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You must also
complete a form to state you are fit to dive.
To find out what is required on the form in
preparation, you can find it online at Divers
Alert Network. Like any sport, you need to be in
good condition to stand times of physical
exertion. Just think about the heavy oxygen tank
on your upper back when you are above water and
you still need maneuverability with all this
heavy stuff fixed on your body. Ok the water
offsets some of the weight but sometimes things
must go quick.
A scuba diving
alternative which gets more and more followers
is nude diving, in particular naked male
diver, nude scuba or scuba diving naked has also
its negative sides since if you don't watch out
certain fishes will eat your best thing off,
they think its a hot dog and hot dog are
to be eaten or ? especially with this special
salty taste of the sea water the fish wont need
chili sauce. |
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There is a age
limit, you need to be at least 15 years old for
normal scuba diving certification and at
least 10 years for junior diving.
A scuba
certification will involve a scuba diving test
where you have to show you know what is needed
to dive safely.
There are plenty
of excellent dive sites out there one of the
best are around southern Thailand in the Similan
Archipelago, Phi Phi Islands plenty of other
places for scuba diving holidays.
A very attractive
version of scuba diving is via liveaboard.
This is also typical by scuba diving packages
out of Phuket, Thailand into the Andaman Sea and
southern Myanmar or Burma.
The best places
for diver there are in the Myeik Archipelago,
a untouched place since it was closed since
colonial times for foreigners and only opened up
recently.
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Scuba Diving |
Thailand liveaboard |
Similan Liveaboard |
Phi Phi Liveaboard |
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-Top Scuba Diving Destinations
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There are several scuba diving
destinations ranked top notch in
diving magazines and websites.
Some of the greatest scuba diving
destinations are in Thailand, such
as the Similan Archipelago, a very
exotic diving destination is the Mergui
or Myeik Archipelago in Myanmar or
Burma.
Sipadan off Borneo is also a great
diving spot. The are some more scuba
destinations at the Philippines and in
the Pacific Ocean plus pls.
Some more
top notch scuba destinations are
the
Blue Hole off the coast of Belize, the
Brother Islands in the Red Sea,
Galapagos and Coco Islands in the
Pacific plus the South Sea Tahitian
heart.
What
scuba
divers generally expected from a
dream destination, seems clear, big
fish, wrecks, beautiful corals and a
functioning environ when not in
the deep blue.
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Whale
Shark at Mergui or Myeik Archipelago
Barracuda |
-The
Right Equipment
The best to start
is snorkeling and with nearly any sport, there
are some gear required. Though when it comes
to scuba diving, having the right equipment, and
knowing well how to use it can turn out to be a
matter of life and death under certain
circumstances. Of
Scuba Diving Equipment |
Scuba Gear |
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course the most important
scuba diving equipment is your breathing
apparatus and make sure each time you use
different equipment you know how to handle them.
Beyond these, you also need a wetsuit
sometimes,
not all the time, especially not all the time in
tropical waters plus fins, mask and other items.
If you are on a liveaboard trip or a casual
diving tour you will rent the diving gear.
Often this will be from a scuba diving sport
shop or the dive tour operator. You can also buy
your own scuba diving gear which is not very useful, just
consider the excess baggage fees airlines are
charging.
The majority of scuba diving is fun and
recreation. Others do scuba diving as a job
and for living as well. Under water
exploration, marine |
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archeology,
oil and gas exploration and research are
other area with scuba diving demand.
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Today scuba diving is more considered a
adventure sport to experience a new world and a
new horizon.
Scuba diving
holiday and vacation including training and
certification programs are common. Special
dive resorts, like at Ko Tao in southern
Thailand wont sell you a room when you wont buy
a diving tour are common.
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Liveaboard yachts have transformed
the whole scuba diving travel into a
great leisure business.
There are many dive schools and scuba classes
somewhere near you -just check the internet and
yellow pages who offer what are known as "try
dives" in a swimming pool for the novice to get
a idea what's going at scuba diving to find out
if you take full scuba lessons afterwards to
learn scuba diving. |
Liveaboard Yacht -Seawolf Soul- in the
red sea |
Liveaboard Yacht -Mermaid- near
Phuket |
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Check for a PADI certified scuba diving
program. At most PADI dive courses you can
rent the scuba diving equipment. The basic open
Water PADI scuba diving lessons will try to
teach you how to do scuba diving. A so called
dive master will look after you, this is a
standard course and is the same almost anywhere
in the world.
-Commercial diving is a mature technology where
recent main advancements have been in the fields
of diver safety, appropriate regulations, and
diver training and education.
On the technological scuba diving front,
commercial diving for deepwater intervention has
seen increased acceptance and usage of the one
atmosphere diving system (ADS).
