Last weekend P&I spent a whirlwind weekend in Florida! It was a 12 hour drive one-way... Oofta. We left home on Thursday night and returned back home early Monday morning (3am!) in time for work at 7am! :) The weekend was packed full, but we had a great time, made some new friends, and best of all we completed our advanced open water scuba certification!! Our diving was all done in some of Florida's freshwater springs - so refreshing! 73 degrees, consistently!
Here we are before our first dive... still warm. :)
Ready to dive!
Most of our certification was done in caverns. It was quite an experience! We both enjoyed it immensely although I was a bit more timid than Peter. The following photo is borrowed from one of our dive mates, Jay. Thanks Jay!
After the first dive, feeling a little queasy and cold, but happy!
Ginnie Springs, FL was our first dive site; we completed five dives here. :)
Isn't it beautiful?!
After Ginnie Springs, we went to Blue Grotto, another neat dive site! We didn't take any photos there unfortunately, but we completed two dives and then hopped onto the road for the long drive home!
Some of the Brown's were asking about what our diving was like so Peter wrote an email that I thought I'd share:
Here we are before our first dive... still warm. :)
Ready to dive!
Most of our certification was done in caverns. It was quite an experience! We both enjoyed it immensely although I was a bit more timid than Peter. The following photo is borrowed from one of our dive mates, Jay. Thanks Jay!
After the first dive, feeling a little queasy and cold, but happy!
Ginnie Springs, FL was our first dive site; we completed five dives here. :)
Isn't it beautiful?!
After Ginnie Springs, we went to Blue Grotto, another neat dive site! We didn't take any photos there unfortunately, but we completed two dives and then hopped onto the road for the long drive home! Some of the Brown's were asking about what our diving was like so Peter wrote an email that I thought I'd share:
"How does it look and feel to be that deep... Good question.
In the Caribbean, you might have 100+ feet of visibility, so you can see all the way to the surface and it's pretty bright down at depth. You'll notice the shorter wavelength colors start to quickly filter out as you go deeper (reds first, quickly followed by orange and yellows). Green, blue, indigo and violet remain the longest. Imagine looking through a big blue filter - that gets bigger as you go deeper. Cool little science project here about it. While the process is of colors interesting, it is all VERY pretty and you (or at least me) rarely notice the change.
In the caverns in Florida, we had very good visibility - probably almost as good as the Caribbean since it is fresh water and has less particulates (other than some silt divers had kicked up off the bottom). Colors get filtered out the same as salt water, but being in a cavern adds the element of darkness - somewhat mitigated by your flashlight (I have a good one). :-) Oddly enough, the darkness didn't bother me much (maybe Marissa a bit more than me). One of my favorite parts of the whole trip was being back in the Blue Grotto cavern and being slightly negatively buoyant as I descended the shaft just flicking a fin left and right occasionally to dodge the limestone boulders as I went deeper. VERY serene and exciting at the same time. While not as much plant and animal life to look at, the freshwater dives were still very interesting.
Back to the feeling... Once you are comfortable with your gear and have your buoyancy dialed in, you feel kind of like this weightless foreign observer looking into another planet's world (and you really are). I think it feels more like your own world too as you get more bottom time.
We aren't fast divers. We dive slowly and try to concentrate on the small things in front of us, the nooks and crannies, and the dark corners. Marissa is really good at noticing all the different sea life. A lot of the fun in diving is finding something neat and pointing it out to your dive buddies. (This almost never happens to me - the finding part - in fact, I think if I DID see something really cool I would keep it to myself and not tell anyone until we got back to the shore - 'cuz I'm kinda jealous of everyone else. It hasn't happened yet, so I'm not sure what I would do...) It doesn't take much skill to see a whale shark (although still very exciting), but to notice a little sea horse, frog fish, eel, or octopus takes good eyes and attention. You won't see them if you're moving very quickly. Even in fresh water, it is amazing how much there is to see if you are willing to pause and watch for a while. Night dives have even more activity! Float and watch - a LOT more fun than it may sound... Try a resort dive sometime and see for yourself. :-)"
I should have him write this blog!! He's far more entertaining than I am. :)
4 comments:
Thanks for the update on diving. It's something we are planning on doing when we get to Mexico.
So do you have to come up to the surface slowly too to decompress? At what depths is this necessary?
Hi Sherlene,
You'll have fun with it in MX. If you get a chance, it is neat to dive (or even just swim) in the cenote's. They are fresh water mineral springs and your skin feels awesome after swimming in them - especially after being in the salt water from the ocean.
You try to ascend slowly from any depth, but as a rule of thumb, <60'/minute up to 60' and <30'/minute the rest of the way up. Generally you'll try to make a safety stop at 15' and hang out for 3 minutes (although it is not required) just to make sure you don't end up with any "issues". With recreational diving, it is all referred to as no-decompression diving, so by watching your dive tables or computer, you should be able to dive without ever needing a decompression stop. The safety stop is used as extra prevention in case your body is slower than normal at getting rid of the excess nitrogen. Lots of science to it, but if you are diving with a computer, it will let you know if you are ascending too fast by accident. Additionally, it will remind you of the safety stop at 15' and alert you if you have stayed too deep for too long and require a decompression stop (the deco stop should never happen if you are paying attention throughout the dive and is something you want to avoid). In short, go slow. There are very few things I can think of about diving that require moving fast... :)
It's a lot of fun and I'm sure you two will enjoy it! :-)
Wow ...too techy for me and I am not really fond of open water. Party pooper when it comes to water I'm afraid:(
Diving looks like a lot of fun, and after reading Peter's take, I might be able to get past the scary part if I knew there were lots of interesting things to see. I like his "float and watch" approach... hmmm.... when is our next vacation?
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