Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
Q- Ball
Mountain climber
but to scared to climb them anymore
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Oct 26, 2017 - 04:14pm PT
|
Mungeclimber,
I would love to read that Nat Geo article if you have a link?
Reilly, my mother and father spent several years sailing the South Pacific. My father was doing underwater photography for nat geo, so my mom spent the time diving and collecting seashells. She had a good sack full off of the Solomon Islands and ran into a giant grouper that swam up and inhaled her haul! : )
|
|
Mungeclimber
Trad climber
Nothing creative to say
|
|
|
Oct 26, 2017 - 09:55pm PT
|
sorry, yeah, outside online is the article.
thx original!
|
|
Q- Ball
Mountain climber
but to scared to climb them anymore
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Oct 27, 2017 - 06:54am PT
|
Wow, that article pulled my heartstrings. Thanks for posting...trying to get tears out of my eyes
|
|
Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
|
|
|
Oct 27, 2017 - 09:21am PT
|
That Nat Geo article said 8:40 of decompression? Are you kidding me? That’s crazy!
|
|
healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
|
|
|
Oct 27, 2017 - 11:09am PT
|
Been diving all around the western Pacific including Northern Sulawesi where they were still fishing with dynamite even in remote villages. At this point I think the best diving is from liveaboards as far from human habitation as possible.
|
|
Toker Villain
Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
|
|
|
Oct 27, 2017 - 01:44pm PT
|
Got my first cert in '69 using a J valve.
Like wall climbing one becomes equipment dependent.
I still have Layton's SCUBA tank and it still has some of "his" air.
Once, at breakfast with Karen, Jan and me, he said, "You know I dove around Guam for 3 or 4 years."
I said, "Wow! Didn't you even come up for air?"
EDIT
When the women cracked up he shot a glare at me before he realized that I was making him out to be superman.
|
|
Mungeclimber
Trad climber
Nothing creative to say
|
|
|
Oct 27, 2017 - 01:58pm PT
|
lol, Toker lol
|
|
johntp
Trad climber
socal
|
|
|
Oct 27, 2017 - 04:25pm PT
|
I tried scuba diving but just never felt comfortable with it. Drowning and fire are my mental nightmares. Kathy Dicker posted up some beautiful cave diving shots awhile back but then disappeared. I ended up buying her Yos wall rack for a measly $400. It had over 40 pieces including a ton of metolius cams and stoppers. I kinda felt bad for getting it at such a bargain basement price.
|
|
Hubbard
climber
San Diego
|
|
|
Oct 27, 2017 - 09:04pm PT
|
After his Navy pilot career my Dad taught scuba diving in the 1970's in San Diego. We had Jaque Coustue over for dinner one night. I was never actually certified, but was around the whole show so much that I learned what I needed to know.
Using my dad's gear and his air and his Zodiac boat with a twenty-horse mercury engine we went diving in the kelp beds off Point Loma. I was 15 at the time.
Swam down to sixty feet and broke open a bunch of urchins and swam away for about five minutes, all things I was told to do. Dad was off grabbing lobsters so I felt very much alone. I circled back around and peered over the rock edge and was shocked at how many big fish had arrived and were feeding in crystal clear water. I picked out a huge sheeps-head and speared him with my sling spear, pinned him on the bottom and with gloves on my hands, grabbed the spear tips sticking out the back of the fish. This fish wouldn't die. He spun around and around on the spear until he had a golf ball size hole through him, but he kept thrashing for all the time it took to ascend and stop to decompress. The fish knocked my mask off and cut my face but I finally flopped him up into the boat and watched him die.
This was my first actual ocean dive. It was so beautiful and traumatic at the same time. I did other dives after this but none of them were as good. Either no fish or murky water or gnarly currents. I drifted away from diving and surfed instead and then was introduced to climbing at age 16. I cherish the memory and gift of it.
Reading all the stories on this thread fired me up to share.
|
|
Sierra Ledge Rat
Mountain climber
Old and Broken Down in Appalachia
|
|
|
Oct 29, 2017 - 05:29am PT
|
My wife got me into diving. So far my quals include master diver, gas blender, fill station operator, cylinder inspector, advanced decompression, and full cave diver. I have a full dive shop in my garage, including a compressor, and can blend any gas that I desire.
I routinely dive in local reservoirs, where the silt reduces visibility to 1-2 feet but at time drops to 1-2 inches. It's totally dark below 40 feet.
I go out alone, because it's pointless to have a buddy in those conditions. Usually I'm in a dry suit, wearing double steel 130s (260 cubic feet of gas) with two sets of regulators, an AL40 decompression cylinder, 3 lights, two compasses, and multiple cutting tools.
I dive by feel, with my left hand finger-walking along the bottom and my right hand protecting my face in case I run into a tree or something.
I carry a plastic bag filled with fresh water. In order to see my gauges I have to place the bag of clear water between my mask and the gauge, and shine my light into the water bag.
I've been below 120 feet, but I get so narcotized at that depth that I usually don't go deeper. At 150+ feet I'm a complete idiot.
On the Big Island in Hawaii I could see whales swimming by all day, about 100 yards offshore, so I decided to swim out there and Swim with Whales. Their songs were extremely loud, but I once I got out there I never saw them. I was out past the reef, so I sank to the bottom (120-130 feet) and relaxed in the sand on my back looking up at the surface. I was really narcotized and really enjoyed the whale songs.
