Who Scuba's?

P utA notherD ollarI n

That's almost unbelievable about that "instructor". I highly question the authenticity of his "PADI Instructor" certification. You have to have over 65 dives to even get your PADI Dive Master in the US, so there's no way this guy got a legit Instructor certification with only 15 dives. Someone scammed the system, or he manufactured his certification because there's no way he was a legit instructor based on the stories you've told.
The shit that you said that this guy did scares the fuck out of me. That's how people get hurt, or even worse, die. I wouldn't even dive with someone that careless, personally. It's sad & scary that people are certified without being trained. That's how accidents happen. It's basically the equivalent of a gaper ducking a gate and heading out in to the back/side country without proper equipment and training.
Fortunately, 98% of my diving is done with my old man. I've personally got 263 dives under my belt, & he's got well over 1,500, so we make a great dive team. We dive black water together all of the time doing search and recovery, so your life can literally be in your dive buddies hands at times. The local police & fire departments no longer have a dive team, so we are contracted through them to recover vehicles when they go in to the river, or the occasional jackass that jumps off of a bridge. (My old man is a chief of police & used to run the dive squad before they were cut due to budgets.) No way in hell I'd get in the mississippi river where I can't see more than 2 inches, and dive in high flowing currents with a guy that pulled shit like the guy you mentioned. fuck that.

 
I've heard Pay and Dive Immediately Before. I'd guess the American equivalent of CMAS is NAUI, that's what I'm certified through.
I dove the U-85, a German U Boat sunk off the coast of North Carolina a couple years back. 100 feet down, water's murky enough that you only have 10-15 feet of visibility. My dad and I are staying off the surface to avoid kicking up more debris, using the BCs and small movements. Cruising around, and we see some PADI divers flailing around right on top of the surface. Not that they were in trouble, but their best method of staying off the surface was to kick as hard as they could. Needless to say, visibility went down significantly.
 
Ugh, I hate that dude. There's nothing worse than divers that can't control their buoyancy and end up murking it up for everyone else. I also hate people that aren't aware of their fin kick cycles so even though their body isn't hitting the bottom, their kicks still send enough force of water to stir up the bottom. I fucking hate mud puppies!!
 
i dive on a side job during the summer, underwater boat cleaning, changing zincs and scraping algae and all the shit off the bottom of big boats and yachts, it should be on that show dirty jobs
 
dude yeah i just got my cert and hopefully this summer il be able to go out a lot. im going to college for underwater search and recovery and then underwater photo and welding. diving is defintly a great thing to do for a career and hobbie. I wonder how well i will be able mix skiing and scuba ?
 
good luck man, scuba = summer, skiing = winter, i think you'll be ok :)
a friend of mine is a tour-guide in winter (he arranges other folks' skiing vacations) and in summer he's a diving guide/instructor in sharm el sheik egypt, he's pretty much living the life imho ....
 
WORD MAN.. scuba is soo much fun i hope to make that lifestyle mine. I just need to make money, and learn more. Near my house there is a 200ft quarry where the they practice recovery and rescue dives. Its coolest place ever. It has caves and stuff and you can see perfectly. at least 30+ ft.
 
yeah, quarries are awesome, altough they do have thermoclines sometimes, i love the shear vertical walls, it's so impressive :)
+as you said, water can be crystal clear !
 
There's a quarry in IL that we dive at quite a bit called Hague Quarry. (I think they ahve a website) The walls's are super cool to dive, but vis is usually no where near 30+ feet due to all of the mud puppies that are usually stirring up the bottom getting certified. A 200 ft quarry with 30+ feet of vis would be super dope to dive! There are always massive thermos at about 30 & 60 feet in our quarry. It get's pretty damn chilly below 60 feet. The deepest is about 80 feet & it's usually only about 45 degrees even in summer.
one of the best dives I've ever had was in Key Largo, FL. My old man and I were the first boat out for the morning and visibility was no joke 100+ feet at 100 feet below the surface. It was the most amazing thing I've ever seen. You could literally see from one end of the ship to the other.
There's GREAT money to be made in recovery dives....especially if the conditions are bad. Our average rate is about $250/hr, but can be higher depending on the conditions. We've got the massive 4,000 pound lift bags that we use to recover boats, vehicles, etc. They're basically big balloons, if you will, that we hook up underneath a vehicle or boat to bring it to the surface. They have hoses attached to them that plug in to air tanks or a compressor on shore....dive down, hook up the bags, turn on the air, and bring it to the surface. Aside from your dive gear, this is basically the main tool that we use for recovery dives.
Any other recovery divers out there? What do you guys charge an hour for your operations?
 
I'm not quite sure of the model it's been a while since purchase but it's a SeaLife camera with added flash. These pictures were taken in seperate dives during my Islamorada (Florida Keys) trip.
 
cool!i use a sealife DC500 with sealife external flash and a homemade rig for my HID lamp ...
 
Sick, sounds similar to mine minus the lamp. Ever had the chance to dive somewhere tropical or do you just mainly wreck dive around Europe?
 
just got open water certified with PADI in cozumel! headed down to belieze tomorrow to go diving with my mom for a week. SO STOKED!!!!
 
nope, so far the most "tropical" i've been was in brittany, france with 20ft vis if we were lucky :)
 
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