Harry York

Coming Together During Covid-19

While things are a bit rough now with the pandemic that is COVID-19, some people are finding it hard to socially distance. As it is essential to refrain from gatherings and social interaction as much as possible during this time, it’s still possible for individuals to come together during these difficult times. Isolation and quarantine can pose negative psychological effects on some people who aren’t fond of ways to alleviate the loneliness they might be experiencing. Luckily, people can still come together to support one another while riding out the pandemic through innovating some of the following:

Help Your Neighbors

Although social distancing is recommended, one can support their neighbors by doing small appreciative gestures. Social distancing doesn’t mean that people can not support their community. These times call for individuals to take new approaches to how they treat others. One can check up on their neighbor’s wellbeing, offer to mow their lawn, mail them a gift, etc. They will likely appreciate that they were taken into consideration. This all builds a strong sense of community and reliability. The human spirit will prove itself to be a strong and uncompromisable force.

Conference Calls

Video calls are an excellent way to come together during a pandemic. As social distancing is highly recommended and enforced, people have been taking to social media to share their concerns and support during this time. Apps like Skype and Zoom are great means to connect with others online. A lot can be done by utilizing conference video calling. In fact, some instructors and teachers still hold their classes online through these mediums. Just imagine connecting with everyone in for a digital meditational or dance class. Some call this a form of improvised fitness.

Donate Locally

Coming together to support the community can be done by donating to one’s local food bank. While the shelves may be a bit emptier during this pandemic, some individuals are finding it difficult to find the food they need or have don’t have the funds to provide during this time. Local food banks are always willing to accept canned food donations and other non-perishable food items. If anyone has any canned beans, canned tuna, protein bars, cereal or other foods they’d like to donate, they can make a generous donation at the food pantries in their town.

Why You Need a Dive Specialist for Your Next Vacation

If you’re planning to go scuba diving during your next vacation, you will want to speak to a dive specialist. Not only will it ensure that you’re diving safely, but it can help you get the most out of your diving experience in other ways.

A Personalized Diving Experience

Not many people realize this, but there are many different scuba diving experiences that you can have that depend on where and how you dive. A dive specialist will be able to help you decide what kind of scuba diving experience you would like to have based on your desired vacation spot. Granted, you can iron out some of these details when you arrive for your vacation, but planning them out before you leave will save you a lot of time. Besides, dive specialists are avid divers themselves, so they will know what you will need to do to have a fulfilling diving experience.

Convenience

Meeting with a dive travel specialist is often much more convenient than figuring out how and where you wish to dive during your vacation. Simply put, you most likely won’t have the same connections that a dive travel specialist will have, so there might be resources that you might otherwise overlook if you tried to handle everything yourself. Even if you do have some of these connections, having someone else take advantage of them on your behalf will make your vacation much easier to plan and enjoy. When almost everything about your vacation is planned out, all you need to worry about is showing up and enjoying all that your diving experience will have to offer.

It’s Free

This may or may not be the case with every dive travel specialist out there, but many of their services are free if you’re already meeting with a travel agent to plan out your vacation. You have nothing to lose by at least speaking to a dive specialist when planning your trip, but it will make things easier and allow you to enjoy your vacation. Think of it as an amenity that is there for your convenience. Take full advantage of it while you can; it can only make a relaxing and pleasurable trip even better.

The Benefits of Scuba Diving

Scuba diving is not only an incredible experience that allows its enthusiasts to explore underwater vistas, but it is also known to go along with medication and counseling programs, treating conditions such as PTSD. This exciting pastime encourages patients to leave a home-bound isolation. It brings them to picturesque destinations. Patients also travel long distances along with other travelers, helping them to enjoy positive social interactions.

Grow Confidence

Scuba diving provides a physical activity known to instill confidence while being safe and enjoyable. Sunlight exposure and the healthy vitamin D that comes with it are also known for the reduction of psychological disorders in a way that is healthy and harmless. Scuba diving does take some learning and the process of getting better works to grow confidence.

