Between the much better buoancy in seawater and my increasing diving experience, I managed to stay clear of plant life and didn't kick up silt or sand. I only layed on the bottom a couple of times, on purpose, and virtually never used my hands to push off. CoCo View does not allow the wearing of gloves, and so the temptation to touch was greatly diminished. I don't think I touched anything on purpose more than once or twice. Some plants and critters sting or burn, and so it's better to stay clear anyway.

Mary's Place is one of Roatan's most famous dive sites. It is a horseshoe-shaped fragment that broke off from the main reef, perhaps during an earthquake long ago. When that happened, a number of deep cracks and crevices formed and you can now dive through those. The cracks are narrow enough to mandate swimming through them single file and make for wonderfully dramatic scenery. At a moderate pace it takes maybe six to ten minutes to swim through the main crevice of the formation. Attendance at a special buoyancy control seminar is usually required before diving Mary's Place and the site is listed as suitable for intermediate level divers on up.

The initial drop-off was at just 25 feet or so on top of the reef plateau. We then dropped over the wall and descended to about 75 feet. I was a bit nervous as I always am with new adventures as we came upon the entrance of the main crack along the wall. It was adorned by beautiful black coral whose branches actually look orange. On divemaster Eddie's go-ahead we went in one by one. I was videotaping the entire swim-through on the SeaLife DC800 camera. Carol was right behind me with the big Olympus digital SLR. The flat, sandy bottom of the cracks was at perhaps 90 feet or so, though I never went deeper than 75 or 80. I enjoyed this dive very much. Mary's Place lived up to expectation, and then some.

The magical traverse between the otherwordly cliffs was over all too soon. At the end there are two exits, one going straight ahead and expelling the diver into the wide, blue ocean with the wall dropping away to the left and right. Divemaster Eddie suggested we take the last left turn that ascended to another exit, one that was wonderfully picturesque and led back to another exit at maybe 60 feet. When I got to the junction I wasn't quite sure which way to turn as the left turn is just feet before the main crack opens into the ocean. It is fairly narrow and goes uphill. I took that one, working my way up to the exit where we all lingered and took in the sights.

What I didn't know at the time was that Mary's Place, on Valentine's Day of 1990, was the site of an open water deep diving record. Bret Gilliam chose Mary's Place because of the near vertical wall with "abyssal drop-off depths." On a single 100 cubic-foot tank of compressed air, Gilliam reached a depth of 452 feet, performed a few math and word problems on a slate to test his alertness at that depth, and began his ascent after six minutes and 20 seconds. He did hist first deco stop at 50 feet, and an hour and 16 minute slater he surfaces none the worse for wear, having answered all the test problems on his slate correctly.

This was, incidentally, my 50th dive and I couldn't have wished for a nicer experience. Or for a better conclusion to a truly memorable week of diving at CoCo View resort on Roatan.

Diving in the sea is different. I learned that it can be as calm underwater as in a lake or spring. And even if there are some waves on the surface, once you go under it's all still. But that's not always the case. On some of the dives the water was pretty rough down there. What is waves on the surface is surge at the bottom. You get buffeted around in a rhythm and it becomes more difficult to move and control where you're going. That can be a problem when you want to get close to something so you can take pictures but also want to make sure you don't bump into it and harm the plants. Several times I found myself entirely too close to a wall with its rich cover of sponges and all sorts of outlandish growth, and was unable to get away from it without the vigorous use of fins that might have harmed the plants. Sometimes surge is obvious as in when you see the plantlife swaying back and forth. Other times you don't see it, but feel that you're just not going where you think your movements should get you.

In addition, there's current. Here again, things can be deceptive. Sometimes it's very noticeable and you just fly away, other times you just marvel how effortlessly and quickly you can swim just to find that it isn't nearly as easy to go the other way. That can be a problem as you don't want to get separated from your buddy or buddies, and certainly not from the dive boat.

As for sharks, I didn't see any nor did I do the shark dive on my trip to Roatan. I felt I just wasn't quite ready as I was still acclimatizing myself to diving in the sea and learning something new with every dive. With the exception of a couple of barracudas and some groupers, all from a distance, I hadn't really seen any big fish, so starting out with a bunch of sharks in a feeding frenzy seemed a bit much. Some guests did go, though, and as I expected, they felt it was an incredible experience.

Brian, a very experienced diver from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and his girlfriend Joanne, also an experienced diver, did go on the shark dive organized by a couple of Italian divemasters who run Waihuka Diving Adventures. The dive site they boat their daring customers to is called "Cara a Cara" -- Spanish for Face-to-Face. Brian said they went down along a line to about 70 feet where they stood and sat against a cliff. Shark feed operations use chum buckets full of stuff that sharks like and the local sharks know the routine. According to Brian, once the dinner bell is rung, the sharks, Caribbean Reef Sharks, appear in a hurry and do get into the feeding frenzy you see in TV documentaries. However, they have no interest whatsoever in the divers, just the food in the chum bucket. Divers are allowed to circle around the whole scene. Once the chum is gone, the sharks leave. The whole thing is recorded on video and participants can buy a DVD. I saw the DVD and it was stunning.

Maybe next time.

I did do one night dive. I had wanted to do more, but each day I was just too pooped after three or four dives to gear up yet again. Others went every night. For beach dives, the protocol at CoCo View is that a flashing strobe must be attached high above the bottom on the "front yard" buoy mooring chain. The first diver who goes out must take the strobe and attach it. Each subsequent diver then takes a numbered tag that must be clipped onto the chain. That way everyone knows divers are out there. Upon return, the last diver retrieves the strobe and brings it back in.

We went fairly late and everyone else, including the strobe, were already back. So we took it out again. We waded through the shallow part of the beach, then donned our fins and turned the divelights on. I brought two, my little Scubapro and a somewhat stronger backup. We quickly found an octopus and stopped to watch it. That was easier said than done for me as the lack of vision and visual references made hovering difficult. Carol attached the strobe to the mooring chain when we reached it and then we were off hunting for whatever might come out at night. There were, as I quickly noticed, a lot of curious fish, some of them quite large. It was mildly disconcerting to train my lights into the dark and then see shadows gliding in and out of my field of vision. Carol went off exploring with the Olympus Evolt 330 digital SLR and I stayed close, lighting things for her. We saw and photographed some interesting critters. The uneasiness never left me.

But it got worse. We encountered blood worms that swarm the divelights like angry flies. You'd think worms just wiggle around on the ground, but these pests buzzed around lights faster than anything I've ever encountered on land, and they got into things. Fortunately, I wore my 3mm wetsuit, but I still felt them against my hands, face and ears. I pulled my skullcap down over my ears as far as I could. Those things were an absolute pain and ruined whatever enjoyment I might have had out of that night dive. Yuk! We quickly retrieved the strobe and retreated to the beach. I'll try again to see if I can find the night dive magic many divers talk about.

I took some Imodium tablets I'd brought along and wondered about the practical aspects of diving when you don't feel up to par. Boat rides can be pretty rough and sitting in a rocking boat on top of feeling nauseous to begin with didn't sound too good. And I wondered what would happen if you went diving and had to throw up. I'd read about that and apparently you're supposed to vomit through the regulator without taking it out of your mouth. I hoped I wouldn't have to put that to the test. As for diarrhea, the thought of suddenly having an uncontrollable urge while diving with a wetsuit on wasn't pretty.

I thought about the amazing CoCo View resort and how it came about. I'd been to Central America in the late 1970s and visited El Salvador and Guatemala. Apparently, while I was lounging by the pool at the luxurious estate of my friends in San Salvador in 1978 and played tennis at the Salvador Sheraton, conditions on Roatan were still quite primitive. Roatan is part of the Honduran Bay Islands that also include Guanaja, Utila and a few dozen much smaller ones. The 49 square mile island was said to be discovered by Columbus on one of his later voyages, then visited by Spanish conquistador Velasquez in an episode disastrous for the indigenous Paya Indians who were enslaved and put to work. Roatan became popular with pirates who, together with the British, were a thorn in the side of the Spaniards. Spain essentially demolished the island by 1650 but English privateers returned and used Roatan as a base. Even the notorious pirate Blackbeard was there for a few weeks in 1718. In the 1700s it was a constant back and forth between England and Spain. By 1800, the English brought thousands of revolting slaves from other islands. Those were called the Garifuna and their descendants are still there today. Roatan was considered a British Crown Colony, albeit a rather minor and neglected one, and influential English families from the Cayman Islands arrived. Though the island was essentially English and Scotch, Queen Victoria, against protests from the settlers, turned Roatan over to an only vaguely interested Honduras in 1858. These days, the official language is Spanish, but many still speak English, and most municipalities have English names.

A 1996 report by a writer/diver/developer by the name of Lorenzo Dee Belveal who first came to Roatan in 1966, built Spyglass Hill Resort, and ran it until 1981 just when CoCo View got underway is interesting albeit perhaps controversial reading. A most prolific writer, Belveal described the primitive yet pristine condition of the island when he arrived, with spring-clear water and 200-foot visibility, and what he considers the subsequent overpopulation, loss of safe drinking water due to destruction of the natural aquifer and the resulting danger of water-borne disease. In 1995, Belveal's assessment was "It only took fifteen years for it to complete the circuit from "new and exciting" to "ruined and showing it," and his predictions for Roatan's future were dire.

