ScubaButch.com – The Advanced Open Water Diver Course Increases your skills, comfort level and safety on every single dive for the rest of your life.  The skills will allow you to enjoy scuba diver so much more.

So one of the more important features of diving with a dry suit is that it extends your diving season.  I am not asking you to dive through the ice, but it is nice to go on a dive with the bright sunshine of a spring day.  You can come up out of the water and strip the top down and enjoy the gorgeous weather.  Even in a wet suit, you would have to strip out of the suit or you would just continue to get cold because of the water evaporating out of the suit which makes you cold.

You don’t have to bring gallon jugs of warm/hot water.  Some divers will take and dump “hot”water down their wet suit to be able to stay underwater longer this time of year.  You would not have to go through that chore.  You would bring hot liquids because you want to drink them.  Might even bring a little stove to heat up some water for instant soup….  Not the suit itself.

New suit construction makes diving in a dry suit more comfortable then diving in a wet suit.  Some of these materials allow you to move around with more flexibility and keeps you warm and dry.  You don’t have to dive an old neoprene or vulcanized rubber suit.  I have dove both of those and I can tell you that even when my current suit restricts me it is not the same as those previously mentioned suit.  Then if you dive one like LeeAnn’s, your mobility is even better.

So hopefully these couple of items make you think about taking another look at diving a dry suit.  No reason to wait till after the summer solstice to think about diving here in the Chicago area.  There are more opportunities then that.

Mike Shea

www.ScubaShea.com

The preconceived notion with scuba divers, such as yourself, is that any training after the basic open water scuba class is not really necessary.  Some will think it is all about the money hungry scuba instructors.  Although some instructors are starving out there teaching scuba, but this is simply not the case.  Others will have their own reasons not continuing on with further classes or training.  This can cause you some trouble, possibly, forty-feet down below the surface. This can be prevented.

Typically, a parent would not let their kid in a driver’s education class to jump on the highway until they feel their kid is confident, comfortable and safe going down the side street and back.  There is a major difference of 70 MPH versus 20 MPH.  It is about the stepping-stones during the learning curve.

Scuba diving is no different.  The fact that you hold a scuba certification does not mean you are immortal underwater.  There is always an inherent risk when it comes to diving.  When you start moving outside of your comfort zone, it’s always easier to have someone who has been there before to show you the way.  Your scuba instructor will bring their experience and expertise to the table to assist you in gaining your own experience in a new environment.

The reality is, after four training dives, how much real experience do you have?  Maybe you went on vacation for a week and knocked out another twenty dives beyond your basic scuba training dives.  There will be a point that you feel the lack experience in certain areas when scuba diving. The advanced open water will bring you up to speed and lead you into certain diving specialties that may interest you as a diver.

Traditionally, there is more risk in going deeper or diving on shipwrecks.  Even if you have one hundred dives in your logbook, some places will not take you to a dive site without the advanced certification.  Why?  Increased liability risk for the resort, boat captain or divemaster.  Anyone can produce a logbook with one hundred, or even one thousand, logged dives.  Or maybe all one thousand dives are at thirty-five feet deep in the Caribbean versus a seventy-five foot dive on Lake Michigan, near Chicago, on the Straits of Mackinac shipwreck.  This dive will dramatically increase your stress due to task loading and you are going beyond your experience level, even with one thousand dives in your log book.*

The comfort and safety of a dive is very important to every scuba diver.  Comfort and safety increases while you are gaining experience.  One of the best way to gain experience in different areas of diving is by taking the advanced open water class; diving specialties.  Go learn a few knot-tying techniques in your search and recovery dive; increase the safety of all dives with the skills you learn on your deep dive; and take that extra time to really know and apply how to navigate underwater with a compass.  You will use these learned skills on every single dive you make after your advance open water class.  If you do not take the advanced open water class, maybe one day you will wish you did.

*One thousand dives is just an example to drive home a point.  Many with one thousand actual logged dives today, more than likely, have already been through the advanced open water and rescue diver classes.  Additional classes beyond the basic certification will dramatically help you achieve one thousand dives in a much more fun, comfortable and safe way.

