Learning to Scuba Dive

The Ultimate Plunge

As a child, there was a time when I was obsessed with Jacques Cousteau. There were no wall-sized posters or fan mail, but I had just about every book about underwater exploration and marine biology checked out of the library throughout my childhood. 

My dad happily shared in my marine obsession and we spent many afternoons watching Cousteau TV specials about his “Undersea World” and ocean odysseys.  I read about the “Aqua-Lung,” one of the first fully automated regulators, created by Cousteau and Emile Gagnan that supplied air to divers underwater.  In my youth (and to be honest, still to this day), I adored pictures of seemingly mythological creatures that could only be found deep in the sea. 

SCUBA (Self-contained, Underwater, Breathing, Apparatus) diving is now a world-wide sport that has given human beings the freedom to explore the depths of the underwater world.  Today’s SCUBA equipment is designed for safety and nothing is left to chance.  The avid SCUBA diver of today is typically outfitted with their own dive computer, which tracks air pressure, dive depth, dive time, and compass bearings. 

LEARNING TO SCUBA DIVE AT HAPPY DIVERS DEN!

After researching local dive shops, visiting their sites and contacting them by phone, we decided to put our scuba diving fate in the hands of Happy Divers Den in Streetsville , Ontario .  Candy Marston, owner and “Dive Momma” of this friendly little shop, answered all of our questions with facts and from personal experience.  During our first visit to the shop, a dive “regular” popped in to return his empty tanks for refilling.  We had a great conversation about scuba diving, how much of a thrill I was in for, and how most people get hooked on the sport right from their first dive.  

Candy provided me with the 200-or-so-page manual for the Open Water in-class portion of the certification and suggested that I review the first few sections.  The course is fairly intensive and is usually completed in one weekend.  Reading the material ahead of time will most certainly help you to understand the material—especially the bits about safety and reading dive tables!   Next, she helped me to pick out my very own mask, snorkel, fins and booties.  Proper fitting equipment is essential to ensuring a safe and comfortable dive.  You don’t want a mask that is either too tight or too loose.  You want a mask that conforms to the natural shape of your face so that in an underwater scenario, the least amount of water will get in!  The fact that I wear glasses was a worry point for me—even with contacts in, I was a bit worried about water problems.  Apparently, many divers wear contacts but the more avid divers tend to invest in prescription mask lenses (usually in the range of $50 to $100 per lens, depending on the strength of your prescription).

In the end, I chose a black and yellow colour theme for my equipment but, to be honest, the gear comes in all sizes and colours (including a Barbie-esque light pink!)   The array of SCUBA accessories seems endless—an entire wall (and then some) of the shop is devoted to gidgets and gadgets for diving.  From underwater cameras to comfort slips for your mask’s strap, if you need it for your dive, you will find it here.   

For middle to higher end of the line equipment, I ended up paying about $400 (tax included) for my mask, fins, booties, and snorkel.  Of course, this is just the beginning of my SCUBA investment.  It is a wise idea to purchase your very own wet suit, BCD (buoyancy control device—the vest that you inflate and deflate to control your buoyancy), regulator, and tank so that you can assure that the equipment is properly stored and maintained at all times.  Another increasingly popular diving must-have is a personal dive computer that is part of your BCD.   You can expect to invest upwards of $2000 in equipment/gear alone once you have decided to pursue SCUBA diving on a regular basis.  Of course, once you have your own equipment, you’ll have it for a long time.  At Happy Divers, there is a consignment corner where you can buy/sell used equipment and the shop hosts a gear swap as well.  Otherwise, if buying your own equipment is not an option, renting what you need from a reputable shop is your best bet! 

Open Water Certification In A Nutshell--

The Open Water Course certifies you to dive to a maximum depth of 60ft/18m upon completion. As a certified Open Water diver, you need to have a dive buddy with the same or a more advanced certification level. Children as young as 10 years old can enroll in the Junior Open Water course and are automatically upgraded to Open Water diver on the their 15^th birthday.  You need to be in good health with no major health problems (most notably, no problems with your respiratory and circulatory systems).  The course is comprised of three major parts:  Knowledge Development Sessions, Confined Water Dives, and Open Water Dives.

