Hey everyone,

Was wondering if anyone here likes to dive. I want to get into it but am wondering how much it is going to cost to buy my own gear.

I kind of want to get a speargun and shoot stuff.

Depending on how often you go diving, you may be better off renting your tanks, regulator and bcd...I would def. buy my own mask, snorkel, fins, etc. There's a number of online retailers that will give you an idea of the cost of things, but I would recommend going to a local b&m dive shop and talk with the people there and try everything on before buying(you don't want your mask fitting improperly when you're 60 feet underwater).

It's been a long time since I was certified, but the class was a few hundred dollars iirc.

GL and enjoy it

i do! though i don't do it much since it falls below skiing, flying, and sitting on my couch on the list o' hobbies these days. also my dive buddy moved back to CA.

where do you want to dive? warm water vs cold water makes a huge difference for cost of entry.

how experienced are you and what kind of diving do you want to do? again, checking out shallow reefs in the caribbean is different from wreck diving in the north atlantic.

you sound as though you already have a cert (open water, presumably)? do you already have good quality snorkel gear?

how much gear do you want? i own a complete set except for tanks. i've never done enough diving to justify owning my own tank vs renting.

without knowing the answers to any of these questions, i'd ballpark ~$1k to get started with decent gear for beginner-intermediate warm water diving. add another $500-1k for cold water.

I was gonna make a SCUBA thread in EDF but never got granted posting rights and didn't follow up.

I'm a fairly new diver with only about 40-50 dives under my belt. Certified in Seattle's Puget Sound in February. I've done probably 2/3 of my dives in this cold water (usually under 50F) and it gets uncomfortable after a little while.

I've done the rest of my dives in Hawaii, off both Kauai and Oahu.

Good SCUBA gear is expensive, but you can usually find good deals on it. Buying anything from a local dive shop is usually grossly overpaying. I'd say expect to spend $1-1.5k including wetsuit to get decent quality stuff.

BCD
Reg (1st & 2nd stage) + octo
Console or computer
Mask/snorkel/fins
Light
Weights/weight belt

A lot of people don't buy tanks unless they do a lot of local diving.

First step is to get certified, and all you need for that is mask/snorkel/fins. The rest of the stuff is usually included in the rental, which is part of the cert class. I think my certification was only ~$130 or so which included 4 nights of classtime + pool instruction and 4 checkout dives (2 days). I'll try to post some pics later from some of my dives

I live in florida and would be diving for fossils in rivers/gulf. I think I am going to sign up for a class soon. Hopefully I can jump in by summer.

Scuba diving is awesome. Not for everyone, but I love it. ~15 dives, including Great Barrier Reef and Mexico.

http://www.scubaboard.com/ is a big scuba forum.

Hey I ALSO got certified in the puget sound in the middle of February. Alki Beach! With 14mm of wetsuit I was pretty warm in the water except my face which was fine after it went numb But once you got out of the water it was soooo cold. I bought the mask, fins, snorkel, boots/gloves and a dive knife for I think $370... and the certification program was $100 if I recall. Have never been diving since getting certified

Scuba diving was always really sweet when I went, but i tend to get nose bleeds and that didnt motivate me to continue going. Never been anywhere that great, just some wrecks in the Gulf.

I can't believe you didn't dive in Costa Rica!

Puget Sound is just really, really cold when it's not warm out. I knew something was up when the instructors and DMs were all saying stuff like "oh it's not that cold. I love diving in a wet suit here. You get really used to it and don't mind the cold..." Then I showed up for my checkout dive and EVERY single one of them was in a $3k DUI drysuit with their fuzzy jammies underneath. Bastards.

when you scuba dive, can you take what you want out of the ocean?

for example, can you take shells, fossils, pieces of corral, plants, etc?

just curious

Depends on the area. With a basic license in the seattle area you can pull out a LOT of food. We grabbed about 40 pounds of shrimp for a BBQ by hand in ~30 minutes.

