Discount Scuba Diving Equipment

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In addition, when you are wearing a diving mask, you are a bit like a horse with blinders. Normally, when you are on land, you can look to the side and use your peripheral vision to check where you are without turning your head. The, if you need to see more you can turn your head, torso, and even turn your whole body around to check things out. This is not the case under water with a mask on. At most, your field of vision is 30 degrees or 40 degrees, and when you turn your head you still are limited, as if you are wearing blinders. So, to keep with your group while also looking at all the fascinating coral and fish on the reef, periodically you have to do a maneuver to check things out. I quickly figured out that I would do this every minute or so when I also checked how much air I used.

One method of turning around when you are diving is to swim around in a circle. While this worked, it seemed to take both a lot of time and a lot of physical effort. It also seemed to be a bit disorienting, because I still could see only 30 or 40 degrees in front of me, but just in a sweeping underwater panorama. Instead of doing this, I found that it took very little effort to turn and see around all 360 degrees, if I just twisted my body slightly into an L shape and got my torso vertical while keeping the same depth. Then, I could use my arms, legs and fins to rotate in a circle gently. I could quickly get my bearings relative to the boat and the boat anchor line, and I could see my group, if I was out ahead and they were not in my line of site.

This first amateur diving experience lasted about thirty minutes, but it seemed like one of the quickest thirty minutes in my life. Frankly I do not remember any half hour TV program being so interesting that the time seemed to pass so quickly. Anyway, I was at about the seven minutes mark in terms of remaining air and I knew that very soon it would be time to start my diving ascent. At about ten minutes of air left in the diving tank, my group had reversed its direction and had begun to move back toward the diving boat.

While we took our time and meandered our way out from the board absorbing the coral reef scenery as we went away from the boat, our line back to the boat was more direct. I forgot to mention earlier that the crew has suggested pretty strongly that we try to get back near the boat before we began our slow ascents. The crew member diving with each group made sure that we started heading back with enough time. Since they were experienced and moved with little effort underwater, I suspect that they had far more air left in their diving tanks and could have stayed down much longer.

Nevertheless, it is the novice diver in the group that has the least air that one needs to be concerned about in a group dive. Also, the reason why they told up to get back to the boat was that we “really did not want to surface a long distance from the boat and have to swim back to the boat.” Apparently, although I have never tired it, swimming a long distance back to a boat with a SCUBA air tank, weight belt and the rest of the gear can be a less than pleasurable experience. The good news is that everybody got back to the boat and surfaced near it. The crew had made it clear that they did not intend to weight anchor and motor around to pick us up one at a time.

Some of us tourist divers surfaced early and some decided to hold the anchor line and they rose upward. A few of us had some extra air and we signal our crew member guides how much we had. Since I had just a few more minutes I started to have a look around in the coral under the boat. Now, even twenty years ago, we had the good ecological sense to not just pull up the live coral for souvenirs and the crew had mentioned that we should avoid doing so. They said that we should be selective in our collection of anything and certainly not take anything that was living.

Therefore, during my whole dive I had just looked and had taken nothing. As I was down to about five minutes of air an was about to begin my ascent, I spotted something under the lip of some overhanging coral. I dived down for a closer look and found a beautiful amber conical spiral shell that was about an inch and half in length. It was clearly dead and nothing was living inside of it so I decided that this would be my last minute first dive souvenir.

I bought it to the surface and showed it around. Nobody else had found anything as beautiful as this sheet. The crew members commented that this shell was a very good quality specimen of a relatively unusual variety, which they named and of course I have forgotten the name. However, I still have this shell and I think that it is still just as beautiful as the day about twenty years ago that I found it the minute before I had to ascent on my first dive in Hawaii. Needless to say, I have been hooked on SCUBA diving ever since!

By the way, in addition to Hawaii, I have also enjoyed taking vacations at various Playa Del Carmen beach resorts with their beautiful beaches and a lot of fun snorkeling and scuba diving.

<< Go back to Part 3: Scuba Diving Lessons and Safety

Snorkeling and Scuba Diving

• Hawaiian Dive Boat (.... Go back to Part 1: My First Scuba Diving Vacation Go on to Part 3: Scuba Diving Lessons and Safety >> Back to our first diving trip off the Big Island on a tourist dive boat. On shore, the crew confirmed that we had all the necessary equipment. The dive company was supplying [...])
• First Scuba Diving Vacation ( Go on to Part 2: Hawaiian Dive Boat >> Everybody who dives has to have a first diving experience. Mine was about twenty years ago of the Big Island of Hawaii with a group of my friends. None of us were certified. How could we be, since it was our first time? If we [...])
• Scuba Diving Lessons and Safety (... Go back to Part 2: Hawaiian Dive Boat Go on to Part 4: Group Scuba Diving >> The second thing that the boat crew went over was “clearing” your ears as you went down and back up. They explained the need to equalize the pressure inside your sinuses and ears as you dove [...])