An account penned by Dennis Foster in circa 1990 describes the island as still quite primitive with barely a runway, not much in terms of roads (read Belveal's The Road for an idea), no telephone system and no reliable central electricity. Yet, by that time CoCo View resort had already existed for a decade, established by visionaries Bill and Evelyn Evans with the help of local and immigrated authorities. The "Prince Albert," for example, was named after Albert Jackson, a local tycoon and entrepreneur who built Fantasy Island across the lagoon from CoCo View in 1989 (view the Sinking of the Prince Albert). Another influential persona, "Doc" Radawski, is a fountain of historical knowledge and now resides at CoCo View. He came to Roatan in the early 1970s and has been playing a pivotal role in the scuba diving community as well as marine archeology and ecological programs geared towards preserving Roatan's natural beauty. I greatly enjoyed his excellent lecture on the history of Roatan.

Fortunately and amazingly, in the afternoon I felt well enough to go diving. I found that I had missed some minor discord on the boat that occurred when a guest who was reviewing the resort for a publication or website requested four full boat dives a day as opposed to two dive site dives and two drop-offs. Drop-offs mean the boat won't take you back to the dock and you have to exit through the beach. At CoCo View that's a long swim in very shallow water, and no fun with extensive camera equipment. So the boat took him to some other dive site and thus was not at the dock when the drop-off divers arrived. Some had left personal belongings on the boat including, in one case, their room keys. That, admittedly, can be annoying and so there were complaints. Divemaster Eddie may have gotten an earful from management over that and was none too happy about it. So he called the group together and discussed the matter in a mature and straightforward manner. This young man will go far.

I later got to talk to Eddie whose blond-streaked hair, very much unlike mine, always looked perfectly towsled and coiffed minutes after a dive. His family came from mainland Honduras when he was three years old. They now own some real estate and a store. Eddie has been working in one capacity or another at CoCo View resort since he was in his early teens. He was a busboy, worked in the kitchen, the dive shop, etc., until he got a chance to get into diving. He started highschool, but still has to finish it. He took a course in English, and his mastery of the language is excellent. He fluently converses in English with an accent hardly thicker than mine. English, Eddie said, is necessary on the island to get a good job. That and computer knowledge. No one else in his family speaks English, and Eddie is trying to get at least his sister to learn it. He's never been to the United States but he has a dream of going to college and study something that relates to his love of diving and the sea. Marine biology perhaps. I hope he gets to realize that dream.

The dive site we visited was called Menagerhea, named or renamed after Rhea's Diving Services, the diveshop Carol managed for a number of years in Tennessee. The seas were a bit rough but I felt just fine, and even better once I was in the water. The site started out quite shallow, then we slowly descended down along a wall. Looking out into the open blue ocean we saw some pretty big fish, including barracudas and groupers. It's fascinating to gaze into the blueness and suddenly seeing a faint dark shadow that then becomes a fish. You can't quite tell how far away they are, or how big. The Menagerhea site is close to shore by the Newman Wall, and so there was quite a bit of surge.

For the drop-off dive I chose the Prince Albert, but this time with a special mission. I took along the Olympus Stylus 1030SW, a 10-megapixel camera that's waterproof to 33 feet without an underwater housing. It's the successor to the Stylus 770SW that we'd taken down to 67 feet at Manatee Springs in Florida with no ill effect. For a while I thought that camera was invulnerable until it did flood at 90 feet in Lake Tahoe when I simply forgot that I'd taken it with me on the dive. I definitely did not want to kill the 1030 as well and so could only take it to the upper parts of the wreck. Still, that meant half an hour between 30 and 40 feet, and a bunch of pretty good pictures -- not bad for a camera that looks just like any other modern little digicam. The visibility wasn't the best, but it took decent pictures.

Whatever causes underwater nosebleeds struck me during a morning dive. The boat had taken us out to "Calvin's Crack," a gorgeous though somewhat oddly named dive site that's indeed a narrow crack in the reef (it was likely named after Calvin Bodden, friend of CoCo View founder Bill Evans). It descends all the way from a fairly shallow entrance area at maybe 30 feet of water to an opening to the ocean deep in the wall. The entrance is like a cave or cavern and you go in head-first, but it's not really an overhead environment as light remains visible through the top of the crack at all times.

It is a wonderfully eery experience floating downward between walls of sheer rock to the left and right, from 30 feet to perhaps 80 or 90, with beams of light from the surface shining down from between the cliffs, and air bubbles from divers ahead of you rising in a silvery stream. Diving the crack is like floating through a rugged, narrow canyon with just enough room for a single diver. The sandy bottom of the crack descends until it opens on the side of the wall into the blue ocean at a depth of anywhere from 60 to 100 feet. I'd been nervous again before the dive, of course, but felt just fine going into and through the crack. It was all totally new to me and so I composed myself and finned through, not taking nearly enough time to look around and take it all in.

I exited Calvin's Crack at about 85 feet, with the bottom still well below me. It was over too soon, sort of like a rollercoaster ride at the carnival. The water felt noticeably colder once I emerged from the wall and was floating in the open ocean along the nearly vertical cliffs. Later, when I uploaded my dive computer data into my notebook I saw that the water temperature had dropped all of four degrees, from 86 to 82 degrees Fahrenheit. All thermoclines should be that mild.

Over the next 25 minutes we slowly worked our way along the luscious wall and back up to shallower water. I noticed that the left side of my Scubapro Frameless mask was getting pretty murky with liquid accumulating at the bottom. There is almost always a little bit of water seeping into a mask and it's no big deal once you know how to purge. My Frameless mask is as leak-proof as I've experienced (I have tried out a dozen masks or so) and I rarely ever have to clear my mask to get the water out. I didn't like the murky greenish water and wasn't sure where it came from until it turned red as I ascended and then I knew. Nose or sinus bleed. Looks emerald green at depth. Nothing to be alarmed about, but definitely something I could do without. I cleared out the mask as much as I could before entering the dive boat through the cut-out with the ladder in the bottom, but Jorge, our boat captain, noticed right away and actually looked a bit alarmed. He gave me tissues once I was on the boat and I ended up needing quite a few of them. So that was a pretty good nosebleed.

I decided to skip the morning's "drop-off" dive and head back to the dock on the boat. That gave me a chance to roam around CoCo View resort a bit, look at the dozens of hummingbirds excitedly competing for a spot on one of the sugarwater bird feeders, and check out the well equipped PADI 5-Star dive shop (Dockside Dive Center). I asked the dive master and other authorities about the cause of the nosebleeds and what one can do about it, but no one seems to know for sure. I have no clue what causes regular nosebleeds (which I have rarely ever gotten), let alone ones caused by diving. They call seats high up in a stadium the "nosebleed section," so I suppose pressure has something to do with it. Carol said many divers, including accomplished ones, have to deal with this and that it usually goes away after a number of dives. I sure hoped it'd go away for me.

I did take the afternoon dive (Valley of the Kings), but made sure I stayed relatively shallow, never going deeper than 55 feet. The dive took us along a wall and then over an undulating reef plateau with lots to see. I think I'll never get tired of looking at the plants and sea creatures. I used to think real sponges looked like what my grand parents used in their bathroom. I had no idea they where tube-like structures in all forms, colors and sizes. Gliding through it all you never know what you'll see next. Many sea creatures have adapted themselves to a specific plant, mimicking shape, texture and color so they become nearly invisible against the backdrop of their host. Wonderful though it was, I felt a bit apprehensive after the green blood episode and so wasn't able to relax and enjoy as much as I should have. I did still have a bit of bleeding, but much less, and so I decided I was going to risk a second dive that afternoon. After surfacing and recuperating we asked the captain to take us to the wreck of the Prince Albert.

Not all wrecks are the same, and one sitting in 45 to 70 feet of water in a channel right outside of a dive resort is most definitely not in the same class as one much deeper somewhere in open water. But until I see one of them, if I ever will, as far as I am concerned, the Prince Albert is a real wreck and then some. It is a large iron vessel sitting upright. It was sunk almost 25 years ago specifically as a scuba attraction by the owners of the CoCo View resort. It has many openings to explore and has probably been proofed so it's safe for divers. Then again, it's still a wreck deep underwater and it can look very intimidating. The sheer mass of the wreck is humbling as you weightlessly glide along its coral and sponge-encrusted sides. The water whose clarity can be exceptional at the top of the wreck can dwindle to just a few feet at the sandy bottom. Plantlife has taken over and transformed the massive vessel of steel into a silent reef with dark gaping holes along the sides and on the top. It's all open for exploration without any supervision at all. I didn't have my divelight with me and so could not see what's inside. Not that I would have done so in the first place. Floating in darkness inside a rusted hull does not seem totally harmless. I must assume things are closed off enough so divers do not get lost, but it all did look forbidding and intimidating.

It is amazing how very quickly sealife takes over a sunken vessel. The seafans, sponges, and corrals of all kinds did not seem any different from those that grow on reefs and walls. I thought a wreck would be all mud and rust and sediment, but it's a living, teeming medley of plants and fish, and really quite indistinguishable from a reef. There are large, spindly plants that stick and fan out all over the place as well as the usual variety of sealife large and small. Fish and other critters are everywhere.

I thought of all the books I had read about divers exploring the Andrea Doria or the Empress of Ireland, and how those wrecks claim lives even from the very best. I don't think it's worth risking one's life for a porcellain plate from a sunken ship, but people know the level of risk they wish to take. Seeing the wreck of the Prince Albert gave me an idea of what it's all about. It was very real, very impressive, and a thrill.

I've had my first ocean dive. It was actually three, an orientation dive in the morning and then two boat dives in the afternoon.

Apparently, no matter what age I am, I get uptight whenever I do something new for the first time. I fell asleep just fine the evening before the dive, and had a good night's sleep, but during breakfast and then the orientation upstairs in the clubhouse I was absurdly nervous. Just like I used to get when I had to give a speech.