Hasten Recovery

Serotonin production in the body is stimulated by sunlight; exposure to the rays of the sun thus can make the recovery process go faster, both physically and mentally. Scuba diving, as stated before, is a skill to be learned. This learning process also keeps the minds of patients away from the traumatic incidents in their pasts. Positive distraction is known to be one of the best-proven methods of PTSD treatments. The greater the passion for the activity, the swifter the recovery from stress conditions.

Make Friends with a Hobby in Common

Scuba diving is generally performed in groups. This enables PTSD or other patients to meet people of like minds who share a passion. Making friends and growing companionship can lead to opening up about conditions that otherwise tend to be hidden naturally. This is healthy progress toward mental and emotional stability.

Amazing Views

Scuba diving is also an activity that brings the patient into interaction with the spectacular world under the sea. This includes many amazing sea creatures. Observing animals, and interacting with them, lowers and stabilizes a person’s heart rate. This helps in gaining greater control over stress attacks.

Active, Healthy Lifestyle

The problems associated with PTSD and other disorders include obesity or anorexia. Engaging in such positive physical activities as scuba diving means that a patient can avoid both such extremes. In addition, toned body muscles cause healthier and better cardiovascular endurance; this aids in a speedier recovery.

Perfect Destinations for New Scuba Divers

Learning to scuba dive is both exciting and anxiety-inducing. To give yourself an opportunity to master basic skills and gain proficiency, it’s best to start out in destinations that are good for beginners. Below you’ll find several sites that would be a great place to learn how to scuba dive. Quite frankly, any of these locations would be ideal.

Bahamas

The Bahamas is a great option for many reasons. For starters, it has shallow reefs and clear waters with high visibility up to 100 feet. In addition to enjoying the shallow reefs and near perfect water, it’s also a great place to explore deep shipwrecks and sheer walls. Many divers find the vibrant colors simply remarkable. It’s the perfect backdrop for snapping vacation photos to post on social media.

Hawaii Island

Hawaii is often a chosen destination because it’s considered a safe place to dive. In most cases, dives in Hawaii are guided, which is one of the reasons why they’re a safe option. New divers in Hawaii enjoy the guided group dives, swim throughs and shallow wrecks.

Key Largo, Florida

Diving in Key Largo, Florida means you’ll enjoy reefs for miles. You’ll likely dive an average of about 30 feet, which is perfect for new divers. There are many different options for dive locations, which will be chosen by boat captains based on weather conditions.

Philippines

Diving in the Philippines is often interesting because of the marine life. There is so much to see, such as ghost pipefish, sea turtles, mandarinfish and pygmy seahorses. Buoyancy is being able to hover in the water without any motion, which is necessary when diving in the Philippines because of the marine life. Fortunately, it’s something that can be learned in a short amount of time.

Cayman Islands

There are many options for diving on the Cayman Islands and it’s considered one of the best places to dive in the Caribbean. There are different levels of diving on the Cayman Islands and you’ll have a chance to learn buoyancy and navigation, among other skills.

Regardless of which location you choose, it’s best to have a qualified diving instructor that you trust. All of the destinations listed have many other fun local attractions.

Diving Clubs for Veterans

Many war veterans return to civilian life with post-traumatic stress syndrome. Counseling and prescription medications have helped many restart their lives. However, the Wounded Warrior Project ventured into new territory when the organization offers a water-sports festival that encouraged veterans the chance to experience the healing effects of being on the water while kayaking, sailing or waterskiing. Scuba diving soon became another option. In 2004, the activity was deemed a viable means of rehabilitation. Today, there are many organizations across the United States that offer diving lessons and certification programs to veterans.

Diveheart-Downers Grove, Illinois

The nonprofit organization was designed to provide diving instruction and certification to children, adults or veterans with any type of physical or psychological disability. The organization strives to build confidence and independence in each of the students through water-based challenges that inspire hope while rebuilding self-esteem. Through the program, veterans have the chance to progress from adaptive diver and adaptive dive buddy to advanced adaptive dive buddy and finally adaptive scuba instructor.

Dive Warriors-Los Angeles, California

The nonprofit charity was designed to empower male and female combat veterans who live with physical or psychological disabilities. The program provides veterans with the chance to enjoy a social environment with others who live with the same challenges. Together, the group embarks on diving excursions that provide healing benefits while rebuilding self-confidence.

