My First Scuba Dive

Here is a video from my first Scuba Dive.  We took a trip down to Florida Springs with Gypsy Divers from Raleigh to get certified as Open Water Divers . I must say, i am liking the capabilities of the GoPro Hero4 Black more and more every day.

In short, I absolutely loved the experience of scuba diving.

The experience is different:

• Breathing under water is something that you just have to experience.  It does take some getting used to, but seemed pretty natural after a couple of minutes.  Floating effortlessly is an awesome experience. Its like being an astronaut just floating around out there.

The people are different:

• I really enjoyed meeting everyone on our dive trip.  Everyone just seem to be good people, looking to just relax and have a good dive trip.  There was no competition or ego’s or any of that nonsense, just good fun underwater.

The sounds are different:

• No cell phones, emails, text messages, car traffic.  All you hear is bubbles floating to the surface and the sound of your own breathing as you inhale and exhale slowly and rhythmically.  This is a great place to escape.

The sights are different:

• I think your sight becomes more keen as you become less distracted and more aware of your surroundings.  You start to notice all the small critters that live under water, along with all of their colors, movements, etc. Tarpon, Gar, Bass, Manatee, Turtles, just to name a few.  Under water, the grass and plant life takes on this living rhythmic movement from the current passing through.

Things that I learned that are the most important for scuba enjoyment:

• Hover – Don’t ever stand on the bottom, much less touch anything.  I saw several people touch the bottom or flip their fins excessively near the bottom.  In short, this just destroys the view for everyone else because of the dust/particle cloud created from all of the sediment.
• Visibility – is probably the most important factor on any dive for me.  Since I like to take photos & videos, I am there to actually see as much as possible. If you can’t see more than 5 feet around, how good could that particular dive be?  If you’re trying to be a good dive buddy and keep your dive buddy in sight at all times, this gets pretty difficult in low visibility.  Let’s be honest, you’re just a hundred times more comfortable when you can see 50ft around you vs. 5ft.
• Buoyancy Control – is perhaps the most important skill you can learn.  This goes back to not touching the bottom and stirring up debris.  If you can become proficient in this one skill I’m certain you’ll never have a shortage of dive buddies.  Learning to just hover horizontally in the water and effortlessly flutter/frog kick was the main thing that i noticed all of the more experienced divers could do well.
• Repetitive Diving – I definitely understand the importance of keeping track of surface interval time, bottom time, etc.  However, I feel this is more for the hard core diver that is looking to get in as many dives as possible in 1 day or 5 days worth of diving.  For me, I would tend more towards doing 2 dives in a day, and then spending the rest of the day above water exploring whatever interesting location I am in.  This is not to say scuba diving isn’t amazing, but it would be shame to be able to go to Hawaii only once in my lifetime and not also explore the rainforests, beaches, cliffs, wildlife, sunsets, etc.

Thanks for Reading!