Entering the majestic world of scuba diving

Robert Young

Crestview News Bulletin

Scuba diving is a sport that is becoming more and more popular with time. People all across the world are dabbling and moving up the ranks in the world of scuba. PADI, one of the biggest scuba organizations, is also the organization most commonly recognized.

Last year I found myself joining PADI as an open water diver.

You think it’s neat looking at the bottom of an ocean floor while you snorkel?

Imagine how it is when all those fish and plant life swim and sway right in front of you. The experience is not something one can describe.

It seems that once in the water, every fish and underwater mammal greets you.

Learning to breathe underwater through oxygen condensed metal tanks is something you’d think is impossible. But it isn’t. As a scuba diver you can drop to the depths of the ocean floor, follow a school of angelfish or even marvel over a circling reef shark.

Well, what about sharks?

Sharks are just like us, they’re scared of things they don’t understand, and so when in the water the sight of a shark is pretty uncommon.

Will sharks attack scuba divers?

Divers are briefed on the safety and regulations of diving with animals. As guests in their habitat we have to abide by every rule and always keep an eye out. A diver that always keeps a lookout is a safe diver.

This past week I traveled down to the Keys to go on a six-day Boy Scout diving trip.

My trip started off with a 13-hour drive to Islamorada where 10 other Scouts and I checked in to Florida Sea Base, one of BSA’s biggest camps offered in the United States.

Each group of scouts was assigned to a dive master and in our case also a vessel. We had signed up for the “Live Aboard” program, which consisted of not only scuba diving every day, but actually living on the boat for the entire trip.

The program was started three years ago when Sea Base wanted to create a variety of programs for scouts to get involved in.

Staying at base camp and then going off to dive wasn’t the high adventure experience that some troops were looking for.

So, Sea Base decided to offer “Live Aboard” giving the Troop the full experience of living on the water, fishing, diving, and even sailing.

Captain Denny Webb and his wife/first mate Holly Whitley, owners of the Conch Pearl, and Hermies, their nautical Welsh-Corgi, greeted us as we arrived at Marathon, where the boat was docked.

The 58-foot steel-bottom schooner housed our adventure as we set sail that afternoon.

The water was sleek, calm and filled with hundreds upon thousands of sea creatures, big and small.

Every day consisted of waking up, eating and diving. We ended up diving 15 times over the trip, swimming with 2-4 feet long barracuda, pulling in more than 18 mahi-mahi and always running into the local reef sharks that glide around the coral beds.

The experience of diving so much and the sight of all the wildlife had really opened my eyes.

Scuba diving is pretty much another world. The earth is made up of 70 percent water, filled with millions upon billions of fish and underwater mammals.

Think of the possibilities awaiting you as an amateur scuba diver.

Your local scuba shop will always have information on how to join PADI or any of the other numerous diving organizations. A lot of people in this community are scuba divers, and I think it’s time for the entire community to try something new.

For more information on the Conch Pearl, check out their Web site at www.schoonerconchpearl.com.