r/scubadiving

I'm looking to get the PADI Wreck Diving certification in California, the closer to San Francisco the better, but willing to go elsewhere.

The problem is that every website I find, and there are a lot, they advertise they do the wreck certification, but then "Call us to book!" only to find "sorry, we don't have anything on our calendar, but check back..."

Anyone have any recommendations for places that do this certification somewhat regularly such that I'm not putting more effort in booking than the course itself?

Also, is anyone else interested in teaming up with me on this so we have 2 or more and they might be willing to make a scheduled class for us?

TLDR: redoing open water and having anxiety about the OW dives even though I’ve been enjoying the pool dives!

As the title says, I’m starting over after 6 years.
I had a DREADFUL experience at my first dive school, I’m not gonna go into it but it left me with some serious PTSD and anxieties, including about getting in the water again.

Anyway fast forward to now and I decided to give it a go again with a new instructor. So far all my pool sessions have been fine (aside from almost forgetting to breathe during the cesa lol)

I’m finishing the OW on a dive trip in November and I’ve got all my anxieties back! Suddenly I’m worried about being back in the open water… I’m not sure why? I guess just all my feelings from years ago are rushing back.

I plan on continuing with pool sessions weekly, or at least fortnightly before I go on the trip so I can try and fine tune all the skills a bit more.

Thankfully my instructor is taking me on my actual OW dives on the trip so I’ll feel comfortable with him..

Idk what the point of this post is but I guess just to ask if anyone else managed to overcome OW anxiety?

Hi!

I got my open water certificate in june this year and my dad, who got his certificate 40 years ago but haven't scuba dived in 10 years, did a reactivate course. We both love scuba diving and being able to do this hobby together but we also got a small shock by how expensive this hobby seem to be now. My dad has been diving in a lot of diffenent countries, mainly during the 80's, 90's and 00's. He described it as all you needed was an open water certificate and everything else you rented at the diving shop, and usually was included in the dive price. A dive always included a dive instructor as well, there was no need to plan for a safety stop yourself as you would just follow the diving instructor who would end the dive by taking everyone to a depth of 3-6m and everyone would just dive around at that depth for a couple of minutes before going to the surface.

My dad have since the reactivate course done one dive with the diving shop that held our courses. He said it was fine but a lot less organized than what he remembered dives to be. A lot of divers in the group seemed very new to diving and the instructors were so busy taking care of them that my dad and his dive buddy missed their safety stop. My dad did not have his own diving computer at that time and the rental diving equipment did not include a computer or a depth gauge which ment he had no idea how deep he was.

We decided to try diving with a different dive shop. This dive shop is a lot more expensive but diving computer was included with rental equipment. We were very clear with the dive center that we are very inexperienced divers and might need suppport during the dive. They said that was totally fine. Now, a week and a half before the dive we learn that the alredy very expensive dive (around 250-300 dollars) does not include a guide and we are expected to do the dive more or less on our own.

I feel like there is much more of an expectation to buy and own your own equipment now than what my dad experienced in the past. The fact that depth gauge or dive computer isn't always included in rental equipment makes it almost necessary to own one to know how deep you are. It feels dangerous to dive without knowing your depth. Also the fact that rental equipment are not included in dives and usually costs more than the dive itself gives me the sense that you are expected to buy all your own equipment once you have decided to stick with the hobby.

One thing that both me and my dad was suprised by in the e-learning material from PADI during the open water course was the recommendation that you should do a reactivate course every time you haven't dived in 6 months. We live in a nordic country and diving any other time than during the summer months would basically require a dry suit. Are we really supposed to do a reactivate course every year unless we also do a dry suit course and dive every winter as well? That sounds really expensive. My dad remembered no such recommendation when he used to dive in the 90s and 00's. He would basically just bring his diving certificate and his log book when he happened to travel, which was usually years in between. No one expected him to do a reactivate course just because it was a couple of years in between dives.

Right now I just feel like I have gotten addicted to a hobby that there is no way I can afford, which really sucks. My question is, have scuba diving changed to a much more expensive hobby since my dad used to dive? Or is it different in other countries?

Hey, so I’m doing the advanced adventurer course in Koh Tao this year and one of the dives from the course is a night dive. I’m a bit afraid since I also never dived in Thailand. Have any of you done it? What can I expect from it? How did you remove the fear? Thanks for the help 🙌

Full disclosure before anything else: I'm one of the two people who built this, so treat this as a "here's my thing, tell me if it's stupid" post rather than a review. Mods, remove it if it breaks the rules.

The backstory is boring but true.

My friend Daniele and I were diving in Egypt, and we were on different computers.

Between us we'd used the Oceanic app, Suunto, and a couple of the generic logbook apps, and during a surface interval we started listing everything we wished those apps did. The list got long enough that we decided to just build it ourselves.

