Recently, I acquired my PADI scuba license. It was a hard yet fun experience that I really enjoyed. Ever since I was a little kid, I've always wanted to be a marine biologist. Getting this scuba license was for me, a big step in this long path.
I thought it was going to be one quick test, but I actually had to read a whole book, do a few tests about it, and then do some more physical tests. Personally, I enjoyed learning the different aspects, but I was more enjoyed about the last two days when we would go to Monterey to actually put our skills to use. Before the tests, I thought getting the scuba license was going to be an easy task, where we could just walk in there, swim around for a little bit, spend some money, then get it. In reality, it was a hard process that I had to work for.
When we first arrived in the dive shop, we asked the guy that works there what we needed and he gave us a pouch with a large amount of books, and then we got our boots, snorkel, mask, and flippers fitted. We were supposed to study one of the books in only five days! It took a lot of time and was kind of boring, but I finished the book without too much trouble, and answered the questions. The dive shop also gave us CDs, which surprised me. Who even uses CDs anymore? The CD's were literally just someone reading the book with scuba footage over it, and it took a very long time. That weekend, we went back to the dive shop to start the actual class and tests. On the first day, everyone introduced themselves and then went over the answers to the book. After, we went into the pool to put on our wet suits, and we learned how to set up and put on all our gear. Then, we sat in the water as they instructed us on what all the gear does (even though we read about it in the book, its still good to make sure we don't drown), then we started learning some basic skills, like how to clear our masks underwater, how to control our buoyancy, etc. The next day, we took a paper test on the book before getting in the pool again with our gear and learning some more advanced skills, as well as doing some hand signals.
After a whole week of rest, everyone drove to Monterey to start out open water tests. In the water I saw some cool fish I was later able to look up and identify like some flatfish, kelpfish, and rockfish. There was a lot of reddish plants on the bottom with strange creatures moving about like crabs and somebody even found a salp. I had a lot of fun being in the ocean and diving while also doing the skills for the test, and when I finally got my license it felt very good.
Here are the logs of the dive that we made:
On the dive log, you can see the date and the number of the dive. To the right of that you can see the visibility in either ft or meters, which is how far you can see underwater. Below visibility, it shows temperature of the water and the amount of weights you had on you. Next to that shows the deepest depth you were at, as well as how long you were underwater. There are some other things you can tick off, like what you wore, what water it was, and any comments you have, but for our dives we didn't do this.
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