We then got geared up and entered the very shallow water at the beach in front of CoCo View's clubhouse. Our divemaster, Melgar, gave an introduction: first we'd swim down an incline, then congregate at the anchor plate of the buoy to demonstrate skills (flooding and clearing the mask; removing the regulator and blowing bubbles), then go past the wreck of the Prince Albert and on to Newman's Wall, then back to the wreck and over to the other side where CoCo View Wall is. That sounded like an awful lot of distance for just an orientation dive, and it felt like it, too, but when it was all over it had taken all of 45 minutes.

I had often wondered what it'd be like to see a shipwreck underwater. I envisioned it as spooky and threatening, sort of the ultimate symbol of human maritime defeat. A ship sinks and goes down to the bottom of the ocean. The image of the water closing over it and it falling has always felt extremely ominous to me.

But seeing the Prince Albert, a 140 foot long hulking former tanker, was not that threatening. Maybe it was the good visibility, or maybe shipwrecks are just one of those things that looks and feels all different once you actually see one underwater. We did not stay and peruse the encrusted wreck of the ship that'd been sunk as a diving attraction in 1985. There'd be plenty of time for that later.

Close to the wreck we saw a school of squid slowly circling in formation. An amazing sight that was. They have those huge eyes and you never quite know which side is the front and which the back. They seem intelligent, very deliberate, and very different from fish that tend to dart around this way and that.

The Newman wall was imposing, and I assume representative for a lot of Caribbean underwater walls. It's far steeper and rockier down there than you'd expect judging by the looks of the geography above the water. Roatan is hilly, for sure, but it does not seem to have the sheer cliffs that drop down many hundreds or thousands of feet. And every square inch underwater is occupied by something -- plants, fish, sea critters of all kinds. This is really what blew me away most. Lake Tahoe has awesome scenery and walls, but it is nearly devoid of life. Here I saw nothing but life teeming all over the place.

I still wrestled with some irrational fears, most of which I attribute to my initial uneasiness with new things. I am aware at all times, for example, of having all that water above me. If anything goes wrong there is simply no margin for error. What would happen if I had a sudden bout of ... something? Would I be able to handle it? Also, I do like to see what's around me, and I get uneasy when the visibility is bad and things go blank. When you dive you don't fall. Gravity as we know it is suspended. But the brain doesn't know that. So it can feel weird to float in nothingness, or turn around and see nothing but open water. But it is not only space; temperature fluctuations can also sneak up on you. You feel your body go cold and for an anxious few seconds wonder if something's wrong. Then you remember: thermocline. I don't mind cold water, but the sudden changes can make me uneasy. That was certainly not a problem in Roatan as the water temperature was 86 degrees and it never got below 84 even at the bottom. Not having to deal with cold water and thermoclines felt good.

Carol had told me many times that managing one's buoyancy in saltwater was much easier than in fresh water. I took her word for it, but it was hard for me to imagine that salt and whatever else is dissolved in ocean water would make that much of a difference. The specific weight between salt and sweet water is very close. However, as I quickly found out, it DOES make a HUGE difference.

In fresh water, where all of my previous dives had taken place (with the exception of that saltwater pool, but that doesn't count), buoyancy is a constant struggle. It is quite hard to consistently stay off the bottom so as not to stir up silt. In seawater, if you have your weights right, that is simply not an issue. I just floated, glided, hovered, flew, without any problem at all. It felt like magic. And it's a good thing, too, because the plantlife on the reefs is far more fragile than I imagined and I sure did not want to harm it.

Diving a reef, I found, is like slowly flying over and through a Pixar landscape. It's like being in "A Bug's Life" or "Finding Nemo," only much more intense and, of course, real. Those guys at Pixar must be divers, I am sure. The diversity and vitality of all those plants is simply amazing: all sorts of sponges and gorgonians (seafans) are everywhere. Some cover rocks, some bulge out, some stick out weightlessly. There's a myriad of different kinds of coral. Fish dart in and out between them in a never-ending fluid dance. Some are lightning quick, some deliberate. The water is a very different medium to live and move around in.

After lunch I experienced my first ocean boat dive. We were on the green boat, the CoCo III. The boats are larger than the ones I'd been on on the Manatee snorkel tours, and the cutout in the center through with you can get back into the boat by climbing up a ladder is fairly unique. Divers sit along the sides by their gear.

The first actual dive site we visited was called "Too Tall Too Small." I am not sure where it got that name. My guess is the resorts get quite creative naming those sites as there are so many. It was a marvelous wall dive, again full of teeming life of all sorts. As I was gliding through this wonder world I thought of the Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" where they sing of "cellophane flowers of yellow and green," and "newspaper taxis waiting to take you away" and similar. Some said that song was really about acid trips (Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds), but though I have no firsthand experience I cannot imagine an acid or any other drug-induced trip to be any wilder than diving a reef.

The combination of weightlessly floating amidst this unreal, unbelievable underwater world with colors and shapes I'd never seen; hearing myself breathing air from a tank on my back; knowing that I was deep under the surface and really in quite a fragile position, it all adds up to a suspense of reality as we know it on the surface. It makes you think and question things. There's so much down there, and it's all so different from the familiar dry world above. The ocean is huge and endless but also delicate and tender. A single boat anchor carelessly dragged across the reefs can destroy what took decades or hundreds of years to build, and what is home to an intricate miraculous world that is a miracle.

We're at CoCo View Resort on the southside of Roatan. CoCo View is not a resort in the traditional luxury accommodations sense of the word. It's a community of bungalows, cabanas and buildings on a totally secluded penninsula. It's tropical to the max, with flocks of Hummingbirds darting around, palm trees and other lush tropical greenery everywhere. Some of the bungalows and cabanas are directly on the water. Yes, I can actually see the water between the cracks of the floorboards in my room.

Getting to Roatan is easy. It may be a penninsula off an island off mainland Honduras, but all it took was a three and a half hour Continental flight from Sacramento to Houston, and then another two and a half hour flight from Houston to Roatan island. And not in a tiny turboprop, but in a real Boeing 737. Flying along the central American coast line is an experience by itself. There is so much pristine, gorgeous and seemingly uninhabited beach with inlets and islands. Is it yet to be discovered? Is it protected? What's the deal?

Immigration at Roatan airport is a lengthy procedure with stern customs officers handwriting and hand-copying lots of stuff. I am sure it serves a purpose, but hey.... we're just here for a week of spending money and boosting the local economy. It's hot and incredibly humid waiting in line. Our luggage has bright pink CoCo View tags and is being picked up and moved through customs by friendly folks from the resort. We're being greeted and soon sit in a nicely air-conditioned Kia van.

The ride from the airport to CoCo View is maybe 20 minutes and what I see is, on a somewhat less extreme scale, what I remember from a late 1970s trip to El Salvador. Visible from the streets is a weird mix of wealth and poverty, American-style shopping strips and much more modest local stores, corrugated steel covered huts and driveways to mansion and resorts.

The ride ends at a large boathouse from where we're ferried to the actual resort, just a few stone's throws away across a still lagoon, and yet so far from civilization. We get a brief intro from a friendly young American woman who hands out forms and the usual disclaimers. There are two young couples from New Jersey and some guys. How many dives do I have? That'd be 36. How many night dives? Ummm... one. Dive buddy Carol senses my intimidation and volunteers that my one night dive was the mother of all night dives. I remember well. It was. But I am still sure that everyone else is vastly more experienced, and they are a bunch younger, too.

I pick up the key to the cabana on the water and it is sensational, just gorgeous. Hot and humid despite the big room air conditioner, but that's to be expected. I am blown away. Pretty much everyone who comes here is a diver and so instructions on what to do are in the room. We unpack and gather up our gear and walk on over to the dive building and dock. Four boats are there, painted yellow, red, green, blue. We've been assigned to the green boat, CoCo III. They are sturdy vessels that, as I later learn, even have an opening in the center for divers to climb in.

We store our gear in cubbies, then sign in to get weights. They are the old-fashioned solid lead weights. The two couples are here and they seem to know exactly how much weight they need. Me, I tried in the pool and sort of figured I might need 14 pounds. So that is what I get.

I am not sure I want to use Nitrox as it costs $8 a fill or $120 for the week whereas air is included. Carol uses it, and so I make my first three tanks Nitrox as well. We test for oxygen content and pressure, note the data on a sticker on the tank, then deposit our passports at the office. At the signup sheet I see that the Jersey couples have already signed up for the shark dive.

What have I gotten myself into? Will this work out? It's gorgeous here for sure, but what awaits me beneath the surface?

Parking at D.L. Bliss is just six bucks a day, a real bargain when you consider the giant size of the park (it takes a mile on a narrow, winding forest road to even get to the park entrance gate) and the gorgeous vistas. It's a bit like Big Sur with lots of woods and nature. We arrived at the smallish Callawee Cove lot at 9:30AM when you can still pick your spot. As always with diving, the closer to the beach you can get the better.

This time, with the memory of lugging those giant 104-cubic foot steel tanks down (and up!) the steep trail, we brought comparatively tiny high pressure steel-80s. They don't look very manly, those tanks, but on this trip I certainly got to appreciate them. Sure, I only had 80 cubic-foot of air instead of 104, but that was enough, and the big difference in size and weight made this trip about diving and not about scaling what seems like 700 steps up a vertical cliff.