I really like dive photography, too, and have a Nikon D300s.
|
|
Scole
Trad climber
Zapopan
|
|
|
Oct 31, 2017 - 11:14am PT
|
I started scuba diving at 12 y/o, and have dove many parts of the world. One of my most memorable dives was a drift dive at Maria la Gorda in Cuba. I was there with a certain Cuban American climber who posts here.
The boat was an old 50' Bertram. I was with a group of strangers using rented Cuban dive gear. The dive was a 55 min drift at 110' on a single 80 cf tank. I was the first in the water and, as I swan to the anchor line I noticed bubbles coming from every fitting and from numerous holes in the BC. At the anchor line I noticed the boat had a two foot diameter hole just above the waterline.
The dive master warned that is was essential to stay submerged, as a 15 k current headed straight out to sea. We dropped to 75', and cruised along the bottom among amazing corals, with thousands of tropical fish, nurse sharks, giant grouper, etc. then dropped over the edge of the wall. My trail of bubbles got bigger and bigger as we dropped. Twenty minutes into the dive my air was already way to low, so I alerted the dive master who was diving with twin 100s. At 35 mins I was almost out of air, and by 40 I was dry. I shared air with the divemaster for the last 15 mins, the first time in almost 40 yrs of diving.
The lesson is, if you dive in Cuba, take your own gear
|
|
johntp
Trad climber
socal
|
|
|
Oct 31, 2017 - 12:02pm PT
|
On my first certification dive with my friend, some fool tried to pull my friend's fins off when we were about 30' down. I dragged the fool to the surface and gave him a piece of my mind. He disapeared after that and was later found at the bottom of the lake; apparently he let all of the air out of his BC and turned his air off.
I'm still not sure how to feel about that. The fool was a prik and looking for attention. I am very defensive of my friends and felt I did the right thing, but I also pushed the guy over the edge. I was 15 at the time and still remember it all vividly at 59. Watching him being pulled out of the lake had a profoung effect on me.
|
|
AP
Trad climber
Calgary
|
|
|
Oct 31, 2017 - 03:12pm PT
|
I did some dives in Cuba once. Pretty sketchy operation
|
|
mongrel
Trad climber
Truckee, CA
|
|
|
Oct 31, 2017 - 11:23pm PT
|
I've only dived in Indonesia, 60 or 70 times. Just about every one was incredibly memorable. Drift dives, like floating weightless through the rain forest canopy, with so much diversity it makes your head spin. Wrecks. Stonefish. Everything.
Sometimes memorable for the sketchiness: at Candi Dasa, the dive boats are these skinny ass little dugouts with outriggers lashed on, and a motor that couldn't have been more than 25 cc. Somehow (with the two passengers doing a lot of leaning hard to one side or the other) they punch through the waves and motor out to these cool rock towers off shore. There's a roiling swell, and the boat and gap between hull and outriggers are too small to gear up on board, so you cinch on your weight belt, the guide holds your gear in the water so it doesn't fly away in the current, and you gear up pitching around in the swells. If you don't execute, being already weighted, you plummet to the bottom or maybe manage not to panic and dump the belt but thereby lose your dive too. Once below surface, it is fantastic though the currents are wild (one dive spot is called the Toilet for what the current does at times). Indonesia has giant currents and when they hit those rock towers underwater, it swirls around crazily. With all that current though the fish and soft corals are absolutely incredible. One of the spots is a known reef shark dormitory, you go there early and are guaranteed to encounter at least 10-20 of them sleeping and one by one lazily awakening and swimming gracefully off to eat somebody. Gorgeous fish.
Sulawesi is as good as land-based gets. Saw the mimic octopus in Lembeh (and tons of other cool stuff). At the end of the trip, they asked what we'd like to go see, so I piped up with mandarin fish, they look so wild in the fish book. They knew right where to go, a heap of coral rubble, an area of staghorn coral that was shattered by an earthquake/mini-tsunami. Shallow. You just settle on the bottom and wait. And wait. And then one, and another, and soon enough hundreds of the little tykes emerge from the rubble and start spawning. Hardly any other species, but zillions of mandarin fish.
But by far the most other-worldly are night dives. I suppose at any minute you could become shark dinner without warning, but the cool stuff to be seen at night is just not to be missed. Huge bizarre organisms that it's hard to imagine what phylum they're in. Millions of delicate prawns of every description. A whole different fish fauna than daytime.
|
|
John Duffield
Mountain climber
New York
|
|
Sulawesi is as good as land-based gets. Saw the mimic octopus in Lembeh (and tons of other cool stuff).
Neat stuff! We went this August past. Followed a mimic around 20 or so minutes. Lembeh, has that mud bottom and it had no where to hide. This species only got discovered in the 1990s.
One of the guys on my boat, did this video
[Click to View YouTube Video]
|
|
Q- Ball
Mountain climber
but to scared to climb them anymore
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Mar 16, 2018 - 08:35am PT
|
I froze my butt off doing a survey on the North Fork of the Holston. Didn't find many mussels, but did find a wagon wheel, rifle, old jars, and my first dragon wing! Haha!
|
|
Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
|
|
|
Mar 16, 2018 - 08:46am PT
|
Anybody done drifts in some of the crazy tides of British Columbia or Norway? I know it’s
dark and cold but just imagine ripping along at 15 knots! What could go wrong?
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!