Scuba divers continue to mostly rely on open
circuit scuba, which is the applicable
technology for their usual type of diving. There
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are exceptions in which some units have the
capability to use nitrox (nitrogen and oxygen
breathing gas mixtures) and some have the
capability to dive safely in polluted and
hazardous environments.
The U. S. Navy and the commercial sector
continue their collaborations on several aspects
of scuba diving technology in both deep and
shallow waters. The deepwater collaboration is
primarily the Navy's testing of an ADS being
considered for use in submarine rescue and other
deepwater operations.1 The Navy and commercial
sector also continue to collaborate with
saturation and heliox (helium and oxygen
breathing gas mixtures) diving operations and
have recently used these techniques in support
of the National Seaic and Atmospheric
Administration's (NOAA) archaeological project
recovering major portions of the USS Monitor
(e.g., propeller, engine and turret) for
conservation and display at the Mariners Museum
in Newport News, Virginia.
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Scuba
Diving Vacations pics by
T. P. Peschak, |
-Contaminated Water Diving
The Navy continues to conduct physiological
and technological research in support of
shallow-water scuba diving operations (e.g.,
combat swimmers and contaminated water diving).
The commercial sector is collaborating with the
Navy in research regarding diving in
biologically, chemically and radioactively
contaminated water, as both may have to work in
sewage-laden environments, chemical spills
and/or nuclear power plants. Prior to the 1970s,
neither entity perceived contaminated water
diving to be a serious problem. The predominant
use of free flow hardhat diving fortuitously
precluded the ingestion and inhalation of
contaminated water. With the advent of demand
regulators in both surface supplied and scuba
diving, the likelihood for the ingestion and
inhalation of contaminated water was
substantially increased.
Water would enter the scuba diver's mouth
through the mouth piece and the surface supplied
diver would be open to water droplets via the
oral-nasal mask inside the hat. Scientific
divers, whose research required working in
contaminated water, were among the first to
explore the use of specialized protective gear
and methodologies.
From the late 1970s through the early 1990s,
NOAA completed a series of experiments and tests
regarding scuba diving equipment, operations
and training in collaboration with the Navy,
Coast Guard, Environmental Protection Agency,
academia and private industry.
The Navy and commercial scuba diving industry
have a wealth of published research to aid them
in their endeavor to make diving in contaminated
environments safer and less onerous. A major
research need is the capability to heat or cool
the diver, as required, because he/she is
insulated from the surrounding contaminated
environment. This is especially important with
scuba or lightweight surface supplied diving
where hot or cold water diving suits may not be
available or appropriate for the job.
-Scientific Research Diving
Scientific research scuba diving includes,
but is not limited to, the disciplines of
biology, geology, chemistry, physics and
archaeology. Thus, there is a myriad of diving
projects being conducted and a wealth of
opportunities for new research. Like public
service divers, the vast majority of research
dives by government agencies, academia and
private industry are conducted using open
circuit scuba to a maximum depth of about 45
meters of seawater, regardless if it is
examining tropical coral reefs or collecting
specimens under the Antarctic ice.
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As in commercial scuba diving where the
object is to have the appropriately experienced
professional at the work site (e.g., burner,
welder, rigger, mechanic), so too scientific
research diving strives to have the
appropriately experienced professional at the
research site. For example, a geologist skilled
in obtaining cores from a coral reef would not
be the ideal collector of live fish for study
and display in an aquarium. Although remotely
operated vehicles have developed a solid niche
in underwater research, there is still a need
for the human presence at the underwater
research work site.
There are several reasons why scuba is the
preferred diving technology for the scientific
research
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community. Mainly, it is the appropriate
technology for the preponderance of research
diving tasks. Other reasons are that very few
research divers are trained in or exposed to any other diving equipment, it is
relatively inexpensive, it is relatively light
weight and highly mobile, it requires minimal
support, and it is off-the-shelf and readily
available.
Thus, the research scuba diving community
has eschewed surface supplied air and mixed gas
diving techniques, which enable the diver to
work deeper and longer than scuba, even though
the commercial diving industry has shown these
techniques to be safe and efficient (e.g.,
surface decompression with oxygen or saturation
diving). However, the cost, support and
logistical requirements of surface supplied
diving are often prohibitive for the researcher
and so many important research sites remain
uninvestigated.
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With air scuba diving relatively restricted
to 50 meters and manned submersibles usually
working deeper than about 150 meters, a manned
presence at a research site between these depths
is rare. The relatively few research dives to
these depths have been accomplished using trimix
(helium, nitrogen and oxygen as the breathing
gas mixture) open circuit scuba (e.g.,
archaeological dives to the USS Monitor at 73
meters) or closed system rebreathers, usually
using heliox. A depth of around 125 meters has
been suggested as the limit for working trimix
open circuit scuba dives. This limit is
primarily dictated by the amount of bottom mix
and decompression gas the diver is required to
carry, the limited bottom time and the
associated lengthy in-water decompression time.