I never really realized before how important picking the right tank is. As much as I had read about tanks, when I bought my own first tanks I got my two used low-pressure steel-95s because Robert at Diver's Cove in Folsom recommended them, and my metallic-blue anodized aluminum 80 because it looked great. The steel 95s are good but I don't think I ever got a full 2,400 psi charge, and when you begin with 2,100 psi or so, there just isn't all that much air in them. The blue alu tank does look great, but it's actually even longer than the steel-95s, so it's quite a handful for just 80 cubic feet of air, and that's before the annoying buoyancy issues of aluminum tanks (I'll get into that!). So I think I'll relegate the pretty blue tank to pool duty, sell the steel 95s, and invest in high pressure steel 100s if we can find them at a reasonable price. High pressure tanks have their own issues (filling time, availability of high pressure fills, etc.) but at this point weight and length of a tank have become important to me. If you routinely have to carry tanks by the valve, having one that you can carry without it dragging the ground makes things so much easier.

But it's not only tanks where there is no substitute for practical experience. The same goes for wetsuits. While I liked the first wetsuit I ever bought, a 7mm Telos, the thing was so difficult to get into that I started all my dives already exhausted. And pulling the recalcitrant material up your arms and legs practically guarantees sore fingertips as the side of the nails dig into the soft parts. The answer there is to get a suit that really fits. My Telos, for example, was a "medium," which meant it fit my 6-foot, 155 pound frame snugly, but arms and legs were too short. No fun.

Well, Carol pointed out that some wetsuits come in "medium-long," though dive shops don't usually carry the size. My new 7mm Scubapro "Form" wetsuit does come in that size and it fits great. It's also made from a material that is super-stretchy and therefore goes on a whole lot easier. Nothing is ever perfect, though. Somehow it must have escaped Scubapro that Velcro grabs this material like crazy. When you pull the velcro off, it rips the surface layer of the wetsuit material. Scuba gear uses lots of velcro, and so it won't be long before suits made of this material look all chewed up. Anyway, I love the suit and we'll see how it holds up.

The water temperature at Tahoe was 68 degrees as it usually is in the summer. However, I knew from prior dives that it gets colder quickly as you go down and so I used my hood and gloves. I had some concerns about the gloves as we took a test camera along, the new DC800 from SeaLife. The folks at SeaLife have this amazing ability to retrofit ordinary digital camera equipment for underwater duty by tweaking the software and adding special underwater modes that go well beyond what consumer cameras with an underwater setting or two offer. A lot of their magic comes from special white balance modes that correct for the way water filters out different colors as you go deeper. They also know that divers do wear gloves on occasion, and so the buttons on their underwater housings are always spaced to accommodate gloves. It may have escaped them, however, that older divers need reading glasses to see fine print and tiny icons, and so that can be an issue.

I had used Nitrox at the quarry in Tennessee, but this was the first time at altitude. I had contemplated the impacts of altitude on diving before, taken the PADI altitude diver class (twice, really), and read up on the subject. It's hard enough to wrap your mind around the logic of altitude diving on air (it's the ratio of the pressure differences between surface and a certain depth underwater that determines nitrogen absorption, and not the absolute pressure!), and it's worse for Nitrox where you essentially have to determine equivalent air depths twice. From talking to various people and also reading bulletin board posts on the matter, it seems that very few really know how it works. It makes no difference, of course, as everyone relies on their dive computer.

It's interesting to see just how much dive tables and dive computers differ when it comes to the real world. NAUI, for example, sells tables for diving at altitude with 32 and 36% Nitrox as well as for air dives. There are two sets of tables, one for altitudes between 6,000 and 10,000 feet and one for 1,000 to 6,000 feet. My dive eventually took me to 64 feet. Rounded up to 70 feet, the NAUI sea level tables would allow for a maximum dive time (MDT) of 45 minutes. The altitude air table cuts that to 21 minutes. That's because diving 64 feet at 10,000 feet of altitude is more like diving 100 feet or so at sea level as far as nitrogen uptake goes. This is where Nitrox comes in handy. Its lesser percentage of nitrogen increases maximum dive time from 21 to 32 minutes with 32% Nitrox, and 37 minutes with 36% Nitrox. So when diving at altitude, using Nitrox increases maximum bottom times when compared to air, just as it does at sea level.

Now how does all that theory translate into what the dive computer shows during an actual dive? Well, at no time did my no-decompression time fall below 60 minutes. And once set to 36% Nitrox, my Uwatec SmartZ also correctly showed an altitude-adjusted maximum oxygen depth of 100 feet. That's about six feet more than at sea level. Most people would expect less, but as far as oxygen goes, absolute pressure matters and so you reach the recommended 1.4 atmosphere partial pressure of oxygen a few feet deeper at Tahoe altitudes.

It's definitely a good thing to plan one's altitude dives, but once you're down there, the dive computer takes over. And at least in my case, maximum allowable dive time was a lot longer than my air would have lasted. I am getting better with my air consumption, but I am still sucking it up at an alarming rate when I get tense, and diving that wall at Rubicon point is still a somewhat scary experience for me.

The beach at Callawee Cove is shallow. You can dive along the rock cliffs and never reach more than 15-18 feet or so. However, swim away from the beach at the point, and there's the wall. Part of it is just a sheer wall, stark and forbidding. Other parts are giant boulders. All in all, it goes from 60 feet or so down to a 1,500 foot abyss within just a quarter mile. Visibility was far less than when we dove the wall last year. We had at least a hundred feet then, but this time it was just 50 or so, as we had already noticed during other Tahoe dives this year. I am not sure why that is; it must be some sort of local phenomenon as I cannot imagine clarity going down by that much within a single year. Tahoe is totally clean and clear, and pollution simply cannot be a sizable problem. Maybe it was ash and dust from all the California wildfires, and that may also account for the lower water temperatures.

Anyway, I never like low visibility, and its worse when there are severe thermoclines. This time we hit two, each gripping one's entire body. At 65 feet it was already down to 50 degrees. I wasn't uncomfortably cold with the hood and gloves, but between the relatively low visibility, the cold, and the menacing face of the wall, I was breathing hard. By now I know that I do not fall when I cannot see the bottom, but it is still a weird feeling. I did not want for it to overcome me, and so when I saw the wall slowly came into view, I swallowed hard and decided to swim along the sheer and near vertical face of the wall. Last time I had gone over it from the top, following Carol. This time, Carol had gone up to the top and peeked over it, feeling "like the Lion King" as she later told me. I swam along the face, breathing hard and hoping I'd soon come to something other than the sheer face. During those two or three minutes it instantly became clear to me why "blue holes" that often have walls that recede as you go down are considered so dangerous. It's easy to freak when there is nothing below you and rock above. Also, at just 65 feet I didn't feel what I suppose was the calming (to me) influence of a bit of narcosis that I probably had felt at 110 feet. In any case, I am very glad I went back to Rubicon Wall. I love those rock faces and giant boulders, but I'd like them that much better in clearer, warmer water.

Nitrox worked well for me, but then again I'd never had a problem with just air. So for now I know that Nitrox doesn't make me feel weird or anything. There's psychology in that. You need to find out for yourself how something makes you feel.

After a two-hour surface interval on the beautiful beach of the cove we did a second dive. This one was just for fun, poking around the rocks and boulders along the shallow shore. It rarely got to be more than 15 feet deep. We took movies with the SeaLife (once in its case, you cannot switch between still pictures and movies, so you need to decide what mode to use beforehand), watched whole colonies of feisty crawdads do their thing, marveled at how warm the fine sand at the bottom was when you stick your hands in it, and just played around.

This second dive was also a lecture in what an impact different types of tanks can have, and how even the same tank can behave differently when it gets empty. On the first dive I had used the high-pressure steel-80 tank and used 16 pounds of weight in the two pockets of my Scubapro Knighthawk BC. For the second dive I switched to my electric-blue Aluminum-80 tank, this time using 18 pounds to make up for the aluminum tank's higher buoyancy. Carol, who generally barely uses any weights at all, had on her new 7mm wetsuit and was on her second dive with the same tank. She doesn't like a lot of weight and dropped two pounds for this dive. As a result of the different buoyancy she now had trouble going down with eight pounds instead of the ten she'd used on the first dive, and so we switched things around again. Having less weight came back to haunt me after I'd used up about 900 psi of air. As we were returning to the beach and I found myself increasingly unable to stay at the shallow depths as my aluminum bottle was getting more and more buoyant, until I signaled it was no use and I had to surface, and so I did. Note to self: tanks that switch from negative to positive buoyancy are a pain.

I listed dogs in the title of this entry. Where do they come in? Well, we had fun watching some Retrievers and Labs play in the water during our dives. But that wasn't why I mentioned it. Like everyone else, I had learned to look up before surfacing so as not to collide with a boat. I did that and none were in sight. But when I came up I bumped into .... a dog. It was a chocolate Lab, and he'd probably been investigating my bubbles. He was just as surprised as I was and quickly doggie-paddled off. Me, I couldn't stop laughing.

There really is no separate altitude class in the PADI system. Altitude is part of "Adventures in Diving" and the concepts and things to know are described in one big instruction manual. I bought the 375-page tome, studied, answered the quiz questions and did the knowledge review. I also attended the altitude portion of the class at Fisheye Scuba which took about an hour.

Instructor Kate Fuquay, who is also part-owner of Fisheye Scuba, wanted students to go up to Lake Tahoe the night before the class so our bodies could properly acclimate to the much higher altitude. A bit of research and calling around yielded a reasonably priced motel room, a rare commodity at Tahoe in just about any season. The motel did not have air conditioning and the room was baking hot despite open windows and night time temperatures dropping into the mid-40s. No big deal as thanks to a big fan I managed to sleep anyway.

Meeks Bay is on the other side of the lake and so it was a bit of a drive to get to the camping and resort area by 8AM. The Fisheye crew was already there and so was an assortment of students taking various classes. Meeks Bay actually has two beaches, a small one north of a marina entrance and a larger one south of it. Both have adequate parking close to the sandy beach and both have rest rooms. The larger resort area beach we used also has a nice store for campers and beachgoers, so that's a plus for when you want a drink, snack or a souvenir (I got a handy nautical map of the lake and surrounding waterways).

