HAVING DONE THOUSANDS OF DIVES since I started in 1964, primarily off the coast of North Carolina, the shipwrecks and dive profiles there are familiar. Overall conditions couldn’t have been much better on this particular day — calm, clear seas with barely a current. We planned on two reverse profile decompression dives at an offshore […]
IN 2018 AND 2019, MY HUSBAND AND I traveled to 50 locations in 35 countries over 14 continuous months, spending more than 250 hours underwater to research a dive travel guidebook for National Geographic.
I was 50 years old and had applied to law school. I was anxiously waiting to hear if I had been accepted, so to distract myself I decided to take a dive trip to Grenada. After a great first day of diving, I awoke early on the second day eager for more. I prepared my […]
While walking from the truck to a dive site entrance on Bonaire, my wife, Deborah, caught her foot under a root and hyperextended her leg when freeing herself. Falling to the ground, she exclaimed that she had broken her knee.
Our checkout dive was easy, with a maximum depth of 75 feet for 50 minutes. The current was slight, and the visibility was spectacular — an ideal first dive. It closed with a nice, slow ascent and a three-minute safety stop. When we returned to the boat, I felt a sudden tingling in my right foot followed by a dull ache in my knee. I assumed the worst, thinking I had decompression sickness (DCS). When I reviewed the dive in my mind, however, that seemed impossible.
I HAVE BEEN A CERTIFIED DIVER since 1986 and have logged hundreds of recreational and technical dives. Since 2014 I have primarily been doing technical rebreather diving with a close group of experienced rebreather divers from Northern California. During the summer of 2019, our group visited Lake Huron’s Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary in Michigan […]
I WAS ON A TRIP TO TULAMBEN to dive the Liberty wreck for three days. The first day was recreational dives followed by two days of technical diving. I had a cold and sinusitis leading up to the trip, but the conditions had cleared up …
