Before I became a teacher at age 42 I had a first career as a marine fisheries biologist, mostly in Alaska but I also worked in Seattle and Washington DC. I got heavily into diving and bought a dive boat together with a good friend of mine. My garage was full of scuba tanks, compressors, oxygen tanks, helium tanks for deep diving, etc. We did exploration of various Klondike Goldrush-era shipwrecks in the Alaska inside passage and I spent vacations on a cave diving exploration team in Florida. In the winters we hunted king crab, scallops, and Dungeness crab underwater. I also did some diving on research teams with my employer NOAA in support roles doing things like capturing sea otters and doing sea urchin surveys.steve-in-kville wrote: ↑Thu Oct 26, 2023 3:48 pmWouldn't have known that about you. What got you into that sport/hobby?
I know a little about it insomuch as there are "degrees" on how deep you can dive and I think there are rescue and recovery certs that can be had. Knew an older gentleman that was into it. But he was into a lot of expensive hobbies.... did well for himself as a machinist, I guess.
Every time you take some advanced class with some certification agency they give you a new card, so cavern diving, rescue diving, mixed gas diving, cave diving, shipwreck diving, ice diving, etc. etc. And there are different levels of training within each specialty. I have a whole binder of them.
After I got married my wife's career brought us to Texas and I sold or gave away all the technical diving gear and just kept a few things for the occasional recreational dive vacation. I stopped doing all the dangerous extreme stuff after I got married.