My new 6-1/2mm ScubaPro wetsuit went on a lot easier than the recalcitrant 7mm Telos I'd become used to fighting with, but it still took me time to don my gear and make sure all was well. We did the buddy check, then gathered around instructor Kate who spent time going through the special considerations of altitude diving as well as the plans for the dives. One advantage of a group this big (there were probably 20 of us all in all) was that we had a couple of non-divers, and so I had someone to look after my 12-year-old son Morgan who'd come along for the experience. He'd brought his snorkeling gear and I was sure he'd have a great time, but he's still only 12 and I wanted an adult to keep an eye on him.

The water was a nice, refreshing 68 degrees Fahrenheit but I had put on my hood anyway, knowing that Lake Tahoe can get quite chilly during a dive. We swam out to one of the buoys so we could descend on its line to the bottom where we'd compare and record the depths shown on our depth gauges or dive computers. That was on the agenda to see if all were altitude-adjusted and whether readings differed or not. I had my Uwatec SmartZ computer on my left wrist and the Timex Helix on my right. At the bottom the SmartZ showed 42 feet and the Timex 41. Close enough.

Lake Tahoe is wonderfully clear and generally has great viz, but a group of mostly novice divers all gathered at the bottom can fix that in a hurry and so we'd soon kicked up enough sand and silt to make it advisable to move on. The bottom at Meeks Bay is sandy and shallow until it slopes away into the abyss at a 45 degree angle. There isn't a whole lot to see and so we swam along the slope at 50 feet or so. Visibility remained marginal for Tahoe and so our initial convoy soon lost sight of each other and split into smaller groups of twos and fours. It's amazing how quickly you can lose sight of other divers underwater. There weren't any boulders here or schools of fish, and so I mostly concentrated on buoyancy, checking my gear and instruments, and watching the occasional crawdad do its thing. Later I noticed that the temperature had actually dropped all the way to 50 degrees at some point and I never even noticed.

Morgan greeted us on the surface, clearly having a good time. We parked the gear at the shore and debriefed. Our assignment for the second altitude dive was to do a full dive plan, adjusted for altitude, pressure groups and all. Here's what Carol and I came up with:

Our first dive had been to 50 feet at Tahoe altitude of 6,230 feet. The 50 feet translates to a theoretical depth of 65 feet at sea level, so we round up to 70 feet. Our first dive was 29 minutes, so after that first dive we were PADI "N" divers. We then had a surface interval of 2:20 hours, and that brought us down to "A" diver status.

Our dive plan for the second dive was to go to 50 feet again. That again translated to a theoretical depth of 65 feet at sea level. We rounded that up to 70 feet, and found that as "A" divers with a residual nitrogen time of five minutes, that left us with an adjusted bottom time of 35 minutes.

That was that, and we conducted the dive in accordance with the plan. On the second dive I used my compass to navigate to the northern edge of the beach where the underwater scenery was more interesting. We saw some of the huge boulders that had fascinated me on prior dives at Meeks. We swam around and between them, all at non-intimidating depths of just 30 to 40 feet or so. It was a fairly long underwater swim back to the beach, and I used that to once again practice buoyancy at shallow depths where staying level is most difficult. Once you reach eight or ten feet or so, it's all too easy to pop up like a cork and you don't want for that to happen. Constantly correcting by adding air to the BC and then discharging it again is no good; you need to learn to achieve buoyancy by changing the average volume of air in your lungs. Carol barely ever needs her ScubaPro Ladyhawk BC's assistance to maintain buoyancy, and I am getting better at it myself.

We were done diving by two o'clock in the afternoon or so, then headed for lunch/dinner at Rosie's Cafe in Tahoe City. Rosie's alone would have been worth the trip with some of the best Key Lime pie ever, but we also needed to let the residual nitrogen escape from our systems before we tackled the 7,400 feet summit on our way back.

This wasn't the greatest diving ever, but it was fun and I finally have that altitude card in the bag. Not that the card matters. Diving matters, the preparation and anticipation, the people you meet, everything about it. I love it.

What we learn in Scuba class always assumes that the pressure at the surface is one atmosphere, or 14.7 pounds per square inch. Course materials then show how a certain volume of air is compressed to half at a depth of 33 feet because the additional pressure of the water on top of us adds another atmosphere, or 14.7 pounds per square inch, for a total of two atmospheres, or 29.4 pounds per square inch. At 66 feet the same volume of air is subjected to three atmospheres and has shrunk to one third of its original surface volume. Conversely, if you blow a certain amount of air into a balloon at a depth of 66 feet, that volume will double once you get back up to 33 feet, and triple at the surface. This is an essential part of understanding diving physics.

However, does this still hold true at altitude? Let's think this through with the example of Lake Tahoe, which is at 6,230 feet above sea level.

At first sight, it would seem that once you are fully acclimated to the Lake Tahoe altitude level, theoretical and actual depth should be the same. At Tahoe you start out at a surface air pressure of roughly 0.8 atmospheres. If you then dive down to 99 feet you'd add another atmosphere's worth of pressure each 33 feet, for a total of 3.8 atmospheres. Then you go back up to the surface where the pressure is once again 0.8 atmospheres. So the pressure difference betwen surface and 99 feet is three atmospheres. At sea level you'd go from 1.0 atmosphere at the surface to 4.0 atmospheres at a depth of 99 feet, and then back up to 1.0 atmospheres, for the same pressure difference of three atmospheres. If anything, when diving in Lake Tahoe you have less total pressure on top of you at 99 feet than at sea level (3.8 ata instead of 4.0 ata) where you'd reach 3.8 ata already at 93 feet. So why then do the altitude tables show that 99 feet at Tahoe corresponds to an ocean depth of about 125 feet and not 93?

The answer is that while the math in the above paragraph is correct, it does not address the problem we're trying to solve. The problem is the uptake of nitrogen, and that means we need to think in terms of pressure ratios and not pressure differences. At sea level, the pressure doubles at 33 feet compared to the surface, triples at 66 feet, and quadruples at 99 feet. Now look at Lake Tahoe where the surface pressure is only 0.8 atmospheres. That corresponds to 26.4 feet of water. So when you dive Lake Tahoe, the pressure doubles at 26.4 feet, triples at 52.8 feet, and quadruples at 79.2 feet. This means that as far as nitrogen ongassing and offgassing goes, you need to divide actual depth by surface pressure to arrive at theoretical depth.

That's because in Lake Tahoe, four times surface pressure is reached at 79.2 feet whereas at sea level four times surface pressure is reached at 99 feet. Henry's law says, "At a constant temperature, the amount of a given gas dissolved in a given type and volume of liquid is directly proportional to the partial pressure of that gas in equilibrium with that liquid." The way gasses dissolve and expand in liquids and tissues in the body is very complex, but if for simplicity's sake we assume that nitrogen bubbles expand as we ascend to the surface, those bubbles will expand to four times their size from a 79.2 feet dive in Lake Tahoe and from a 99 feet dive at sea level. That is why we need altitude conversion tables (click here for an example of such a chart.)

Below is a table that shows what I call "altitude nitrogen atmospheres." The colored lines show what depth surface pressure multiples correspond to at various altitudes. If you look at the purple line you see that as far as dive tables go, a 132 feet dive at sea level corresponds to a 110 feet dive at 5000 feet altitude and a 98 feet dive at 8000 feet altitude.

It should be obvious by now that altitude conversion tables are used to stay within safe decompression limits. So they handle the nitrogen side of things. But what about oxygen? That's an entirely different ballgame. As anyone who has taken an Enriched Air Diving, or Nitrox, class knows, high oxygen partial pressure can become a problem. Oxygen toxicity can occur when oxygen partial pressure exceeds certain values. This can lead to convulsions and loss of consciousness, and thus quite possibly drowning. The recommended oxygen partial pressure limit is 1.4 ata. The 1.4 ata limit is used by Nitrox divers to compute the "MOD," or "Maximum Operating Depth" of a Nitrox mix. The formula used to compute the MOD is:

MOD = (1.4 / oxygen percentage x 33 ) - surface pressure in feet of water.

If we dive EANx32 (32% Nitrox) at sea level, the MOD is 111.38 feet. But what would the MOD be if we dive 32% Nitrox at Lake Tahoe where the surface pressure is only about 0.8 ata? The answer is 118 feet! Yes, the MOD for diving EANx32 at that altitude is actually 6.4 feet deeper than at sea level. In fact, those 6.4 feet apply to all Nitrox percentages. That's because oxygen toxicity depends on pressure and not on pressure ratio.

That creates an interesting situation: As far as pressure goes, 99 feet in Tahoe is only as much as 93 feet in the ocean. But as far as nitrogen uptake goes those same 99 feet are like 125 in the ocean.

If we dive air, oxygen toxicity is rarely an issue. At Lake Tahoe levels, an air diver would not reach the 1.4 ata partial oxygen pressure level until a depth of almost 200 feet, far deeper than the recommended recreational diving depth limit. For Nitrox divers, however, the MOD can become an issue. At Lake Tahoe altitude, the MOD for a diver using 36% Nitrox is about 103 feet, and that is actual feet, not altitude adjusted feet.

The table below shows altitude-adjusted MOD levels for air as well as Nitrox with oxygen percentages between 30 and 40 percent. Again, the MOD at altitude gets deeper because the surface pressure, converted to the equivalent of feet of water, gets less and less.