Rob is already certified after a destination vacation he took a few years ago but chose to sit in on the classes with me over the course of the weekend and to complete a “refresher pool session” on Sunday.  Since I am the newbie, I attended two full days and one evening of in-class and pool sessions.

Knowledge Development: 

Armed with the manual of mandatory reading, Rob and I arrived at Happy Divers on Friday around 6 p.m.   Our instructor Steve was extremely excited for us and couldn’t wait for us to jump right into the material (and into the pool!)  The in-class portion of the course, otherwise known as Knowledge Development, provides students with the opportunity to expand on the learning that they have done independently by engaging in discussion with classmates and the instructor.  You also view summary videos for each section of the text.  Major themes of study include: learning all about the science of buoyancy, how diving affects your body, the physics of diving (including pressure and density underwater), diving safety, equipment selection and maintenance, and learning how to plan out a dive using dive tables.  You’ll need to complete a quiz for each major chapter —5 in all.  On the last day, there is also a 50-question multiple choice final exam that you will need to pass with at least a 75%.    The great thing about the PADI course is that the emphasis is on developing your knowledge and confidence.  Our instructors took the time to review any questions that we didn’t quite get the first time around and ensured that we fully understood the content.  The information that you learn is entirely practical and the course is designed to help you become a safe and happy diver!

Confined Water Training:

Staggered along with the Knowledge Development sessions (i.e., one in-class session, one in-pool session), the second step of certifying yourself as an Open Water Diver are the Confined Water Dives.  This is the part where you get to put on all of the equipment you’ve read about, jump in the pool and take your very first breath underwater.  Even in a pool, breathing underwater is pretty exhilarating! 

Before you unpack your scuba gear bag, you’ll need to demonstrate your comfort level in the water by swimming 8 laps of the pool (between 200 and 250 metres) with no stops but no time limit either.  After a quick rest, you will tread water or float for 10 minutes. Once you’ve demonstrated that you are fit enough to scuba dive, you are on your way to learning the skills you’ll need to dive safely.

The practical confined water dive training sessions can be completed in a pool or in a pool-like setting (an enclosed or relatively shallow open water area).  Happy Divers uses the Cobra Swim Club which houses a private pool used to train some Olympic athletes in Brampton .  There is a lot of preparation that goes into a dive (even if it’s only a practice pool dive!)  Ensuring that all equipment is in proper working order before you go under is of utmost importance.  Picking a buddy and establishing underwater communication signals and route is also paramount.   

The equipment that you wear for scuba weighs quite a lot out of water.  The tank and the BCD alone can be hard to move about on land.  Add on a weight belt and insert a few extra weights into your BCD and you’ve just gained at least 30 pounds!  Of course, once you’re in the water, all of this weight seems to melt away. 

OVERVIEW OF DIVING EQUIPMENT:

-Tank of compressed air that you carry on your back

-First stage regulator that is attached to the tank that controls air pressure to the diver

-Second stage demand regulator and mouthpiece that delivers air on inhalation and closes on exhalation

-Face mask that covers nose and eyes to allow for underwater vision and air pressure equalization within the mask

-snorkel

-Octopus (aka an extra second stage regulator and mouthpiece with an extra long hose for use in emergency situations by yourself or your buddy)

-Submersible gauges and compass—to display direction, depth and to show how much air remains in the tank (or a dive computer that displays everything!)

-BCD (buoyancy control device)—the vest that a diver inflates and deflates to control buoyancy

-Weight belt and/or weight pockets in the BCD—worn to compensate for the natural buoyancy of the diver

-fins to propel the diver through the water

-wet suit to prevent hypothermia, cuts, and scrapes underwater (hoods and gloves are also worn in colder climates).

 The first day of the confined water dives is all about learning and practicing the specific techniques that you will use to breathe and move about underwater.  You’ll review how the gear works underwater, how to establish breathing control, clearing out your mask, completely removing and replacing your mask, removing and replacing your regulator, scuba swimming strokes, and helping your buddy in an emergency situation.  