Force Blue-Montauk, New York

The organization was established by Jim Ritterhoff and Rudy Reyes. Reyes is a former Marine who served in Afghanistan and Iraq. He returned home with depression and PTS. But, Reyes experienced first hand the beneficial effects of diving while in the Cayman Islands. He soon planned another trip and invited his military friends to join him. Today, the organization strives to bring combat veterans together to experience the healing effects of diving while helping to promote marine conservation.

Tactical Reintegration Project-Massachusetts https://thetrp.org/

The New England charitable organization equips combat veterans, gold star family members and active-duty soldiers with the ability to rejoin civilian life via the healing effects of scuba diving. Veterans learn diving via online, classroom and underwater training. In addition to offering scuba diving lessons and certification, some chapters become involved in exploring worldwide locations to document uncharted wrecks and create Maritime mapping.

Finding Your Diving Community

If you’re new to the world of scuba diving, finding a community of like-minded diving enthusiasts in your area is a great way to build life-long memories in the water. Sure, scuba diving can be a solitary pursuit, but there’s something special about getting a bunch of your close friends together for a fun weekend in the water. If amazing stories and memories with your diving buddies is something you want out of life, we’ll teach you where to go and who to talk to if you want to find your own diving community.

How to Build Your Own Diving Community

By far the most effective way to find your own diving community is to join a dive club. Dive clubs are local group of scuba diving enthusiasts that often get together to go on weekend diving excursions.

Dive clubs are an excellent option for divers wanting to broaden their social circle because they pull diving enthusiasts from all walks of life. Just as importantly, dive clubs generally attract members from a specific neighborhood or area, meaning it is quite easy to find a community of passionate people who love to spend time in the water. Because dive clubs are built around a particular city or specific neighborhoods, it is easy to arrange more informal diving excursions very quickly.

These days, there are also dive groups specifically for disabled veterans, as well as diving associations for different ethnicities as well. The National Association of Black Scuba Divers helps plan diving trips for African-American divers, while the National Marine Sanctuaries’ Ocean Guardian Dive Club is for kid divers aged 8 to 12.

If you are unsure of where to find a local dive club, a quick Internet search is generally a good place to start. From there, you can find where and when local dive groups in your area are hosting meet-ups and events.

Visit Your Local Dive Shop

If you prefer to connect directly with divers in person, visiting your local dive shop is a great place to meet with other scuba enthusiasts. Dive shops tend to be local social hubs for dive masters and scuba enthusiasts alike, making them a great place to go if you want to find your own diving community.

Shore Diving in the Pacific Northwest

My wife Amy and I decided to go scuba diving in the Seattle-Tacoma area while visiting my daughter on her 21^st birthday. We found shores of the Puget Sound easy to get to, fun to scuba dive, and the waters teaming with interesting creatures

The Puget Sound has hundreds of shore diving locations. For planning, we picked three of the highest rated dive sites closest to the Seattle Tacoma Airport, just on the southern edge of Seattle: Redondo Beach, Saltwater State Park, and Three Tree Point. We used TL Sea Dive Shop to rent cylinders, it was only about 10 minutes away from the airport, and another 10 minutes away from our Airbnb location. The folks at TL Sea are awesome! We ordered 33% nitrox in advance, and used 100CF aluminum cylinders, which gave us about 45 minutes of bottom time at 75-90 feet. The Nitrox 100’s worked out perfectly!

The water temperature in the Puget Sound is a consistent 56 degrees, we were undecided about using wet suits or dry suits. We settled on 7mm two-piece wet suits. Having no experience with that much neoprene in saltwater, our weights & buoyancy were a little off on the first dive. I gave Amy some extra weights, and for the second and third dives, I wore only the 7mm shorty (which was a little cool and refreshing!). As soon as the dive shop opened up again, I returned to get 10 more pounds. I can’t say enough about how helpful the staff at TL Sea was, especially helping us pick dive sites and dive planning. For tides and currents, the staff instructor directed me to the “planmydive.com” website, which is very informative.