But what about altitude adjustment for Nitrox divers? Can they use the same altitude tables? Not directly. Nitrox divers know that in order to use regular dive tables, we need to first calculate the equivalent air depth, or EAD. The formula to compute EAD is:

EAD = (( Partial Pressure Nitrogen / 0.79 ) * (depth + 33 feet)) - 33 feet

You can generate Nitrox Equivalent Air Depth tables in a spreadsheet program with this formula, then use those values to generate a second table that shows Equivalent Air Depth for a given percentage Nitrox at a given altitude, and then use those twice adjusted depths to look up maximum no-decompression bottom times in standard dive tables. What you'll find is that using Nitrox at altitude almost cancels out the effect of altitude: At altitude the equivalent ocean depth is deeper than the actual depth as far as nitrogen goes. But with diving Nitrox the equivalent air depth is always shallower than the actual depth as far as nitrogen goes. Depending on the altitude, diving a certain mix of Nitrox means you can use the standard no-decompression sea level air tables. For diving Lake Tahoe, for example, using 34% Nitrox gives you about the same bottom times as diving air at sea level.

I should also mention that NAUI has plastic dive tables for EAN32 and EAN36 both for altitudes between 2,000 and 6,000 feet and 6,000 and 10,000 feet. The tables are based on the Reduced Gradient Bubble Model and show maximum dive times for the initial dive and a second dive. They are fairly basic and probably include a good deal of safety.

Finally, it's essentially all moot as no one is using dive tables anymore anyway. The dive computer does it all, and almost no one knows how theirs works. That's why I felt a need to figure out how it all fits together. It's still good to know these things. Thanks also to Brian at diverssupport.com for helping me understand all these concepts.

Disclaimer: Although I am fairly confident in my math and checked my findings and results against a number of authoritative sources I do not claim all of this is correct and no one should base their dive plans on what I wrote here.

Anyway, the full-face mask was interesting. I had always viewed them as professional equipment beyond the reach and realm of recreational diving. In the "masks" section of our scubadiverinfo.com website I described full-face masks as follows:

"Full face masks protect professional and advanced recreational divers in polluted water and from stings, also allow verbal communication, and alleviate cramps from having to bite on a mouthpiece for long periods of time. They are also warmer in very cold water, and the chance of the mask getting knocked off accidentally is much lower. Full face masks are also referred to as "Jack Browne" masks in recognition of the Desco engineer who came up with the protytpe design of a full face mask with an integrated air supply attachment."

In practice, the full-face mask first looks a bit intimidating. It's large and it has a fairly elaborate strap system. The second stage is built into the mask, so there is no separate mouthpiece. You don't bite on one either. You simply put the mask on, get your hair out of the way, and you're all set. You still breathe through your mouth. The nose is kind of blocked with a rubber piece. BC inflation works the same, with the usual up and down buttons and there was the usual backup second stage, though I am not sure how you'd use it with a full-face mask.

Go under and it's an entirely different experience.

The view is panoramic, and much more so than with any conventional mask I've tried, and by now I've tried quite a view different designs. I wish I could remember the make and model of the mask as, from the looks of it, not all full-face masks offer this panoramic view. As is, this one certainly stood out.

Breathing feels totally natural. It's through the mouth, but not having a mouthpiece to bite on is a huge advantage in my book. Most mouthpieces chafe on my gums or my jaw gets tired from the mouthpiece forever pulling this way or that.

Equalizing your ears is a bit different. The mask did not have the separate nosepiece I use to pinch my nose and blow against it to equalize. The advice was to either move your jaw from side to side or some variation of that, or to move the mask up to block the nose inside as it pushes against that rubber piece in the mask, and then blow against it. I can't remember exactly how I did it, but it was no big deal and certainly not a problem.

Since air flows inside the mask, there is no mask squeeze and you do never have to equalize pressure inside the mask. That's never been a problem for me, but some people forget to do it, sometimes with annoying consequences. All in all, not having to worry about it is nice.

Another big issue for me is mask fogging. I've tried just about every trick to keep my mask from fogging and it does it anyway. This is a real drag. I mean, you don't go diving to see a wondrous underwater world only to see it from behind a fogged-up mask. Sure, you can let some water in and swirl it around the lens occasionally, but that's hardly a satisfying solution. The full-face mask -- at least the one I tried -- did not fog up at all. I suppose it's because of the airflow. It's wonderful not to have to worry about that.

And then there is mask leaking. I was wondering how such a large mask would do. After all, the perimeter of the seal is a lot longer than that of a conventional mask. Amazingly, not as much as a single drop came in. Maybe that's again because of the positive air pressure. If the pressure inside and outside of the mask is the same, water won't come in.

As listed above, there are other reasons to wear a full-face mask. One is to be able to communicate with dive buddies who also wear a full face mask with communications gear, and with the surface. Since you don't have anything in your mouth you can talk, and an integrated microphone then picks it up. I didn't have the battery pack that powers the comms gear and so could not see how well it works.

As for the saltwater pool, it wasn't nearly as salty as I expected. It was also absolutely crystal clear and clean. I'll have to look into it for my own pool.

Quarries start out as open-pit mines where rocks and other materials are extracted. Once the quarry is no longer used it may fill with water and become a great place for diving. The place I went to is Loch Low-Minn near Athens, Tennessee, a 10-acre lake in the midst of 100 acres of wooded land. Check the web and you find it listed as a McMinn County Highway Department quarry that yielded crushed limestone for concrete and roads in the early 1960s. Its use as a scuba facility came about when a couple by the name of Rick and Stacy Low purchased the quarry in 1996. They named the place Loch (Scottish for Lake) Low (for their last name) Minn (for McMinn County). This quarry is quite popular and has been featured in Dive Training Magazine a couple of times. The owners live on site and take good care of the grounds and the facility. Unlike many quarries, this one has a good number of scuba-related attractions. There are two wooden diving platforms, floating gates for buoyancy training, a navigation course, and any number of sunken artifacts ranging from statues to a Lock Ness monster to funky items like a toilet and such. There is also a large diameter tube to swim through.

Depending on the water level, Loch Low Minn can be as deep as just over 80 feet at the center of the lake. I'd been told that visibility is quite good for a quarry, resulting from the three springs that seep into the lake and all the vegetation that filters run-off from around the lake.

We went there mid-week with a couple of students that had to complete their open water certification. The quarry owners were not there, but had left the big rolling entrance gate unlocked for us. The quarry itself is completely hidden. You don't see it until you drive over an incline and then there it is, a still body of water nestled into rocks and woods. There's a beach and a wooden deck with benches for divers to prepare. A bunch of catfish and a few bass swam around, obviously expecting to be fed.

It was quite hot and humid and I dreaded donning the wetsuit, but my new 7mm Scubapro went on a lot easier than my old 7mm Telos. For one thing, the Scubapro is a medium-long and a better fit than the medium Telos with its short arms and legs. For another, the Scubapro's material is stretchier and softer. It'd been a while since my last real dive and I didn't want to embarrass myself in front of two students, so I prepped my gear slowly and methodically, making sure I didn't forget anything or do anything stupid.

The water felt wonderful, with a surface temperature in the 70s. Carol spent some time talking to her students about the dives ahead and the tasks they had to complete: buoyancy control, emergency free ascents and diver rescue. Then we went down, heading for one of the diving platforms.

As almost always, I had a few minutes of nervousness. Visibility was somewhat less than I expected, and there were rather dramatic thermoclines. The quarry bottom slopes away steeply from the beach and so we soon found ourselves in fairly deep water. I saw the bottom below me disappear, making me feel as if I hovered over nothingness. Then we hit one of the thermoclines that gripped and chilled my body. There was a minute or two when I had to fight a sense of panic ('what if I something went wrong with me?' 'what if I faint?') that urged me to head for the surface. It was over soon and I felt okay again, but the thought of something happening while underwater is not pleasant and I hope I'll never find myself in such a situation.

We soon reached one of the platforms and Carol went through the checkout dive drills with her students. I had the Olympus 770 with me and took pictures of them. Then I saw some of the sunken artifacts I had been told about. I went exploring but the visibility was such that the dive platform quickly disappeared from view. I did not want to get separated from the group and returned before I completely lost sight of it.

Exercises done, we all resurfaced. Carol debriefed the guys and then we set course to the far end of the quarry where we hoped we'd spot some of paddlefish that had been released into the quarry a couple of years ago. This gave the guys an opportunity to learn about compass settings. When asked how they'd reverse the course once we were there, they promptly made the beginners' mistake of trying to visualize what was opposite the original compass reading instead of simply adding 180 degrees. That explained, off we went.

Even though there wasn't anyone else in the quarry to stir up silt, visibility remained fairly low and I realized the value of Carol's bright-yellow fins that made her harder to loose than had she worn standard black ones. As we approached the other end we began seeing slender horizontal shapes in the water -- paddlefish. They seem to be curious enough to check out divers but they don't come close, so I never saw one clear enough to take a picture. While Carol and the guys hovered to look at the paddlefish I decided to drop down to see where the bottom was but at around 40 feet it already got pretty cold dark and I lost sight of the group, and so I ascended until I was at their level again.

Carol then took the lead again and guided us close to the rock wall at the far end. For all practical purposes, it looked like a wall dive. It may have only gone down to 60 or 70 feet, but with the limited visibility it was easy to imagine being in a much larger setting. On we went and back into open water where we swam through a series of hovering PVC pipe shapes. It felt like being in a video game where you got points for flying through a series of gates. The shapes, of course, had been deployed to practice buoyancy. I had hoped we'd also be able to swim through the corrugated metal pipe laying near one of the diving platforms. I had seen it on video and felt it was a clever simulation of an overhead environment without actually being one, but it was on the other side of where we emerged and by now we were at the end of the checkout dives.