Yes, I did indeed say that you will be asked to remove the regulator, the part that provides you with AIR underwater, from your mouth and let it dangle freely in the water beside you.  This was a bit scary for me at first as my greatest fear going into the process is not being able to breathe… at the bottom of the pool.  Of course, it is always wise to stay calm and not panic when underwater.  Following the careful instructions of our leader, each one of the students in the class took their turn at removing and replacing their regulator.  When it was getting close to my turn, I must confess to feeling a bit nervous, but just kept repeating the steps in my head.  Steve appeared before me, signaled for me to go, I gave the “OK” and took the regulator from my mouth.  When you don’t have air coming in, you need to let air out… slowly, in little bubbles.  You NEVER hold your breath when diving (this is a cardinal rule).  I brought the regulator back to my mouth, inhaled the air and, unfortunately, a nice gulp of water too.  Little did I know that instead of standing up in the 5 feet of water and coughing it out at the surface, I could have coughed right into the regulator and blown the excess water out of it!  Point well noted for future reference! 

Our instructors provided us with clear instructions and genuinely cared if we were having difficulty with some of the skills.  It was normal for people to repeat a skill until they were comfortable with it.  Despite the fact that you will probably have up to 8 (at a max) people in the pool with you when you are learning the skills, the instructor goes to each person and checks that everyone has each skill mastered with confidence.  There is also a lot of checking for “comfort level” by signaling for an “OK” underwater (where the instructor makes the “OK” sign with their hands and checks that you are returning it to ensure that you are indeed “OK”) 

The second day is a review of the first and building on what skills you’ve already mastered.  For example, you’ll learn how to handle emergency situations such as low-air (where you’ll have to share air with your buddy or make an emergency controlled ascent).  Other skills include: removing and replacing your BCD underwater and at the surface, removing and replacing your weight belts underwater and at the surface, swimming underwater without your mask, and practicing communication signals with your buddy.  One of the coolest skills we had to learn was how to breathe from a regulator that goes into “free flow.”  A “free flow” is when the regulator malfunctions and begins to let out air at a pressure greater than we can inhale it.  The air rushing out of the regulator sounds just like a raging river underwater.  In order to take in only the air you need, you keep the regulator only partially in your mouth, creating a “fountain” of air spilling out into the water around you from which you “sip” the air you need!  I didn’t believe it until I tried it for myself—sipping cool air underwater was truly an unbelievable experience.

Overall, the in-pool training sessions were a lot fun (mixed in with a lot of focused hard work)!  It is a little intimidating at first to be underwater and breathing—your focus is definitely on establishing control over your breathing—but swiftly switches over to the fact that you are indeed able to live it up underwater!  It is such unique experience to breathe almost like you do when you are sleeping or at your doctor’s office--- slow, deep breath in, slow deep breath out and so on.  It is very calming to hear your own deep breath and the tickling sounds of the bubbles as you exhale. 

I was truly impressed by how thorough and supportive the course instructors were and really enjoyed the learning process.  It is so amazing to see the agility and skill level of the instructors—it’s definitely something to aspire to. Candy was the one who impressed me the most as she removed and replaced her BCD and tank underwater in one fluid motion!  It was like watching a scuba samurai (except with no knives and scuba gear instead)!  At the very end of the course, the last skill we learned was the Buddha pose which is the act of striking the meditative, cross-legged pose and floating underwater.  Candy and the other instructors looked so serene while the rest of us seemed to float up or sink as we established the right level of buoyancy.  It was during this final pose that most of us looked around at each other with reassuring looks of confidence that we had officially mastered the skills that we needed to proceed to the next level.

Open Water Training and Checkout—

Once you’ve completed all of the in-pool training, you’re ready to take your skills to the lake (or ocean, if that’s where you’re headed!) Essentially, you will repeat what you have done in the pool in the “real world.” 

Diving in a natural setting allows you to ensure that you’ve mastered the skills you need once you venture out into deeper territory.  You’ll get a sense of how the equipment reacts at a greater depth than the pool can offer, how to monitor your buoyancy, experience varied visibility, perhaps a current or two and maybe even come face to face with fish! 

FUTURE DIVING ADVENTURES:

We look forward to diving in Ontario (and hopefully, someday, beyond Ontario ) with Happy Divers Den.  The shop coordinates weekend dives for pleasure and offers courses to upgrade your certification.  On a regular basis, Happy Divers’ regulars get together at the local pub and even host pool parties!  They have formed a veritable scuba community!

Stay tuned for upcoming dives with Happy Divers Den!