Back in the 1981, at the ripe age of 19, a friend, Mike Haffner, and I decided to get out SCUBA certification. We stopped in at the local dive shop, Tackle Shack, and learned what the class would be like, how long it would take and how much it would cost. After agreeing on a start date, I signed up. Mike needed to go home and get his check book and he would sign up the next day. That was the last that Tackle Shack saw of Mike. I finished the class have had a on-again, off-again relationship with SCUBA ever since.

I spent years spearfishing with my Sea Hornet 48, chasing down Spiny Lobster and later using a Nikonos-V camera. My biggest issue with the camera was that only 36 exposures fit on a roll of film. It appears that the digital era has solved this problem.

Now, in 2008, it looks like I'm entering another on-again period. I just finished my Enriched Air certification, more commonly known as NITROX. This will allow me to use air with a elevated Oxygen (O2) level. Normal air has a 20.9% O2 level where NITROX, at my certification level, may be up to 40% O2. This allows for safer or longer dives compared to normal air, as long as you don't go too deep. Oxygen becomes toxic at certain depths, depending on how much Oxygen is in the gas that you are breathing. Going into convulsions at 100+ feet down would not be a good thing, but that is why you need to be certified and they don't let just any Mike do it. I took this class at Tackle Shack also.

I'll be going through my old underwater film and see if anything is worth scanning. If I can dig up my old dive logs I'll add some historical info here soon as well as any new dive info.

My dive C-Cards from 1981 through 2008