The family and I got into diving this last year.
I can't believe that I waited this long.
It's a real kick in the ass and the kids are doing good at it.
We have done Monterey several times and we just came back frome Nassau.
In Nassau we did 11 dives.
Two of them were shark dives which is kinda weird since I had a Blue bite my left hand on a fishing trip about a month or so ago.
Other than sex them shark dives were the best times I ever had in water and I'm a water rat.
The Bahammas were nice... but other than the dives I kinda think it's over priced and a bit overated.
I'm looking for new places to go and I'm considering Catalina because it's affordable and maybe going to Cozomel on our next big trip.
This is fun as hell but damn... try paying for four people.
So where do you all like to dive at?

Ive only done my qual dive so far.  I love it.

right here i got into it a couple of years ago did around 50 or more dives my first year.the last 1.5 about 8-10 just dont have the time but with bug season coming up it might change.  

Been diving about 2 years now.  Love it!  I just lost my dive buddy though so I haven't been diving lately.  Gotta find a new dive buddy real quick though

Keving67

Started as a Connecticut Fireman in '76, supporting the State police. Have all ratings. Been in mud, lakes, Oceans, rivers, caves, Cisterns, and (aaaak)septic tanks, wrecks, night, Ice, and rescues(?)...
Still enjoy it on a recreational level- as in Carribean!

I would love to get into diving but there is not enough water in my state rigth now to take a shower.

Diving is great fun!  Fun thing to do with your spouse (our kids are still way too young!).  

I learned 3 times.  Once as a kid long before there was PADI/NAUI certifications.  I learned more about diving from that unstructured teaching at summer camp than I did from any of the certificate classes.  Once in the 1970's at university because it was harder and harder to find a place to get air without a card.  We had ex-military instuctors.  A LOT of excercises to insure that you don't panic such as being blindfolded and having the instructors turn off your air and/or rip off your equipment.  

The last time was with my spouse.  Since it has been a long time since I had done any real diving, I figured it would not hurt me to take a refresher course when my spouse got certified.  We did one of those do it all in a week programs in Cayman.  Fun time.  Startlingly more gentle instruction.  LOTS more equipment and COLOR!  No more choice between black or black (alright, you could get blue Voit fins back in the old days.)  However, no preparation for sudden unexpected events.  

I drove the instructor crazy.  He'd have us all sitting in 25 ft of water in a circle and would come around to each individual student to do each evolution.  To make sure no student panicked doing the evolution and tried to imitate a Polaris missile (a potentially fatal mistake), he always took a very firm grip on the BC harness.  Of course, he would look around at the other students and see me doing commplete doff and don exercises, turning off my air, etc.  

If you want a nice place to go, I highly recommend Cayman.  The people are very nice and it has stingray city.  SC is a shallow lagoon where the stingrays are tame enough to eat out of your hand.  WARNING:  They still want their food and if you make them work too hard, they will get angry.  Everyone will tell you that stingrays can't hurt you becuase they have no teeth.  Right.  They do however have bony plates in their mouths that can grind up shell fish.  They can suck the flesh of your arm up into that and grind up a 2 inch circle on your arm.        

Frances,
I heard about them rays.
One of the guys in our group told us about a girl on one of his Cayman dives was told to put her long hair up.
For some reason she didn't and it cost her near 2" of scalp.
Man that's gotta hurt.
When we did the shark dives it was more or less safe.
We were briefed on their behaviors,we kept to our plan and these sharks knew the routine about getting easy meals.
 

Was PADI certified years ago with my father, and we planned several vacations and winter weekend getaways around diving opportunities.  Did my open water in Freeport.
Haven't been in a couple of years, primarily because many of my friends aren't certified, and I enjoy the sociability of snorkeling much more.  Yes, some advantages to diving, particularly if one is interested in wrecks or caves, but for me, a snorkel, mask, and fins setup allows me to see 90% of what I'm in the water to see.  Never really got in to the photography aspect.  I’ll keep the card, and will refresh my memory with the tables (although the computers do the work now) and equipment when I go next, but I have no real urgent desire.

