John U. Lloyd State Park
Fort Lauderdale, FL
20 July 2016
Shore scuba dive
OK I’m confronting my scuba diving intimidation.
Time to get over what’s holding me back – mainly understanding all the technical equipment.
Freediving is so much simpler to understand, and to my mind less dangerous because it doesn’t involve all that complicated math, computers, dive tables, chemistry, and diving equipment.
I mean I had to ask my son how to use the toaster oven.
But almost all the divers I know are scuba divers and I keep missing out on dives.
I joined the black dive club DIVERSe Orlando, and they go every couple weeks.
They’re going again on a boat dive off Boynton Beach, in Palm Beach County on Saturday.
At their recommendation I took a review course to fill in the gaps of what I don’t understand.
The main 3 things I feel I need to work on right now are:
1. Understanding the dive computer
2. Improving my equalizing technique
3. Buoyancy control
With a new instructor from Sea Dreams Scuba, I did a shore dive off the John U. Lloyd State Park, east of the Port Everglades shipping channel and the Fort Lauderdale airport.
Even though the sky is sunny, conditions have been rough the last few days, with blowing wind and waves.
Turns out that a storm far out in the Atlantic can squall water conditions here.
I keep learning details.
I admit it was cool to be able to breathe underwater. Kind of strange after freediving.
Haven’t scuba dived since New Year’s Day.
Saw a bunch of queen conchs.
On the outside, their big shells look crusted and dead as they sit on the bottom, but if you turn them over their upset thing-mouth and bright pink inside shell tell you otherwise.
Why do conchs have such bright, luxuriously pink shells inside, smooth, polished and perfected?
Clearly this preference for pink interior decorating is something they have evolved into, and are doing only for themselves.
Scuba instructor holding up a Queen Conch in all her pink opalescent under-shell luxuriousness. I need to use the red filter for my GoPro! © J. Manos
My first boat dive is tomorrow. I’m going to go far deeper than I’ve ever gone (which was 31 feet on my freedive test on April 3rd).
As I came back to shore I stared at the giant shipping cranes west of the park.
Just like when I was in Seattle, walking north along the waterfront where the railroad terminated into giant grain silos, I felt again the industrial might and output of a continent coming to a head behind me, and expelling outward into the world’s seas.
© J. Manos