fish at Bloody Bay

Juvenile Spotted Drum at Bloody Bay:

Orangutan Crab with Anemone in the Philippines:

 

[Dawgluver]

Love those little drums! Nice pics, RP!

I've never met an Orangutan crab, looks fascinating. And I can see how it got its name.

 

[CharlieD]

They have a new full-face mask. You can't dive down with it, but folks who have it rave about it. I'll see if I can find the link for you.

Here it is: https://www.amazon.com/Tribord-Easy...bs_lp_t_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=S1KDSS7WQWXZTW926RM7

Thank you. Have to check it out


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[CraigC]

Thank you. Have to check it out

Aga produces a full face mask, but they aren't cheap.

Back in 1987, before I met Karen, I was involved with open water scuba instructor (OWSI) Training. I was a certified instructor development course (IDC) staff instructor. Two of the students were from Grand Cayman. After they passed the instructor evaluation (IE, which is conducted by PADI headquarters staff), invited me to come to Grand Cayman. All I had to pay was airfare and food. I stayed at one's rental condo complex. He pointed out his private fill station, the better dive areas like the Oro Verde wreck, the better spots on the wall and Governor's Reef, then saying have a good time, handed me the keys to his boat.