Spent seventeen years bumming around the Eastern Caribbean.  Made most of the notable dives there and had GREAT AMOUNTS OF FUN in the Jimmy Buffet Days.  St. Croix is fun (Salt River), Montserrat is great (Rosseau), St. Martin stinks as a dive site, Grenada and the Grenadines are good, the Pitons on St. Lucia are awesome cave dives.  But the pearl is Saba.

STAY AWAY from the big commercial islands.  In the Caymans the Brac is good.  Bonaire is fun.  And diving St. Barthelmy is with the topless French ladies is always a treat.

australia (just about anywhere), guam, hawaii, philippines, marianas islands.

Fly to Cancun, rent VW, drive south. It's that simple. Good diving and very reasonable. Plus you have the "cenotes" ... clearwater sinkholes that are all around that area. Pretty unique. Even snorkelers can dive right off the beach.
Also lived a year in the Exumas (on my sailboat) and the water is the best I've ever seen but w/o the boat I can't imagine it would have been cheap. Enjoy and Stay safe

PADI up through rescue.
Did it while I was in the far east.
Nothing is worth diving on in Michigan, too cold.
I like it on vacation in Jamiaca, though, as it is almost as nice as the Pacific sometimes.

i used to dive, but then we broke up

[:D]

NAUI-basic, advanced, master, ecology, and just finished my rescue.

been diving for 4 years now in So Kali

gonna do tahoe end of summer i hope.

fun aint it!  enjoy the sport.

oh i just started spear fishing recently too...calico bass is sooooo good!

I enjoy muff diving.

Faralon islands.

j/k!![:D]

I got certified (SSI) in 1992.  Been on probably 10 or so dives, with about 8 of them being in the 1st year I was certified.  I keep telling myself that I am going to go again soon, but keep putting it off.  My wife is also wanting to get certified soon.

Wife and I got certified here in Wyoming towards the end of January in '00.  The our Open water cert was in a warm water pool at 67 degrees F, and you would instantly glaze over with ice when you surfaced from the black hole. Outside temp was 13 F. Wind chill was sub-zero, Vis was 4" in front of your face.  

Then off to Australia and the GBR out of Cairns.  The night dives off of the liveaboard was the most intense thing I've ever done.  70 foot dives, first 20 ft. through throngs of grey reef sharks.  The divemaster briefed us on using the torches.  "If you hold the light on a shark, he'll come and see you, take it off of him and he'll recognize you as a metal backed monster."  Yeah, right. (He was) Then he held his two index fingers apart and said "two small green dots this far apart is a 4-6 foot shark, then he held his hands 1 foot apart" two green dots this far apart is a 6-10 foot shark then he held them about 15" apart" if you see eyes this far apart, everyone gather around the divemaster!"  I had 8 footers swimming all around me as I waited for my wife to descend with me.  She was on the surface, in the eery green light off of the dive deck she looked like a worm on a hook, trying to turn on her torch.  Crap!  She wasn't fazed, I however was twitchy as hell.  17 dives over 4 days, what a honeymoon.  17 days total in OZ.  

The wall and night wreck dives on Grand Cayman are awesome as well.  Stingray City is kewl.  That's it for me for awhile, we have a new son who needs to grow a little before we go again.  P.S. On the GBR we had our first experience with Japanese divers, rudest crowd I've ever been around. IMHO.  

I don't SCUBA but I do a bit of SkyDIVING and sometimes I get to do a lil MUFFdiving. [:D]

My wife and I got certified on our honeymoon in Kaui back in 99.
We try to do one big dive trip a year.
We did a beginners dive in St. Thomas before we were certified, so I can't tell you alot about it except it was fun there.
In addition to Kaui we have dived the Big Island, Grand Cayman, and just came back from Belize.
It has the second largest barrier reef in the world, and it is really cheap to stay there.
For the 2 of us for 2 weeks including 5 days of 2 tank dives and one long haul dive, about 2800 bucks. If we had planned earlier we could have gotten the flights cheaper, and there are cheaper places to stay, but 78 bucks a night seemed good. You can find places to stay as cheap as 28 bucks a night.
But be warned, there is not much else to do there. Well not completely true, but no big shopping malls, huge night life, etc...
There is bird watching, cave tubing, and mayan ruins to see.