SCUBA pics...who dives?

SixLug

Explorer
These are from July of 2007, in the Caymans with some friends.

The Nekton Rorqual, our live-aboard HQ.
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MV Tibbetts off Cayman Brac...a russian destroyer sitting very close to the edge of a couple-thousand foot drop off into oblivion. One more bad hurricane in this area and it could go bye bye. This is a pro pic from one of the crew members. My fav. pic of the trip really.
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Turbine engine onboard the Tibbetts.
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Tibbetts turret.
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Going inside...
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Heading to land for a break from the boat while it refuels...
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Random toilet on a submerged tug...ha.
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They had a rope swing off the back of the boat...so cool...
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SixLug

Explorer
Here are some more pro pics from the crew...

Deco stop at 15 ft...the hang out.
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Cool little guy...At one point in the trip, a couple fellow divers and I found a turtle that had an unfortunate encounter with some plastic around it and was stuck so I helped free it...that was pretty cool.
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My entry procedure..You can see the rope swing behind me.
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At the Tibbetts again
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During the trip, we saw an incredible amount of wildlife...barracuda, sea horses, turtles, nurse sharks and black tips, tons of lobster, and these annoying little guys called Blood Worms. We did a night dive every night, and they were attracted to our dive lights. They are like underwater gnats, getting in your ears and everything...ha. Kind of gross, really annoying.

If you dont know anything about the Caymans, the islands are basically the tops of mountains, and they extend out into the water a few hundred yards, suddenly dropping off into nothingness....thousands of feet below. The coral on the shelves were arranged so that you could swim between the formations, along a sand floor. One of the neatest things was that there were a lot of tunnels in the coral, so that you could swim from one side through it to the other side. Some of the tunnels were very long...we went through a couple that were probably 30-40 feet long. I remember one dive, we started at about 60 feet, swimming between two HUGE formations along the sand floor and it sloped downward towards the dropoff for a few hundred feet, ending at about 110 feet below the surface.

One point on this trip made me feel like the smallest organism in the universe. As I said, the islands have shelves that extend into the water a few hundred yards or so, and then drop off. On a wall dive, you swim out past the edge and can dive down a bit to check out the wildlife on the wall. Some of the crew told us to swim away from the wall into the open water and check it out. So at about 100 feet deep, I decided to try it out. I swam in a straight line away from the wall for about 30 seconds, looking straight ahead into the blue. I turned around and could see the wall from a pretty good distance. I looked down and saw pitch black that extended thousands of feet below me, wondering if some large creature was looking up, licking its chops, excited about its easy prey above. I looked up and saw 100 feet of crystal clear water above me, seeing the details of the chop at the surface above, with the sunlight beaming through. I have never felt smaller or more vulnerable in my entire life. Some of you may not be religious, but I am. I believe in God, and this experience was just another sliver of proof of the complexity of our world, and the higher power that created it. It was absolutely incredible. Id recommend to you all to get certified and try it out.

My setup: BC is a Dive Rite Tec II harness with the Rec wing, Dive Rite Nitek Plus wrist computer, Oceanic mask, dont have my own regs yet. Im open water certified, advanced open water certified, and have my Cavern Diver rating. Cave diving is the coolest thing in the world, albeit extremely dangerous if you dont know what your doing. I learned all of my diving certs. from the one and only Paul Heinerth...a family friend of the friends I went to the Caymans with. Hes a very well known diver in the caving community, and has worked with Nat Geo, and on the set of Pirates of the Caribbean 2 when they sunk a large ship for the movie. Cool stuff.

Paul: http://www.usdct.org/personnel/paul.htm
http://www.sptimes.com/2004/06/16/Hernando/Lost_diver_found_in_i.shtml
http://www.cavediver.net/forum/gallery/showimage.php?i=3290&c=
 
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Nullifier

Expedition Leader
Ha I just got my replacement c card in the mail today from padi. it has my original cert date of june 30 1985! I guess next year I will have to honor that with a 25th anniversary dive trip to some place exotic. Trouble is I'm running out of places. maybe the red sea or antartica. funny thing is I was 11 when I got certified as a jr diver I have used and carried the same card I got when I was 11 all this time. used to get a good laugh from folks at shop when we were handing in cards.
 

SixLug

Explorer
ha ha...thats awesome! Antarctica would be incredible!! Stay away from the orca...ha. Do you have a dry suit?
 

ChuckB

Expedition Leader
I have been a few times, need to go some more. Definitely one the coolest things I have ever done.
 
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Nullifier

Expedition Leader
ha ha...thats awesome! Antarctica would be incredible!! Stay away from the orca...ha. Do you have a dry suit?

No but they are much better in the water then those crazy thick wet suits I'll tell you that. Antartica is on my travel list. For international destinations it is in the top 3. Doubt it would happen next year but I will get there. :snorkel:
 

Capt Sport

Adventurer
Hey,

Great pics thanks for sharing. I dive :snorkel: check out my avitar, that's from a trip to the Bahamas. I prefer free diving but am Scuba certified as well.

Cya,

jr
 

SixLug

Explorer
No but they are much better in the water then those crazy thick wet suits I'll tell you that. Antartica is on my travel list. For international destinations it is in the top 3. Doubt it would happen next year but I will get there. :snorkel:

Yeah, I remember one of my cave dive lessons, we were diving in some fresh water springs in Florida, the water temp was in the 70s, and I had on a 7 mil wetsuit, and it sucked. Drysuit is def the way to go for cold water.

Capt. Sport, I def. respect free diving...it takes a lot of lung capacity.

:victory:
 

Capt Sport

Adventurer
Capt. Sport, I def. respect free diving...it takes a lot of lung capacity.