We checked remaining air with Carol, needless to say, having used barely more than half of us heavy breathers. Oh, this was also my first time on Nitrox. Since I hadn't brought any scuba gear except my trusted Scubapro Frameless mask I was using borrowed gear. The BC, fins and gauges all worked fine for me, except some chafing on my gums from the different second stage mouthpiece, but I was wondering whether I'd feel a difference diving 40% Nitrox. I didn't. A couple of times I felt a bit like one does after hyperventilating on purpose but I could be wrong. I felt no different after surfacing than I usually feel after a dive, but we'd never gone deeper than 40 feet and total dive time had been just under an hour, so I'll reserve judgement until a longer, deeper dive.

Diving the quarry was fun. It's a very peaceful place with nothing but nature. Before we left we fed the very tame catfish and the pesky bass that always darted between the catfish and snapped away the food from them. I want to go back and have some more time exploring the various stuff placed on the bottom, and also the rock wall on the far end. I am pretty sure I'll get a chance.

Getting the gear out reminded me once again that scuba is equipment-intensive. And almost all of it is needed for a dive. Another good reason to keep it all in one place. A complete set of my stuff is in a large travel bag that I bought at CostCo for just this purpose. It's not a scuba bag, but perfect for the task. I hope it'll hold up to the abuse of many more airplane trips. Things are already beginning to fray a bit here and there. That's probably the difference between a $40 bag and one that costs hundreds.

I was also reminded again just how heavy those tanks are as I shlepped one from my garage through the house and into the backyard. Sure, my steel 95s are monsters and Carol forever advocates the use of smaller and handier tanks for regular dives, but there's just a huge difference between the effortless way happy, smiling divers carry their tanks around in movies and commercials, and how heavy the beasts are in real life. Every time I pick one up I think of cave divers with their doubles, or the deep divers who carry and clip on five or more. Maybe sometime in the future materials science has advanced to a point where compressed air containers, if they are necessary at all, will weigh a fraction of what they do today and people will look at today's gear with the same mix of awe, reverence and amusement we peruse a medieval Knight's suit of armor.

I was pleased that I still remembered how to get the gear assembled. No mistakes there. I know, this must seem trivial to seasoned divers but -- alas -- I am not yet one of them. And I swear, one of these days I'll even learn how to put on my fins more or less elegantly. As is, watching me put them on must be comic relief and raise doubts in onlookers' minds as to my suitability to go under.

But go under I did, and it was great to blow bubbles again. Everything worked fine and, as always, my 12-year-old son had fun looking down with his mask and snorkel and playing with my bubbles. He also practiced his underwater photographer's skills with a Casio in an underwater case. I let him breathe through my regulator just below the surface while I used my AIR2 backup. That's when I noticed a minor annoyance: the nylon tie that secures the mouthpiece of the AIR2 stuck out in the wrong position, poking me in the lip. No big deal, but I always get a bad feeling when factory-authorized service on a potentially life-saving piece of equipment is not done quite right. I mean, if the tie is put on wrong, am I totally sure everything else works okay?

After the 35 minute dive (if you can call practicing in a backyard pool a dive) I was reminded that the end of a dive is really not the end of a dive. That comes only after everything has been taken off, rinsed, put somewhere to dry, and then finally stowed away in its proper place.

Now that my son is old enough to take a scuba class himself, I find myself wondering if I think he's ready for it, and whether I'd be scared letting him dive. I know it's a parent thing to worry, and I'll let him decide if he wants to and when he is ready.

I just finished reading "The Dive -- A Story of Love and Obsession" by Pipin Ferreras. It's the story of a Cuban free diver who set record after record together with his wife, Audrey. A fatal accident killed Audrey during a dive to 170 meters (558 feet) and the book recalls Ferreras life and is also a tribute to his wife. Earlier I had read "The Blue Edge" by Carlos Eyles, also a man who pretty much dedicated his life to free diving, albeit for different reasons. But whether it is records, spear fishing, or just being one with the sea, it is hard for me to imagine how it is done.

Scuba and free diving both take place in the water, but beyond that everything seems different. Scuba dives can take an hour or more. Free dives a couple of minutes or maybe three for accomplished free divers. Scuba is slow and measured movement; free diving means darting down and back to the surface. Scuba means dealing with the gas laws so as to avoid embolisms, narcosis, the bends; free diving has none of that as no additional nitrogen is introduced into the body.

Competitive free diving, of course, has its own rules and governing bodies. There are different categories. In "Constant Weight" the diver follows a line to a certain depth and then swims back up, all on his or her own power. In "Variable Weight" the diver uses a weighted sled to go down, then swims back up. In "No Limit," the diver uses a sled to go down, then inflates an airbag at the bottom and holds on to that to get back to the surface. The depths reached are almost unimaginable. How can they do that?

Apparently, in free diving the rules are all different. With no compressed air to counter-balance the enormous water pressure, the lungs and other air cavities inside the body compress enormously. Conventional equalization of the ears and sinus only goes that far; beyond a certain depth the divers do "water equalization, " i.e. they let salt water into the sinus system in a practice that is described as entirely unpleasant. And another phenomenon takes place when a "blood shift" keeps the lungs from collapsing. It's a residual from ancient times perhaps, from our genetic past, but it works (not that I'd ever want to experience it).

The kind of free diving described in "The Dive" requires extensive planning and preparation. Safety divers on scuba are deployed at regular depth intervals, including the bottom. In those extreme record attempts, that means a diver has to wait at almost 600 feet on Trimix. Breathing gas goes very fast at that depth and it's clear that timing is everything. Once the safety divers are down, the free diving attempt must be made exactly on time. And even so, the deeper safety divers won't be back on the surface to partake in the celebrations as there are hours of decompression time.

Wherever there are records and titles, there are politics and competing agencies and bodies, and apparently that's no different in free diving. In his book, Ferreras describes his life and career, and his intense personality that more or less made him an outcast. Already relying on his own certifying agency, after his wife died in her record attempt he came under intense criticism. One of his own crew wrote a book accusing Ferreras of negligence and wrongdoing.

Knowing my tendency to get deeply involved in topics that interest me, I promised myself not to start research on free diving after I finished the book. But in this day and age that's hard to do. Wiki provides an overview, and Audrey Mestre's final dive is right there on YouTube. Yes, the sled's camera recorded how she is trying to inflate the lift bag at a depth of 558 feet, and it won't inflate. You can watch the whole thing.

Running the scubadiverinfo.com site, I get almost every diving-related accident notice via Google news. I don't post them but file them away. It makes no sense to highlight just the danger and the bad things that can happen. Life is dangerous, even one's bathroom where most domestic fatalities occur. I don't see Better Homes & Gardens Magazine report on that very often. It's not necessary.

I first heard of this accident after Carol's certification trip to Ginnie Springs. A cave diver had died the week prior. He had been deep inside the cave system. There had been silting of the system as a result, it was said, and apparently the diver had gone in there by himself with experimental rebreather equipment. I looked it up on Google News and found just three references to it. Compared to the international coverage of the shark-related death during a shark feeding trip, that's a virtual news blackout. In fact, it was just the Gainesville Sun and the local High Springs Heralds that reported at all, or at least that is what Google picked up.

The reports were brief, but what caught my eye was that this was a diver from my native Switzerland. His name was Mark Fyvie, and the paper reported he'd been diving alone, entering the Ginnie Springs underground and underwater caves through the Devil's Eye entry just past noon. When he had not returned by 9pm, another diver by the name of Corey Mearns went looking for him, and Mark Fyvie was found 3,800 feet into the system. The IUCRR (International Underwater Cave Rescue and Recovery) non-profit posted a new thread on the cavediver.net forum entitled "Fatality beyond the Hinkel" in the afternoon of March 11. The report said the diver had used a side mount/no mount rig for passage through a suspected new lead. It was reported that an IUCRR recovery team brought out the body at 9AM on March 11.

I then searched through Tages Anzeiger, the big local newspaper in Zurich, Switzerland but did not find a mention. However, I quickly found Mark Fyvie's website and this is where everything became very emotional. Zurich is my hometown. I grew up there. Zurich Divers, which he started and ran, was Mark Fyvie's diving homebase. His personal site was not in German but in flawless English, which surprised me. I can usually tell translations from German into English, but his English was perfect.

I saw Mark's credentials. He'd been diving since 1993 and a diving instructor since 2000. He had almost a thousand dives to his name. He was a PADI IDC Staff Instructor, an Emergency First Response Instructor Trainer, a DSAT Tec Trimix Instructor, a DSAT Gast Blender Instructor, and an IANTD Technical Cave Instructor. He was also certified as a Closed Circuit Rebreather cave diver, Trimix diver, cave scooter diver, and specially trained on the Mealodon rebreather. So Mark was certainly no noob or amateur. A look at Mark's diving highlights is a trip around the world. He'd been diving and cave diving all over the place, with extensive cave diving, sometimes weeks at a time.

Mark reported on a two week dive trip to the Ginnie Springs area where they'd penetrated 3,800 feet, past the Hinkel restriction. In April of 2007 he did his Megalodon training with a true diving legend, Jill Heinerth of RebreatherPro.com and Jill was highly complimentary of Mark both as a person and as a skillful diver. Mark himself, on his site, was completely aware of the pros and cons of rebreathers. "Some people who dive rebreathers think that once you buy one you must do every single dive with it." Mark wrote, "I don't agree at all. A CCR is a dangerous device that could kill you at any time, why take the risk of using one on a simple dive that could be done more safely with open circuit?"