What are we doing this weekend?  Well LeeAnn and some others are taking their first steps into becoming “Technical Scuba Divers”.  With a little luck, they should finish their Tec 40 certification.  This has been a good group since the divers have some time underwater, and not just looking to get another cert card.  So they have been a great group asking questions, trying to understand the concepts we are talking about and taking serious the implications of being underwater that deep and that long.

PADI did a nice thing by breaking the Tec diving certifications into different levels.  This way it has allowed divers to get the steps into Technical diving without overloading you the diver.  Tec 40 allows you to dive with gear that you have.  Your max depth is 130 feet, just as recreational limits.  You can just stay down longer with bailout bottles.  So you are getting into the rigors and considerations of what goes into Tec Dive planning.  Your not just jumping into the water and staying down till you have “so much” left in the cylinder.

Technical diving has a bit more planning and concerns than what recreational diving does.  So Tec 40 allows you to focus on those planning aspects while also getting into the water and learning some of rigors of Tec diving.  So it is that old building block mentality.

So I am looking forward to this weekend.  Should be a great time with some great scuba divers.  They should have a great time achieving this first step of Tec diving.

Mike Shea

www.ScubaShea.com

Two of the points in the article was to be true to yourself and don’t create false statements.  When you look at what the potential student was concerned with might very well fall under these two points.

I am going to start with the point of creating false statements.  LeeAnn and I are both PADI instructors, so is many of the diving professionals that I know.  One of the aspects about PADI is that they do allow for independent instructors outside of a shop setting.  With that being said, every instructor in the PADI system had to go through the same certification to teach.  Whether they are in a shop or not. So that will bring us back to a point that I have said before; meet and know your instructor!  Sometimes when you walk into a shop and ask for instruction, you get what ever instructor is filling in that day.  No concern about who you are personally, not really caring about why you want to scuba dive and what was the motivation to learn now how to scuba dive.

We are going to take the time to know you!  We want to know why you are scuba diving, what happened to give you the motivation to learn how to scuba dive and where do you want to take your scuba diving.  Without a doubt, (ok maybe a little bias here) we are some of the best PADI instructors in the region.  We have created that reputation by training people to be confident and comfortable in the water.  Not just by checking the box off and getting through the weekend.

That last paragraph started to go into the other concept of being TRUE to ourselves.  Now, LeeAnn and I love to scuba dive.  We love to teach people how to be scuba divers and become better scuba divers.  We also want to have fun doing that.  As you can see by the website, we might not be the most technically advanced but we know scuba diving.  We are comfortable with who we are and what we can do.  If we are not the right fit for you, then we are going to be upfront about that.  We also have enough knowledge, experience and friends in the industry that we could probably refer you to someone that might be better suited for what you are looking to do.

Let me also throw this out there for certifications and qualifications.  The training agency, that alphabet soup of organizations out there vying for your attention saying they are the best.  When it comes right down to it, every certifying agency has to meet the Recreational Scuba Training Councils (RSTC) minimum requirements.  So that gives you a starting point.  After that an agency can add to that minimum and make it their philosophy.  So I will say it again, it comes down to your instructor and what are they doing to satisfy your desire.

When all is said and done here, we are back to YOUR confidence and comfort ability in the water.  We give quality instructions at the highest professional standard.  We maintain what is required of us as a PADI instructor and give you points to become more comfortable while you are scuba diving.  Please, do your homework and make sure that your future instructor takes the time for you and not just for the check in the box at the end of the weekend.  We want you to have a safe, fun and enjoyable experience scuba diving.

Mike Shea

www.ScubaShea.com

We are happy to report that CITES did take the recommendation and placed 5 Sharks and Manta Rays on the protection list.  This is a huge step forward and you can read more about it on the link provided here from Project AWARE:

http://www.projectaware.org/update/historic-shark-decisions-survive-final-threat-cites-plenary

These animals need our help to sustain a healthy ocean.  We came up short in 2010 and this time there was a challenge by several countries that did not want to see this change.  In the end, we are over the hurdle and onto the next.  By itself, the placement of these Sharks and Manta Rays on the protected list will do nothing.  There needs to be pressure to create regulations to make the act of fishing and targeting of these animals unprofitable.  That is the next step, and will take as much focus and dedication as what the first step took.

