Elmar’s
Scuba Diving Page
Scuba Diving is yet another hobby of mine. I
currently hold an Advanced Class Padi Certification. I got
my Open Water Certification in 1987. My first diving experience was in Dutch Springs, which is located in
Bethlehem Pennsylvania near Allentown. I did my check out dives there as well
as spent some weekends there. Other places I dove so far are Cozumel, Florida
Keys Anguilla and NYC area. My dive activity in my earlier years was limited
and I have a renewed interest in the past 3 years.
Florida Keys - A great place to dive is the Florida Keys. One of my favorite dives is the Thunderbolt Wreck off Marathon Key. While doing my advanced certification, I dove the Thunderbolt twice once for the deep dive and once for the wreck dive electives for advanced certification. My wife also had a good experience getting her Padi Open Water certification from Doug Morgan. Update: I did my nitrox training with Doug end of April 2005. I now have my nitrox certification. I found its always better to get the study material and go over it before the certification training. It makes things a lot easier and quicker as well as not having to study a lot during vacation. Lessons learned on this trip, dive tables are always in hour:minute format. Test questions can slip you up by saying 80 minutes and not 1 hour 20 minutes. Bring a small knife on any dive (got caught up on some fishing line on the Thunderbolt wreck easily freed this time.) My temporary dive buddy was not nearby when it happened which is also prompting me to look into alternate air sources like Spare-air or a pony bottle. Weekend of August 5th 2005 Key Largo Diving.
Spiegel
Grove and other Pictures Link
My first dive in the Long Island sound was here
http://www.topozone.com/map.asp?lat=40.972333&lon=-73.14116
off
Port Jefferson on the north shore of LI. Visibility was about 5-10 feet and
this area looked like the bottom was dried up. The bottom was coated with brown
shells and everything seemed mostly dead and dried up. A crab I saw when I
grabbed it broke to pieces when I picked it up. It seemed like most of
everything was dead. We did see a couple of horseshoe crabs that were alive (my
buddy swears they were). Dive statistics: max depth 27ft, 41 minutes bottom time,
strong current, water temp 66 deg F, air temp 90deg, sunny weather, date June
29, 2003, time around 1pm.
We tried a few
times to go diving on several weekends this summer but the weather was
uncooperative (high winds high waves).
Looks like this season is over for diving.
We plan to do
some wreck diving around the area.
DUTCH SPRINGS
REVISITED 2004
We dove Dutch
Springs twice this year. The water is clearer than I remember it in 1987. We dove on two separate occasions and
logged two dives each day. 8/14/04 64
ft max depth for 25 min, and 64ft 30 min. Full wet suit and min water temp was
56 degrees 30 foot visibility. On 10/02/04 we did 73 ft. max for 28 minutes and
68 ft. for 30 minutes minimum water temperature was 56 degrees almost two
months later with 15 to 20 foot visibility. Visibility was less due to
construction near the quarry and recent rain storms. Surface water temp was 70 degrees in October and air temp was
also 70 F. The hood made a big
difference compared to the water in LI at 66 degrees. We saw many things sunk
in the quarry. Trolley car, crane, helicopter, school bus, tanker truck,
airplane, fire truck and more. Many of
these things are hooked up to each other by a line, which makes for easy
navigation. Watch your weight belt on
the line. I almost lost mine as I was traveling along the line and it hooked my
buckle.
I am pictured left with Len Fecher my dive buddy.
Dutch
Springs is nice place with friendly people and staff. Makes for a great day trip.
Some cool
links:
NY Area Wreck and Reef GPS, LORAN
Coordinates
NJ Scuba NY Area
Dive Map great site with lots of SCUBA info
Middle of LI
Sound Conditions at BUOY NOAA SITE
A link to
some great dive stories. Something to aspire to.
My Nitrox training promped me to do some research. Following are interesting links.
Link
about Nitrox Tanks by Luxfer. Important
reading.
Link to NJSCUBA
article on tanks.
Any comments questions or suggestions for this web page please email me.
June 2, 2007
Email Elmar