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Scuba Diving Locations Scuba Tanks Liveaboard...

Scuba diving locations, scuba diving trips, liveaboard, scuba diving lessons, snorkeling, scuba diving training, scuba tanks, dive gear, scuba diving.

-A few things to know prior To Scuba Diving

Scuba diving is a great water sport not only to where cool off from the burning sun at the beach at your vacation time. Diving opens a totally new world probably even more interesting than outer space since we are still on earth.

What you have seen on the TV screens, maybe also in the movies and spectacular pictures in some magazines and the internet plus the clips at youtube are one thing. When you float down into the deep blue you really experience it and this is a another experience, you might get addicted to it.

To start doing Scuba diving is somehow like getting a driver license, you need some basic education by taking a PADI course maybe in the swimming pool of your beach hotel at vacation time, that's just the right place to start. But not only there, in almost every bigger city in the "western world" someone is offering diving lessons in a swimming pool somewhere. Means its not a big deal, after a few lessons you will be fit for diving.

Fit for scuba diving in this case means you are technically fit, but this is only half way down the road to scuba.

-Scuba diving and health.

If you have any conditions that preclude you from other activities such as heart conditions, diabetes, high blood pressure, breathing problems and definitely anything that would make you more susceptible to drowning, you will need to consult a physician to be sure you are able to dive! This is recommended for anyone else as well.

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 diving variant which get more and more followers is nude diving, in particular naked male diver, nude scuba or naked scuba diving 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.

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, some 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.

Great scuba diving locations	Thailand liveaboard
Similan Liveaboard with dive gear on board	Phi Phi Liveaboard dive equipment on board

-Top Scuba Diving Trips

There are several dive locations ranked top notch in diving magazines and websites. Some of the greatest scuba diving destinations are in Thailand, such as the Similan Archipelago, the Similan Islands are accessible from Khao Lak on the opposite land side or via liveaboard trips. Thailand and Myanmar or Burma have the Andaman Sea in front. Myanmar is a very exotic diving destination in particular the Mergui or Myeik Archipelago is a top and untouched scuba destination.

Liveaboard scuba diving trips into the Andaman Sea this area are usually operated out of Phuket Thailand since there is no dive center after about 200 km north of Phuket and Myanmar is totally virgin to local diving.

Sipadan off Malaysia Sabah or Borneo is also a great diving spot. The are some more scuba destinations at the Philippines and in the Pacific Ocean plus 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, see more on diving travel.

Diving in the red sea usually means Egypt and Sharm el Sheikh plus Hurghada diving, the red sea has great diving grounds with marvelous corals and shipwrecks. Its a real dive only vacation destination since there is nothing much going on after nightfall.

Another great diving destination would be the whole red sea coast of Saudi Arabia but they don't let foreign tourists into the country.

What scuba divers generally expected from a dream destination seems clear, big fish, wrecks, beautiful corals and a functioning environ. This is not available at all scuba diving destinations since the local people usually are not much interested in scuba due to the relatively high costs, they have other problems to tackle and usually no much time for vacation anyway.

Dive locations with Whale Shark at Mergui or Myeik Archipelago

Whale Shark at Mergui or Myeik Archipelago
Barracuda Picture

Barracuda Diving

Dive Vacations

Scuba Diving Locations at Great Barrier Reef

Scuba diving locations Great Barrier Reef

-The Right Dive Gear

The best to start is snorkeling and with nearly any sport, there are some gear required, having the right dive equipment, and knowing

Scuba diver at scuba diving trips and scuba tanks

Scuba diver, Scuba Gear and dive equipment

well course the most important is how to use it can turn out to be a matter of life and death under certain circumstances. Of 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 for fun and recreation. Others do scuba diving as a job and for living as well. Under water exploration, marine

archeology, oil and gas exploration and research are other area with scuba diving demand.

- Today scuba diving is more considered a adventure sport to experience a new world and a new horizon.

Diving holiday and vacation including training and certification programs are common. Special dive resorts, like at Ko Tao in southern

Liveaboard Yacht -Seawolf Soul- in the red sea

Liveaboard Yacht with dive equipment on board

Liveaboard Yacht -Mermaid- near Phuket

Thailand wont sell you a room when you wont buy a diving tour are common. Liveaboard yachts have transformed the whole scuba diving travel into a great leisure business in particular since all dive equipment and dive gear is on board. There are many dive schools and scuba classes somewhere near you -just check the internet and yellow pages who offer what are known as "dry dives" in a swimming pool for the novice to get an idea what's going at scuba diving to find out how learn real PADI scuba diving.

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. If you intend to make scuba diving trips

Andaman Sea Scuba Dive

you also could do scuba diving lessons at the vacation spot and get a PADI certification there. The Andaman Sea in Thailand around Phuket is on of the typical scuba diving locations where all this is possible also during a liveaboard trip.

- 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

Scuba Diving Trips

Scuba diving Locations

Scuba Diving Locations at Similan southern Thailand

diving. There 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.

Scuba Diving Locations pics by T. P. Peschak,

- Contaminated Water Diving

The Navy continues to conduct physiological and technological research in support of shallow-water 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 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 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 by diving under the ice.

As in commercial scuba diving where the object is to have the

Scuba diving and corals

Scuba diving tours

Scuba diver at diving under the ice needs some special dive equipment

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 community. Mainly, it is the appropriate technology for the

Commercial Scuba Diving with underwater model Nadine Werner

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 divers 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, finally the people are taking submersibles when diving deeper.

Scuba diver and dive gear

- 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

Submersibles from Russia means special dive equipment

Scuba Diving Tours

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 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 which is different to the normal scuba diving tours.

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 dive support vessel at the first in-water decompression stop.

Dive Support Vessel

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.

-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.

- Carbon Fiber Scuba Tanks

Scuba diving can be a very dangerous past time if you are not orderly trained. Your life finally depends on the life support equipment you carry underwater. From time to time a new technology find its way into scuba diving, one of the rather resent is carbon fiber scuba tanks. They have some distinctive advantages, carbon fiber scuba tanks can be filled to 4500 psi, other scuba tanks are rated to 3000 psi. That means a carbon fiber scuba tank can hold much more air, but it also enables it to supply more fully-rated fills versus a regular scuba tank. E.g. a 88 cu. ft. carbon fiber tank can hold almost 10 times the fills of a normal scuba tank and carbon fiber tanks weigh about one-third as similar steel scuba tank. Usual Aluminum tanks are about $ 300,- and carbon fiber scuba tanks are about $ 700,-.

-Scuba diving Conclusions

Most of the world's continental shelves have not been directly observed by humans. Despite this, the vast majority of interested marine research scientists have not utilized the existing and new diving technologies to extend their underwater research investigations into these scientifically, environmentally and economically important areas. This is due to the researchers' lack of familiarity with these technologies, the real and perceived complexity of the technologies, the additional training required and the cost.

Funding agencies need to consider these diving technologies just like they do ROVs, manned submersibles and any other expensive piece of research equipment. Not all researchers are required to, or even care to, conduct in-situ investigations. However, those who do need to consider technologies for working deeper and longer. Author is William Phoel at Phoel@ aol.com.

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