What ended up in it:

• Dive profiles from the computer (supporting hundreds of them), plus manual entry
• Photos and video attached to the dive itself
• Marine life logging: what you saw, where you saw it, on which dive
• A dive site database with the stuff you actually want before you splash: depth range, entry, currents, level, what's down there
• A social layer, so buddies and trips aren't just a solo diary
• One tap colour correction for photos and video shot on a phone

On that last point, spoiler: I shoot professionally and I live in Lightroom.

But after a dive I don't want to open Lightroom just to send my friends a photo of the turtle. So I wrote the correction algorithm myself, coming at it from both the mobile app side and the post processing side. It reads the content of the shot and adapts, instead of slapping the same "kill all blue" preset on everything, and it tries to recover what the water ate. It won't beat a manual grade. For the ride back to the boat, it's plenty.

The part I care most about is the marine life data. Birders solved this years ago: casual sightings logged in an app turned into a genuine research dataset. Recreational divers are already in the water looking at exactly the species researchers want counted, and almost none of that gets recorded anywhere useful. Every sighting logged in SeaLog is species, site, date, depth, which is the shape citizen science needs. The goal is to make that dataset actually usable for marine research and conservation, and to build a community that treats logging as something bigger than personal record keeping.

Site is here if you want to look: https://sealog.life

What I'd genuinely like from you:

1. Does this solve a real problem, or one only the two of us have?
2. What do you log with today, and what keeps you there? Paper counts as a valid answer.
3. If you've switched apps before, what made you leave the old one?
4. On marine life: would you actually log sightings if the data fed research, or is that a "great idea, never gonna do it" feature?

Roast it if it deserves roasting. That's more useful to me than polite enthusiasm.

Anyone have experience diving both Lighthouse and Glover aboard an Aggressor liveaboard in Belize? Planning a trip for next Spring and would love to hear pros and cons. It seems like the Lighthouse itinerary is the most common and most reviewed.

Hello! Would appreciate some thoughts from people who have experience with either of these regulators.
I’m looking at buying a regulator set and have narrowed it down to:

MK17 EVO 2 + S600
MK25 EVO + S600

Both sets would also come with an octopus and SPG.

I’m looking for something I can keep for a long time rather than buying something cheaper now and upgrading again later. Most of my diving will probably be recreational tropical diving around SEA, including saltwater, and portability for travelling is also something I care about.

For people who have used either/both:

1. Which would you choose for this use case?

2. Is there any meaningful advantage to the MK17 EVO for tropical/saltwater diving?

3. How have they been in terms of reliability and servicing?

4. Is there anything else I should consider between the two?

The price difference between the sets isn’t huge enough to be the deciding factor for me. I’m mainly interested in which one makes more sense as a long-term regulator for my use.

Thanks!

Hi fellow divers, i have a friend who is looking to purchase her first regulator. She chanced upon this brand "HotDive". Does anyone know of this brand or have used regs that are from this brand before?

Would love to hear your feedbacks and reviews about this brand's regulator. Thanks!

Gifting my son a Shearwater Peregrine TX with Swift Transmitter as he is getting into diving and we want him to be safe with a decent DC. Want him to figure out what he wants for regulators on his own to get what he likes / prefers.

• As we go to different dive sites, will he be able to get the transmitter on the rental regs?
• Issues he needs to be aware of with this kind of thing?

Thank you!

***Thank you all for the replies! The summary appears to be get a reg set prior to transmitter or trying to install on rental gear. Appreciate the feedback!***

I’ve never tried scuba diving before and would like to get my padi open water certification. Which places worldwide (preferably central/latin america or asia but open to other locations) would you recommend to go to in September to do this? Also, I have myopia and wear glasses, I’ve got roughly -4 in each eye. Would you recommend getting a custom made mask before leaving or do diving centres typically offer corrective lenses?

Thanks

Hi there, as the title suggests, I am looking for a diving buddy! Preferably someone around my age. I am 30F and I would like to go to Egypt this fall and I have AOW + I am about to do nitrox course rn.

Just trying my luck, but anyone interested? :)

I'm a padi OWSI instructor. Looking to do a crossover to SSI.

What's the protocol? Do I need to do the whole course again or is there a shortcut where I just do an exam?

TIA.

My dive buddy and I are AOW and sidemount certified with about 150 dives each under our belt. We just want to dive the cavern parts of the cenotes within our limits. Is it possible to just get the cavern certification so we could dive those without a guide? We’ve found that guide costs add up so quickly after a couple of days and found that our days end up getting rushed because the guide just wants to get us in and out of the water as quickly as possible.

Relative newby to scuba diving.. a couple dives in FLA and Cayman. Thinking of going here next year. Any thoughts?

getting ready for my advanced open water soon but my vision has gotten so much worse this year. my big fear is losing my mask underwater or getting separated from my buddy and not being able to read my gauge or see hand signals.

​for anyone who started diving with bad vision what did u actually do? custom mask, contacts, or fix your eyes completely? would love to know what worked best long term

Looking for advice on Belize liveaboards. Which itinerary and which boat to choose, and other general questions to be best prepared. Older, experienced diver but first time doing a liveaboard. Probably Mar-April of next year.