The working depth and bottom time for
closed-circuit rebreathers scuba can be deeper
and longer than trimix open circuit gear because
much less gas must to be carried by the diver
and the decompression time is somewhat shorter
due to continuous
computer-initiated |
Submersibles from Russia |
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changes to the breathing gas in
order to maximize decompression.
Regardless, if the scuba diving technology
is open or closed circuit diving for dives
deeper than about 50 meters, it would be
advantageous to have support divers relieve the
research divers of their samples or specimens
and transport them to the surface or, in the
case of live specimens, to arrange their
decompression if necessary. In areas that are
distant from a shore-based recompression
chamber, it is prudent for the research project
to have a fully outfitted, double lock
recompression chamber aboard the support vessel.
The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health
Administration requires that all commercial
scuba diving deeper than 30 meters have a
recompression chamber onboard the support vessel
or in the immediate vicinity if a vessel is not
being used. Once a recompression chamber is
aboard for the safety of the research and
support divers, it is a short jump to use the
chamber for surface decompression using oxygen.
Although the deeper decompression stops would
still be required, it would significantly reduce
the total in-water decompression time, thus
increasing the diver's safety and comfort. The
in-water decompression stops would best be
served by having the research divers ascend in
an open bell where the divers can stand with
their heads and shoulders out of the water.
The bell could be equipped with onboard
decompression gases if on open circuit scuba
diving. It could also be equipped with
emergency decompression gases if a closed
circuit rebreathers was being used. The bell
could also provide hard wire communications to
the surface.
Even more physiologically and comfort
friendly is the use of a submersible
decompression chamber or ambient pressure
chamber for scuba diving. These
mini-habitats have been used successfully for
decompression after prolonged cave explorations
and, most recently, in the rebreathers depth
record to 224.5 meters by German divers. An
ambient pressure habitat such as BAY-LAB would
be suspended from the support vessel at the
first in-water decompression stop.
The research scuba divers would enter the
wet portion of the habitat, doff their gear and
move into the dry portion to comfortably
decompress on a bunk with food and drink. The
ship would raise the habitat as the
decompression schedule dictated. Decompression
gases could be provided to the research divers
via umbilical from the surface and oral-nasal
masks in the habitat. Alternatively, the
decompression gases could be pre-bottled and
aboard the habitat negating the need for supply
from the surface. This is possible because new
low-energy life support systems can maintain
divers in such a habitat, independent of surface
support, for two to three days, certainly long
enough to complete a decompression schedule.
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-One Atmosphere Diving Systems
An alternative to ambient pressure scuba
diving, as accomplished in both open circuit
and closed circuit scuba and surface supported
umbilical diving, is diving in a suit
pressurized at one atmosphere. Diving at one
atmosphere, as in a manned submersible,
precludes any decompression requirement and is
physiologically benign. While the technology has
been available for a couple of decades, it is
only recently that new metallurgy and materials
research has provided the ability for these
systems to become less of a manned submersible
and more diver-like.
The obvious advantage of scuba diving in a
system at one atmosphere is that no
decompression is required, regardless of depth
or bottom time. The perceived disadvantages are
the lack of mobility, compared to scuba, and the
required use of manipulators and associated loss
of tactile sensation. However, users of the ADS
indicate that the manipulators are capable of
picking up a coin lying on the bottom of a test
tank.
This is probably comparable to the capability
of a scuba diver's hand in cold water with a
glove on. The ADS has been reported to be
economically competitive with a saturation
diving complex, but is more expensive than
either open or closed circuit scuba. However,
for sustained diving research operations, ADS
may prove to be safer and more economically
effective than ambient pressure diving
technologies.
One person, one atmosphere scuba diving
systems have never been utilized by the
scientific community and the reasons are
probably twofold: underwater researchers are
unfamiliar with the technology and the costs are
considered beyond the capability of most of the
aquatic research community. However, the idea
that research using ADS is especially expensive
must be examined in comparison with the costs
associated with the use of manned submersibles,
which do not have the capability for significant
manned intervention. The ADS system is unique in
that due to its propulsion units, it "flies" and
can hover in the water column, rather than being
walked as in hardhat diving, or swum as in scuba
diving. It is highly maneuverable and can access
areas where ROVs and manned submersibles cannot.
The present stage of ADS development encourages
the use of this technology by diving researchers
to document important areas of the Sea realm
that heretofore have gone unexplored. |