Places like hawaii are VERY restrictive on what you can take out. It's like any other natural resource--You can't just go chop down any tree you see and make it a Christmas tree

30+ dives, only rent, the only thing I own is a dive slate and table. If you only do recreationally there's no point in buying (you'd need to make it a major hobby in a good location to make it worthwhile).

that said i live in Scotland and it's frigging freezing. If i lived in Alexandria, Cairns, Cayman, Hawaii or similar I'd probably buy.

I went once in Cabo, so amazing. Always meant to get certified

I KNOW... I got certified 8 or 10 years ago... me and a buddy from work did it on a whim. That's the only time I've ever gone diving.

My divemaster also had a drysuit during our checkout dive. I honestly wasn't that cold (well... at first as the water seeps into the wetsuit). We only had 3 people in the group so we had alot of time to kill and extra air... got to swim around alki (I think it's alki... right next to Salty's), take some photos, etc. Went down to 60 feet and swam around those old pylons but my friend was a panicked heavy breather and kept running out of air while I had 10 to 15 minutes left

Yeah that's Alki Cove 2 & 3.

My first checkout dive I was part of a big class (10-14ppl) and my friend and I finished our surface skills (swims, etc) pretty quick. Instructor said "ok, free descend and wait on the line down there." We descended and waited 30 feet below for ~20 minutes freezing our asses off while people on the surface struggled to complete the most basic of tasks. I didn't enjoy the rest of that dive.

Haven't done it in years but got certified in the Cayman's like 6-7 years ago and did several dives including a wall dive. loved it.

I only have about 25-30 dives but I love it!

As far as certification goes, I did the classroom and pool part near my home in Portland. Then I did my certification dives in Belize. Highly recommend doing this. My certification dives would be 10 minutes of training exercises and then we joined the rest of the group for the rest of the incredible warm water belize dive. Beats the heck out of doing a training dive in a freezing cold river.

I have only done warm weather diving on vacation, never done any local cold weather dives. For my needs I feel that I am much better off renting most gear than buying. Since all of my diving is done on vacation I don't want to have to lug a lot of heavy gear on the plane every time. Plus I don't have to worry about maintenance. If you are planning on diving locally they it might be different for you.

I would recommend buying a diving computer. You can get ones that look like oversized wristwatches that aren't too expensive ($150 and up). You can also spend a lot more if you want fancy features.

Diving is awesome!

I got certified while in Costa Rica and did a few dives down there, and then a few in Key Largo last winter. It's awesome, but since I live in Minnesota I don't think I'll ever own my own personal equipment. Just easier and less hassle to rent, imo.

Totally worth doing. Probably one of the greatest most amazing feelings in the world to breath underwater and see everything that goes on down there. I remember when a buddy and I did our first training exercise and we looked at each other underwater in the gear and starting laughing- had to go the surface for air.

Love diving. 23 logged dives. Puget Sound(5 - 4 of those were cert. dives), Oahu(2), Maui(3), Kauai(2), Big Island(6), Great Barrier Reef(5)

Does anyone here have any experience of diving again after perforating an eardrum?

I perforated mine a couple of years ago after my second dive. I'm desperate to have another go but I don't want to go through that again. The ear still doesn't feel right however, I've had multiple doctors tell me that it has healed and there is bugger all wrong with it. As such I'm inclined to think that the doctors are right and I'm imagining it.

csaba,

no direct experience (pretty sure i've known people who perfed) but i would recommend:

spend some quality time in a pool or other controlled environment before venturing back to ocean depths. practice some sloooooooow ascents and descents until you know how your ear will react.

if you are good at controlled descents and keeping your sinuses open (with the valsalva maneuver or whatever you prefer), then 60 feet == 6 feet -- it just takes longer to get there.

gl.

Yeah, just take it easy and see if you can go down to 20 or 30 feet. I would not plan a vacation around diving until you know you're good to go.

I love diving, although at the moment I'm only certified to open water level with PADI and have a bunch of rec dives under my belt. Hoping to get advanced and some wreck diving in this summer. It's f-ing expensive here (Ireland) and can be a bit hit n miss as to the conditions you're diving in, but it's by far my favourite hobby to take part in.


Csaba, you should ask on a diving specific forum or perhaps a technical diving forum, purely because of how much those guys know about diving.

fyp