Forum - Banjo Ben Clark

Scuba Certification

And with the Mediterranean and Caribbean Seas and other tropical waters, who needs quarries anyhow? Congratulations on your certification!

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Congratulations! Do you think you will continue to dive? I have often thought about learning to dive to look for artifacts on the bottom of the river. Have you ever had any intest in Native American Artifacts? I bet you could find some cool stuff doing that.

I would love to do stuff like that, yeah. I just wasn’t a fan of this quarry diving. I’m claustrophobic and have a fear of being strangled, so this was a big mental challenge for me. It took a lot for me not to panic at times, being 50’ deep in a freezing quarry, low vis and dark, water filling up my mask that didn’t fit right, etc. It didn’t help that the quarry had a Halloween theme going on, so there were zombies stashed here and there that you would uncover as you swam. Ha! I look forward to warmer, clearer waters and staying above 40’ deep!

You won’t get any clearer than Flathead Lake up in Montana. I’ll let you dive and tell me where all the whitefish like to hide.

I will, as soon as you find me a .300 mag that never fails to fire underwater.

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Ya ready for the Dead Sea now?

The RED Sea, yes…I’d need to haul a couple banjos with me to the Dead Sea if I expect to sink. haha

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Oh yes of course. I bet even your banjo would float on the Dead. The Red then. And don’t forget the Med; is that doable?

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Probably not on this trip I have planned, but I would sure love to!

How does your body (mainly the ears) deal with water pressure at that depth? Mine start hurting when I swim to the bottom of a 10’ pool.

I have to stop ever 6-10’ and equalize…nearly everyone does. The way you do it is to hold your nose from outside your mask and lightly blow to pop your ears. My instructor has dived to 230’ feet before, and he said that you don’t have to equalize as much the deeper you go. I can guarantee that I will never be able to confirm that by experience.

:open_mouth::open_mouth::hushed::hushed::scream::scream:

@BanjoBen That has to be very pitch black that deep down. And then having to resurface don’t you have to stop for a while to get repressurized going back up? No thanks, either 230’ up or down is quite a ways.

Yes, you have to have pressure stops of several minutes along the way to acclimate. I learned that you do everything slowly in scuba. He was doing a tactical dive down into Dean’s Blue Hole, I believe. He had to have lights, of course, and two 80 pound O2 tanks on his back. He said he got into a school of some kind of huge sharks at that depth, swimming all around him.

@BanjoBen, Um no thanks…:pleading_face: I love watching the Great White sharks and would love to take some photos of them jumping out of the water, but there is no way I’m getting into a cage in their habitat. I’d rather be on an “I think we’re going to need a BIGGER boat” to take photos. I am sure they do "Tubing in your area during the summer, you should go to one of those rivers after summer and dive, i would bet you could find a lot of dropped stuff

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My inner teenager is really getting the best of me right now. :laughing:

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Interesting thread here… Brings back memories. I got my PADI Certification in about 1983. Since then, I’ve done most of my diving in the Great Lakes region. We have a Cabin near Sault Ste Marie, Michigan and have lots of wrecks in Lake Superior in the Whitefish Bay area. Water vis is about 30 feet in most places. A wet-suit is needed due to the cool water. There is a neat whale-back freighter very close to our cabin in about 72-feet deep. Also a Canadian Air Force Twin Otter at 30-feet. Many wrecks are over 200-feet deep and require special skills. About 30-miles from our Cabin lies the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. She broke in half and sank in one of Lake Superior’s fiercest storms in about 1975. There is a Wreck Museum at Whitefish Point that plays the Gordon Lightfoot song often in the museum area commemorating the wreck. The museum is is very close to Tahquamenon Falls which I believe is the 2nd largest waterfall east of the Mississippi. A great area to visit. While on vacation every summer, our family plays Bluegrass music continually from our cabin front porch. Before our family got too large for our Cessna Skyhawk, we used to fly up there from our grass strip on our farm near Owosso, Michigan (6B3). Since most of our kids are grown, maybe we can do more flying. Lately, my banjo is getting a lot more hours logged than my Skyhawk. HAPPY PICKING!

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That sounds like some fun, fun, fun!