We are going to get there.  Without a doubt, we are slowly starting to turn the tide as it were in favor of protecting our oceans.  It is not a resource that we could keep harvesting without something breaking.  I only hope that we are in time enough to help Sharks and Manta Rays make a strong return for all to see.

Mike Shea

www.ScubaShea.com

Now, I have nothing against Richard.  For what I know of him, I respect him.  Really where I respect him more; is that he has the desire to explore.  He is the one that helped create the commercial version of NASA to take people into space.  He was also in the race with Cameron to reach the deepest point in the world with a civilian craft.  While Cameron won that race; Mr. Branson did not stop there and his funding has brought new and remarkable discoveries in our Ocean World.

The latest is in the Cayman Trench, in the Caribbean Sea.  A team of researchers with an ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle) have discovered “chimneys” at the deepest points ever found.  These chimneys are where super heated gas from the core of the earth are expelled.  These chimneys have also thrown out the concept that life could only happen with the sun.  Because life happens here, in abundance.

It is this exploration that gives me hope and dreams for our youth.  It also gives me the desire to keep propelling our youth to take up scuba diving, exploration and the desire to seek out a new world.  OK, little Star Trekkie there but our undersea world is something to seek out.  We know more about our moon then the ocean floor.  Great miracles can come from the ocean yet.  Our children are going to be the ones to unlock the secrets finally.  They can only do that if we foster their desire to look to the ocean as their new frontier.

If you want to see more about the ocean floor and what the team found, click on the link below.  I hope you show your children and try to spark their interest in the science, wonder and desire to explore.

Link for the Cayman Trench finds:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21520404

Mike Shea

www.ScubaShea.com

One of the techniques you can use is called the rule of thirds. What the rule of thirds does is break your framing into segments. Think of the viewing frame broken into 3 equal parts going from top to bottom. This sectioning can also be taken from left to right. Many on te newer DSLR cameras have a grid pattern that you can see in the view finder to help you place objects into different sections. In older 35mm and DSLR’s, there was just that box that gave you the center part of the viewing area. I happen to think that this lead to people putting their objects within that box and pulling the trigger.

So as you frame your picture, you want to try and leave one of the thirds somewhat open. This will give you that framing that will let your subject look more natural. Gives a better look and feel to the eye. Now if your subject has movement to it, I might give that open space to the subject to move into. Thus, your eye looks at the photo with more believably. It registers better with you.

If it is a non moving object, let your eye guide where the third should be. How does the photo look better? Remember, you are the artist here. So take the advantage of the framing and how you want to project your image.

Keep practicing, you will only develop your eye by taking photos. So keep it going.

Mike Shea
www.ScubaShea.com

Now you noticed, I did say editing. I would like you to understand that I don’t spend hours on a single photo, color enhancing or “photo-shopping” something out. Either the photo is good enough to publish or it isn’t. I do crop, adjust the exposure and enhance some clarity. Other than that, the photo does need to stand on it’s own merit.

Which brings me to the point of this conversation. How many times have you seen a photo with everything dead center? Seems like more than you care to remember. Now, I know that the world is not a photography studio (no matter how much I would like it to be) and the world will not sit down for you in a pre-designed setting. That happens in the mall, when you go in for Christmas or Graduation photos. Heck, even they are getting out of the mall and taking photos in the outdoors.

What is one way to make your photo more appealing? Get the subject out of the center of the frame. If they are walking or moving, try to give them space to move into. If they are next to an object, maybe put that object in the center and them supporting it. Play with it a bit. See what feels more natural to you about your photograph. Don’t just center frame the object and pull the trigger. Heck, you are an artist when you are looking at your subject through the view finder. Make some art!

Some photos are not going to turn out. That is ok, unless you are taking actual film. In this digital age, with instant gratification, shoot a shot or two outside of being center. See what kind of remarks you can get on the photo. Make a story with your photography. I am sure we will like it!

Mike Shea

www.ScubaShea.com