Another entry from November 2007 describes a full month of cave diving with the Megalodon rebreather in the Americas. This is where he got his CCR Cave and CCR Trimix certifications and also descended down to 272 feet in Eagle's Nest. He was enthusiastic and wrote, "Now I realise what closed-circuit rebreathers are for - it's totally changed the way I can dive caves." He went on to say, "The bad part is finding a dive buddy for this kind of diving. Even in cave country it's tough and I had to do most of the dives alone. ... Now, feeling rather limited by the duration of my CO2 scrubber, I purchased a new radial scrubber, which should easily be able to handle durations of up to ten hours. I can't wait until my next trip in February."

Again I was surprised by the consistently high quality of his English, then found that Mark wasn't Swiss. He'd been born in South Africa, then had lived in New Zealand, Australia, England, Germany and finally Switzerland. He was truly an international citizen, always traveling and exploring new things and places. Switzerland was not going to be his final destination and even after having been away from my native country for over 30 years, I chuckled at Mark's comment that he yearned "for a place where he can shop on Sundays, take a shower after 10pm". It's true. Your neighbors may call the police if you take a shower after 10pm, shops are rarely open, bars close early and at last in my days, you had to register with the police if you moved from one neighborhood to another.

What made me cry was another part of his website. It was about his wedding. He had proposed to his sweetheart and they were going to get married on September 6th of 2008 in Venice. Mark had it all planned out, described every step. He had his whole life ahead of him. It is just so very sad.

At this point I was abundantly clear that this was not just another reckless diver who didn't know what he was doing. This was an extremely accomplished, very smart man who planned meticulously and left nothing to chance. I have done quite a few things in my life, have moved around, seen many different places, have had different careers, but nothing like Mark who was only 36 years old when he died. Looking at his many other interests, I saw that he'd been learning Japanese and wanted to live there someday, was enthusiastic about biodiesel in Australia, Pilates training in Switzerland, all on top of being a certified Cisco engineer.

But there was more. Mark also initiated a discussion forum for English speakers in Switzerland, the englishforum.ch. There was a need for that as Swiss German is as close to a legal secret code as it gets. Mark had commented that while "he was fluent in German, he was completely baffled by Swiss-German and unable to understand even more than a few words." That's because you cannot learn Swiss German. It is only a spoken language. So Mark created a place to help English speakers in the Swiss society. I know the software he used as I use it to run a large forum/community myself. His setup was, of course, completely up-to-date and nicely customized. An "In Memoriam: Mark Fyvie (1972-2008)" was posted on March 13. Within days it had over 300 replies and testimonies to what a great and wonderful person he'd been and how many he had helped. His work had touched people's lives. From all I read about him, I guess he just couldn't help helping others.

Jill Heinerth herself wrote a post and tribute to Mark, her student and friend. She said Mark was a "peer among a very elite group of the world's extremely accomplished and capable technical divers" and that "Mark contributed more to the cave diving community than can ever be measured." In a eulogy on her own website at rebreatherpro.com, Jill wrote "But the reality is that manipulating your own atmosphere for life support is the most dangerous thing you will ever do. Add to that advanced activities like cave diving and exploration and we are on the razor’s edge."

In the end, Mark's time was up, much too soon. In my reading I have often come across divers' frustration when a fatality is simply dismissed as drowning, leaving up to speculation what actually may have happened, and why. Sometimes it's obvious, often it is not. The Megalodon is a rugged, modular and highly regarded electronically-controlled closed circuit rebreather with redundant electronics and a HUD display made by InnerSpace Systems. Mark had indicated he had purchased a radial instead of the standard axial scrubber. The radial scrubber would be able to last as much as ten hours underwater. Inner Space says CisLunar scrubbers also work on the Megalodon and according to an evaluation of the Meg on spiralbound.net, others do as well, though only the CisLunar is mentioned as being radial. Whether or not that made Mark's unit experimental I don't know.

Now one is not supposed to dive solo, though I've read of many wreck divers who feel solo is actually safer under certain conditions where panic can easily result into two fatalities instead of one rescue. As is, my Cavern/Cave Diver Workbook by the National Association for Cave Diving says to "dive with a properly trained and equipped diving partner and maintain diving team continuity throughout the dive." However, that only seems to be a philosophy and not a requirement. As far as safe cave diving goes, "The NACD strongly advocates diving with a partner as the best approach to safe cave diving." Mark had already concluded that finding a suitable buddy for extended time diving was difficult and that he had to do most of his dives alone.

It is equally important to let others know one's dive plan in case something goes wrong. His dive plan was known as he was enthusiastic about his plans and wanted to share with his friends, and at least that aided in the recovery.

The rest is mystery. I'll likely never know what happened, exactly, and it is none of my business. I did not know Mark personally, but his story, so well documented, deeply touched me. May he rest in peace and his loved ones find some sort of solace, nearly impossible though that is.

It's really an amazing thing, those Florida springs. I mean, when it comes to Florida, most people think of sandy beaches, the keys, spring break madness, alligators, swamps, and -- if they are old enough -- perhaps Miami Vice. They'd probably associate Florida with diving, but in the ocean and not inland and certainly not in some of the clearest, freshest water anywhere. But that is what you get in Florida's springs.

How did it all happen in what most people think is just swampland? Well, the northern part of Florida has a vast underground aquifer with several hundred springs. Together they discharge almost ten billion gallons of fresh water a day, with some of the larger ones contributing hundreds of millions of gallons to that total each day. It's all part of a giant storage system. The water originates as rainfall that then penetrates limestone where it is filtered and accumulates in fissures and holes. Combined with carbon dioxide and decaying plant matter, the water becomes mildly acidic and, over many thousands of years, enlarges cracks and holes and creates passages. What it all means is that there is a vast underground system of caverns and caves, many interconnected, in northern Florida and this is the source of all those springs.

The term "springs" is perhaps a bit inadequate because the vast freshwater resources contained in the Floridian limestone system creates all sorts of natural wonders. There are, of course, springs, and they often come right out of the ground. Somehow I associate springs and rivers as something that originates higher up, in the mountains, and then makes its way towards the sea. But Florida's springs come from underground. When you dive, you often see holes at the bottom, with water pushing out of them. Sometimes it's just little boils in the sand. You see them in the clear water, see individual grains of sand twirling around, and feel the flow when you put your hand on them.

But all that water also created grand caverns, nearly endless caves, and also many sinkholes. When we think of sinkholes we generally think of the evening news reporting on a hole in the ground that all of a sudden opened up, collapsing a road or swallowing a home. Those sort of things are usually blamed on human transgressions such as draining or over-using the watertable. However, sinkholes also happen naturally when water slowly eats away at limestone until a ceiling collapses and forms an open entry into the underground spring system.

A good explanation of all this can be found on the "The Journey of Water" webpage of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.

What does all this mean to divers? It means that Florida has perhaps some of the best diving in the world, and it is in places where you'd never expect it. Instead of sandy beaches, tropical islands, and dive boats, Florida diving seems all shallow rivers and small ponds, some of which covered in duck weed and hard to spot. Once inside, the water is usually crystal clear. That's because it is not stagnant like in a lake, but constantly replaced by the vast volume of water from the underground springs. This phenomenon is exploited by a good number of popular parks and campgrounds located around those springs. People go there to swim and snorkel and just have a good time.

To me, this is what makes Florida's springs so fascinating. There is endless variety. To some people they offer an enjoyable get-away in one of the well-maintained parks with their lush, prehistoric-looking groves and clear, refreshing ponds. Some come to watch the Manatees which like to hang out in the springs. And some dive the caverns and the caves where things can get quite extreme. Manatee Springs state park, for example, both contains a friendly pond and the entrance to a vast underwater caves system that's testing the very limits of courage, skills and endurance in the exploration of many thousands of feet of labyrinthine cave.

During my online explorations I was reminded again of the thin line that separates harmless, enjoyable fun from entry into a deep twilight zone that's as challenging and dangerous as exploring outer space. When Carol and I last dove the Catfish Hotel sink in Manatee Springs state park, I both marveled at the dreamy underwater world that looked like right out of a Pixar movie and shivered knowing that the dark cavern at its bottom was the starting point of Sheck Exley's explorations into the black unknown of endless caves and also where just a few days prior a young man had died when the water had sucked him into the cave.

Ginnie Springs where Carol certified her class likewise has a bright and a dark side. The water in the small spring/pond area is gin-clear, as the location's name implies, but just yards away, underground, lies a massive cave system that has claimed many lives. None other than the great Sheck Exley almost died at Ginnie early in his cave diving career. And, as she later found out, a week before Carol's certification trip, a cave diver had perished deep inside the Ginnie system. Sometimes, a dark side lies just beneath the sunny, friendly surface, and most never even know it's there.

I was reminded yet again of the interesting role Florida's springs play when I found a website dedicated to Florida Springs with almost 50 trip reports and descriptions of springs, rivers and sinkholes in the state's northwest, north and central regions. The site offers an hourlong DVD, entitled "Florida Springs -- The Unexplored Florida" on a good dozen of the more interesting springs. I ordered it and it arrived just a couple of days later. Watching it was an experience. Not only did I see some of the places I had been to myself, but I was reminded again of the secret nature of those treasures. Even the state parks are mostly visited for picnics or swimming and not that many divers know about them.

I also realized once again how diverse the springs are. Some are popular and easily accessible whereas others are virtually unknown or closed off to public access. Some are bright and friendly, others look dark and forbidding. In some you are not allowed to dive at all, in others you pay a fee at the park ranger's office, and some require special permission. According to the DVD, there are even some where you need to check in with the local sheriff and get permission there.

All of this made me want to go back. I'll most likely never dive a cave, will never see what Carol saw, but I may get my cavern certification and poke around some of the better known ones. I cannot wait.