Thanks Exrunner,

You'd be surprised how quickly your breath hold time increases once you start. Not to mention how much more you see free diving, cause your so much more quiet. I recommend you give it a try, just be careful and go slow. Much like everything else fun it can be dangerous if you don't take the time to learn to do it correctly.
 
Nice pics!

You'll have to come see me here in Hawaii, I have the great job of being a SCUBA Instructor, did 10 tanks in the last three days, I'll have to pica few of my fav photos to post.
 

Lynn

Expedition Leader
...maybe the red sea...

Dang, too bad my photos are a) 35mm and b) too crappy to even bother trying to scan. All I can say is diving in the Red Sea is incredible! We stayed at a resort in Hurgada. Very nice.

We saw a baby whale shark while coming back in from the dives, and I didn't have my snorkling gear handy.

And in Puerto Vallarta a few years ago we saw a Manta from the boat, without having my snorkel gear handy...

I swear on my dead relatives (and even those who aren't feeling so well) I will never get on another small boat again without full snorkel gear in place, and me poised to jump!
 

SixLug

Explorer
Nice pics!

You'll have to come see me here in Hawaii, I have the great job of being a SCUBA Instructor, did 10 tanks in the last three days, I'll have to pica few of my fav photos to post.

Thats awesome!! I would love to do that! When we did that trip, I had almost 30 dives in 5 days, so it was definitely a lot of diving in a little amount of time. Post some pics here if you want! Or start your own thread...doesnt bother me either way.

Lynn, that sounds like a little bad luck..ha ha! Speaking of rays...On this trip we went to a place near Sting Ray Alley and they were everywhere. I just sat on the ocean floor in the sand and they would swoop down over me. A couple of times they came from behind and brushed the top of my head...ha. Absolutely amazing.
 

Lynn

Expedition Leader
Lynn, that sounds like a little bad luck..

Worse than that. When I DID go on a manta dive, someone forgot to invite the mantas.

Had a couple of 5' reef sharks show up, though.

That was on my first post-certification dive, Kona, HI.
 

Capt Sport

Adventurer
When I DID go on a manta dive, someone forgot to invite the mantas.

Hey Lynn,

My brother went on that dive, it's to bad the Manta's didn't show up for you. I saw the video of my bro's dive and it looked pretty cool. The Manta's zoom in above your head feeding on the plankton in your dive lights. He said they bump into you a lot, and they just swim in loops over and over again.

I plan on doing that dive on my next trip down.
 

SixLug

Explorer
Ok, so Im a little bored and was looking at some more scuba pictures from when I got certified, and thought Id post a quick cave dive we did during the Cavern Diver cert.

Quick tidbit: I am a certified "Cavern Diver", not "Cave Diver." The difference is that as a Cavern Diver I have to have 3 light sources in the underwater overhead environment, being caves more specifically, although not excluding others (ships, etc). The 3 light sources are: ambient sunlight from the entrance, a main flashlight, and a backup. The first one is the limiting factor, being that when I reach an area far back enough in the cave that I cannot see ambient light from the sun, I have gone too far, and must go back. Cave divers may continue, but must have 3 light sources, being: Primary dive light, and at least 2 back up light sources.

So on to the trip. Went to the Chassahowitzka Wildlife Management Area in Florida to do a cave dive. The only part we would get to do would be a single chamber in the cave, because it was too deep (for us) to get to the next part of the cave. It was about 150' deep at the bottom and we could do about 110'.
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In order to get to the cave, we had to us this bad boy to get our gear to the entrance:
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Its a metal cart that is battery powered and can carry all that gear through brush for about 15 mins. Then it dies...more on that in a bit. It was nice while it lasted though..ha. (thats me on the far left) There was a trail from where we had to park to the edge of a swamp area, so we put all the gear in that monster wagon, and started down the trail. Once we got to the swamp, we donned our gear and then hiked about 10 minutes through the sludge. Now that may not sound like a long time, but with a 7mil wetsuit in the heat of day trudging through goop and mire with a steel tank on your back, its kinda tough. Ha.

Heres after the hike about to get into the water.
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I dont have a pic, but it looked like we were about to swim into some really low visibility swamp pond. We had to get our masks and stuff on, keep our fins in our hands, get on our hands and knees, and slowly move out to the deeper water. We did this very slowly in order to keep from stirring up the sediment we were in and making the visibility in the center of the "pond" much worse. As the water got deeper and we got near the center, it became much clearer, and very blue. It was amazing. Directly below us was the entrance to the cave. Across the entrance of the cave was a conveniently placed submerged log that made a nice seat:
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So we met up there as everyone got to the center. Then we :snorkel:

A friend spotting for one of us to set up the line to follow:
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From around 80' looking up at the entrance...I think it looks like an arrowhead.
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We swam around for a bit in the cave, which was enormous inside. It was huge, with crystal clear water inside. We ventured down to around 110' and leveled off to take a look at the bottom, which was still a good 40' below us. At the bottom, the cave continued horizontally quite a ways, but that was well beyond the scope of this dive.

Me, on the way up. Somehow this picture ended up looking really cool to me, although it was accidentally.
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Paul Heinerth with post-dive briefing:
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After the dive we hiked back out to the monster wagon, and it promptly died. We had to pull it back full of gear to the cars, over quite rough terrain. The cart is pretty dern heavy without stuff in it, let alone gear for 5 people. So that was fun. At this point we started getting eaten alive by mosquitos. :ar15:

All in all, an awesome dive. Cave diving is quite an experience, but only when properly trained. Id highly recommend it.
 

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