Episode 31: How do you know if you are a good diver?

The Cave DPV Certification is one of the toughest technical diving certifications to attain! Those of you who have followed our podcast/ YouTube channel for a while are probably aware that we tried to achieve this certification earlier in 2021 and it was a total disaster. We discussed this on great detail the last episode of this podcast. Today we give you all an update on our progress and share our stories on the toughest scuba diving credential we've ever worked for.

A few months ago Woody and Gus bought some amazing DPVs (Diver Propulsion Vehicles) with the intent of using them when diving the Florida caves which in most cases are springs and a bit of a workout to swim against. So the guys showed up to class, with minimal practice, a leaky dry suit, and new dive gear configurations, what can possible go wrong? Well, apparently, everything!

Central Florida is the home of 'Cave Country' and since we live only 4-5 hours away we get to cave dive there often, but we have many friends who live in Cave Country and dive their caves constantly, almost daily in some cases. We were wondering why we and thousands of other people continue to dive the same sites over and over, and also, how come 'Cave Country' attracts so many non-cave divers? We interview Joe Cocozza, a local cave diver who is also the owner of the Pod Diver Lodge and host of Pod Diver Radio. Joe is an amazing host, a scuba instructor, and a huge wealth of knowledge regarding cave diving and scuba diving in general. Links: Pod Diver Lodge: https://www.poddiverlodge.com/ Pod Diver Radio: http://poddiver.org  

This episode was recorded on video too! If you are interested in seeing our pretty faces and hand signals you should head to our YouTube channel and check it out! Today we talk about the main pillars of scuba diving and what can you do to conduct a self-assessment of your skills as a diver and determine whether you are a good diver and/or what areas you need to work on in order to take your skills to the next level!

In this episode we discuss "Diver's Cemetery" which is located in Dahab, Egypt. We discuss why it is so dangerous, why should some people stay away from the site, and why we would absolutely love to dive it!

We had the wonderful idea to go diving in the Gulf of Mexico, in February, on wet suits. The water temperature was 63 degrees (17 celsius) and lets just say we had some problems... We learned our lesson and wanted to share with you what happened and how you can avoid running into some of these issues.

It is no secret that we are addicted to diving. And just like many divers out there we are members of Facebook groups and forums where diving is discussed 24/7. Occasionally you see questions from people asking about the limits of diving on air. We see things like "Has anybody gone past 130 ft/40 m on air? There are some wrecks I want to see but they are below those limits so I wonder what would happen if I just went for it on air?" And of course, a question like that is only followed by a jungle of misinformation led in some cases by "experts" who are happy to announce how often they dive "super deep on air without issues" because "they never get narked". We like diving deep, so we understand why other divers want to go below recreational depths, but we do it safely! We wanted to discuss what it takes to dive deep and share some potentially lifesaving knowledge and facts with divers that want to be able to dive deep like us.

On this episode we talk about our plans over the next couple of weeks, exciting news about DPVs and lights, a failed rebreather experiment, and we cover a story detailing what happens when a diver surfaces and is separated from his boat. We also talk about the gear we use to mitigate this risk.

For our One Year Anniversary episode we wanted to talk about something we are super passionate about, Cave Diving! We spent a week in Cozumel with an amazing group of divers from the KISS Rebreathers Tech Diving Team, so we invited 3 world-class Cave Divers to join us on this episode. We discuss what's the path to become a cave diver, cave diving unbreakable rules, what happened to most people who died in caves, and shared some funny and interesting stories from dives in the past. Our guests for this show are Doug Ebersole, Bryan Buescher, and Mike Young who in addition to being one of the world's greatest cave divers and explorers, he invented the rebreathers we all dive and absolutely LOVE.

Here's what we've been up to over the last two weeks, pus our plans for New Year's and we review some of our favorite articles from 2020.