I became a NAUI ceritified SCUBA diver in June of 1997. I took the class through the University of Michigan during my last term of college. All I can say is that SCUBA diving rocks! If you live in Ann Arbor and want to learn how to dive, I HIGHLY recommend taking the diving class offered by the university - it is one of the most extensive beginning diving instructions that is available in the country. Let me know if you'd like some more details on that.
In June of 2003, I got my Advanced Diver certification, and because of
the frigid early-year temperatures of Lake Huron where I got my
Advanced certification, I decided to also get my drysuit certification
on the same trip. I was much happier in a drysuit than I would've
been in a wetsuit. It's going to be hard to go back to cold water
diving in a wetsuit.
I did my open water certification at Portage Quarry near Bowling Green
in Ohio. It wasn't the Carribean, but it was still nice enough to
make me fall in love with the sport. All of the pictures on this
page of me, my dive buddy (Mark), and the fish from Portage Quarry during
a dive we did later in the summer.
The story with Portage (and any other quarry for diving) is that it
was a rock quarry that flooded when the workers hit the water table
while digging. Once that happens, they just head for dry ground and leave all
of the equipment. This provides quite a lot of interesting stuff for
divers to look at or make part of their dive. The "scales" were
the first thing I saw on my first dive. We could swim by them,
swim through them, or sit on them.
The quarry also had many other things to make diving more intersting.
There were slabs of limestone, trees, stumps, boats, cement mixers,
and even a school bus and an airplane on the bottom.
One of the most common things to dive for is to see the fish. It's amazing
how different fish look when they aren't on the other side of a piece
of glass. The fish in the quarry were surprisingly friendly. They would
swim around you, bump into you, or just sit a couple inches in front of
your mask wondering what kind of ugly fish you are.
One of the more exiting things was feeding the fish. We heard old hotdog
buns were the food of choice for the fish at Portage Quarry, so we
brought some down with us and gave the fish a little snack.
In all fairness, not all of the diving was spectacular. The very first
dive we did (in June) was admittedly rather scarey. Here is a picture of
Mark that is pretty close to how we both felt on our first dive.
But, once we got used to diving in something besides a pool, things
got a lot more fun... We just swam with the fish and looked around
at all of the stuff on the bottom of quarry.
We've now had the opportunity to dive elsewhere including other quarries,
Monterey, the Florida Keys, and most notably - The Great Barrier Reef in Australia.