Redondo Beach

The Redondo Beach dive site is noted for easy access, public facilities, very small tidal factors, and can accommodate all experience levels from beginner to advanced/technical diving. It was an obvious choice for our first “acclimatization” dive. Amy wanted to try out a new camera, and we returned to Redondo Beach for her ‘photography dive’ with the new camera, and we returned again for our first Pacific Northwest night dive as well. Redondo beach is perhaps one of the easiest shore diving locations I’ve ever been to.

Entry

A paid public parking lot across the street from the beach provided an excellent spot to gear up and conduct our pre-diving checks. The cost of parking was $6 for the whole day, but you can also pay in hourly increments. For our evening and night dives, the parking lot was full of divers with various portable tables and interesting equipment. Although we saw numerous divers the parking lot, we only encountered one other buddy team below the surface. The dive site was not crowded at all. After gearing up, we simply walked across the street using the cross walk and right into the water. There are numerous places to enter from, we picked a set of concrete stairs next to a pier.

Diving

From the surface to 85 feet, the water was clear and visibility was consistently about 20 feet. At depths below 85 feet, the light level drops off rapidly and having flashlights were very helpful. We saw schools of perch and rockfish, especially close to the pier by Salty’s restaurant. Further out, we saw numerous varieties of anemones, sea cucumbers, and colorful crabs. A number of manmade formations such as sunken row boats, statues, etc. provided homes to all kinds of invertebrates, including an elusive red octopus.

Exit

We had dinner at Salty’s after our afternoon dive as we waited for darkness for night diving. Although it is an upscale restaurant, they were very welcoming to a couple of scruffy scuba divers! The food was standard northwest coastal fair, I would recommend the blackened fish tacos.

Recommendation

If you are new to diving in the Pacific Northwest, or just passing through and want to squeeze in a couple of easy dives; Redondo Beach is a great place to start. It has something for all skill levels, incredibly easy access, and very good facilities. We also appreciated having other divers around the parking lot who happily gave us advice only local divers would know. TL Sea dive shop was most accommodating, and close! We will definitely be going back to TL Sea for our future dives in the Pacific Northwest.

The Benefits and Challenges of Altitude Diving

High altitude diving is one of the breathtaking adventures of all time that offers an unparalleled experience. Since dive planning tables and computers are for sea level, many high altitude dive sites remain virtually untouched. While scuba diving in general can be highly beneficial to an individual’s mental health and even social awareness, the technical complexities of diving at altitude add an element of satisfaction and accomplishment. Because of the lower ambient air pressure changes nitrogen absorption and decompression limits, divers must have proper training to avoid the risk of decompression illness. Staying within the proper limits, altitude diving is quite thrilling.

Benefits of high altitude diving

One of the key benefits of high altitude diving is that it opens diving options few other divers have experienced. For divers living at higher elevations, it may provide access much closer to home. For example, one PADI statistic suggests that Boulder Colorado has the highest concentration of certified divers in the United States. They would typically need to fly to a coastal area to go diving, but altitude diving opens hundreds of possibilities virtually in their backyard.

High altitude diving also boosts self-confidence, trust, and self-esteem because it requires additional training and skill. Varying temperatures at depth require divers to become experts in buoyancy control with different types of exposure suits. Preparing for high altitude diving requires expertise with dive computers or planning tables in order to compensate for changes in ambient air pressure. For an added measure of safety, most altitude diving experts encourage divers to keep altitude dives short and shallow.

Challenges of high altitude diving

High altitude diving is also known to have some serious dangers and challenges, especially in the upper 30 feet of water because of differing nitrogen absorption rates depending on the depth of the dive and the altitude. For this reason, most experts advise a longer safety stop the higher the altitude or deeper the dive. Altitude diving can be risky, and precise dive planning with a wide margin for error is essential.

Lastly, knowing the limits of one’s equipment is critical. For example, some high altitude lakes can be 40 degrees or even colder. Some recreational regulators have temperature limits of 50 degrees or warmer. Diving with equipment not suited for the environment can have catastrophic consequences.