East Puerto Rico Scuba Diving

Scuba Diving Lessons

Every year more people are drawn into the “Fascination of Scuba Diving”. Modern scuba equipment allows us to dive to depths of a hundred feet and more. This would not be advisable without proper scuba diving lessons! There are a few hazards like pressure related injuries, such as decompression sickness or air embolism that could happen to anyone without good training by a certified scuba diving instructor. As a scuba diver you must be able to calculate how long and how deep you can safely stay underwater. You also need to learn the correct descent and ascent rates.

Scuba means “self contained underwater breathing apparatus”. Sounds complicated? It is not half as complicated as it sounds. Your scuba diving instructor will teach you how to use a PADI diving table and how to calculate your dive time and depth under water. And with the right instructions and the right dive gear you will be able to go scuba diving in no time. Now, if you are looking for the ultimate adventure than you might want to get some Scuba Diving Lessons; and Puerto Rico sure is the right place to get started!

Scuba Diving Equipment

Since we are not able to breathe under water just like fish, scuba divers depend heavyly on their scuba diving gear. What we need to feel comfortable under water and to be able to breath in this, for us, strange environment are only a couple of items. It wasn’t always like that as you sure know. Not so long ago, men could only go diving under water with a huge effort on dive gear, a lot of helping hands and a pump that delivered the air through a pipe to the diver down below. Today we have been able to reduce all that to a simple and easily manageable set of dive gear.

Here is what we need to go scuba diving now:

• A Buoyancy Control Device, or Jacket to keep us floating on the surface and buoyant below
• A Dive Tank filled with fresh clean air so we can breathe under water
• A Regulator to control the air flow from the tank through the mouth piece into our lungs
• A pair of Fins for our far too small feet, so we can swim faster and without much effort
• A Diving Mask, so we can get a clear picture under water and see where we are swimming
• And in some regions it is recommendable to use a Wetsuit, to keep warm

Is Scuba Diving Dangerous?

Fact is, that a diver may be more of a threat to aquatic animals than they would be to us. Some corals for example, can be killed by simply touching them. Most aquatic animals don’t pose any risks to divers, there are however, a few marine life forms that may harm or injure a scuba diver. Common accidents include jelly fish stings, fire corals, and crown of thorns. Sharks and poisonous sea animals, can also injure scuba divers, if they behave improperly. Unprovoked attacks on scuba divers by animals are rarely heard of. Animals behave under water much as they do above, they attack only when they are provoked.

“Scuba diving, being a visual underwater experience, doesn’t include altering the underwater habitat in any way. Divers shouldn’t touch anything, be it a plant, a cute animal or even just an object under water, that could easily have become the home of an animal over time.”

Scuba Diving the Weightless Adventure

You sure have asked yourself by now, how it feels to be submerged 50 feet, surrounded by nothing more than blue water and tropical fish. It is very similar to a space walk. With all your gear on, feeling completely weightless just like flying through space. It’s adventurous!
Once you’ve found out that you actually can breath underwater just as normal as you can breath on the surface, a whole new dimension will open up for the new born scuba diver in you. And after you’ve learned to keep your buoyancy so perfect that you can control your ascent or descent solely by breathing in and out, the real fun begins. You will than be able to fully enjoy the view and your world has just grown by a whole 70%!

Scuba Diving Certification

Once you had your scuba diving lessons and you have finished your PADI Open Water Scuba Diving Course with East Puerto Rico Divers, you will be certified by your scuba diving instructor as a PADI Open Water Diver and you will be able to enjoy your scuba diving adventures anywhere you want. But first of all enjoy scuba diving here in Puerto Rico, the best kept secret of the Caribbean! See unspoiled and healthy coral reefs, colorful and strange looking tropical fish and dolphins, rays and sharks in all shapes and colors. And it’s not like you would have to stop there; there is always the Advanced Open Water Course or if you want to take it a step further, the Rescue Diver Course…….or even master scuba diver.

If you feel like getting started with your scuba diving lessons right away, please contact us here.
Click this link to find more details about the , or
read more about how You can learn to dive right here.

Scuba – What does it mean and where does it come from?

The word SCUBA itself is an abbreviation for Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus.
Today’s scuba diving equipment for recreational diving consists of a tank, filled with compressed air, and a Jacket or BCD to hold the tank and help to become neutrally buoyant under water. They both are connected through an air hose to the so called “demand regulator”. The demand regulator controls the flow of air, filling the diver’s lungs under water. Add a pair of fins, a diving mask and maybe a wetsuit and you’re ready to go scuba diving. This wasn’t always so easy though…

Scuba Timeline – Important Milestones of the Scuba Diving History:

The first time we learn about someone staying under water for longer than the time of one single breath, is in Greek History. Around 500 BC during one of many wars, the Greek soldier Scyllis was taken prisoner, aboard the ship of the Persian King Xerxes. Scyllis learned that Xerxes was to attack the Greek fleet; he grabbed a knife and jumped overboard. The Persians soldiers, who where searching the surface, could not find him and presumed him dead. Scyllis though had used a hollow reed as snorkel to remain under water. He surfaced at night, cutting each ship of his enemies loose with his stolen knife. According to the Greek saga, Scyllis then swam nine miles back to re-join the Greek fleet; he so heroically had saved from harm.

Around 1300 AD Persian divers were using eye goggles, made from polished shells or turtles shields. The Persians also used a hollow reed to breathe under water. But this still wasn’t scuba yet. Another 400 years had to go by to give the word scuba a meaning.

People couldn’t stay out of the water, so around 1530; the first diving bell was invented. A barrel or bell was sunk into the water and a ‘diver’ could undertake some limited research underwater or gather some food, swimming back to the bell to catch a breath in between, until the air was not breathable anymore.

A man called Von Guericke developed the first working air pump in 1650. This air pump was brought to good use by Robert Boyle, a man all divers will get to know better if they decide to go for a professional scuba diving career. Boyle was an English physicist and the inventor of “Boyle’s Law”. One day he observed a gas bubble in the eye of a viper that had been compressed and then decompressed again. In his notes he wrote down: “I have seen a very apparent bubble moving from side to side in the aqueous humor of the eye of a viper at the time when this animal seemed violently distressed in the receiver from which the air had been exhausted.”
This was the first recorded observation of decompression sickness or, as we call it today, “the bends.”

In 1772, Sieur Freminet invented the first re-breathing device that recycled the exhaled air inside a barrel. Yet the invention didn’t have all its security measures in place though and the inventor died on “lack of oxygen” after testing his own apparatus for twenty minutes.

In 1825, English inventor, William James designed another self contained breathing device It was a cylindrical iron “belt”, that was attached to a copper helmet. The belt held about 450psi of air, enough for a seven-minute dive. By the 1830‘s the surface-supplied air helmet was perfected well enough to allow extensive salvage work underwater.

In 1876, an Englishmen named Henry Fleuss invented the first closed circuit, oxygen re-breather. His invention was originally intended to be used for the repair of an iron door in a flooded ship chamber. After the successful repair, Fleuss then made the fatal decision to take his invention to a thirty-foot deep dive underwater. He died from oxygen toxicity; pure oxygen is toxic to humans under pressure.

Two years later, in 1878, Frenchman Paul Bert published the book “La Pression Barometrique”, a 1000-page work containing his physiologic studies of pressure changes. He shows that decompression sickness is due to formation of nitrogen gas bubbles, and suggests, for the first time, gradual ascent as one way to prevent decompression sickness. Bert also shows that limb pain, caused by DCS, can be relieved by recompression.

Ehrich Weiss, better know under his stage name, Harry Houdini – the famous magician, was also an inventor. Houdini’s invention of the “diver’s suit” permited divers, in case of danger, to quickly get themselves of the suit, while submerged and swim to safely. We write the year 1921.

In 1926, the French navy officer, Yves Leprieur invented a system using a 2000 psi steel tank, which flowed air into a full-face mask

In 1937, the Austrian Hans Hass enters the scene and brings the underwater world to the public eye. During a vacation in the south of France, he learned about “goggling”, the newest sport of breath-hold spear fishing. Hass soon becomes a star among his disciples. In the following year, in the Adriatic Sea off Yugoslavia, Hans Hass is the first man to shoots photographs under water with his self-made camera housing. For his dive he used a surface-supplied open diving helmet, which he designed and fabricated himself. Only one year later Hass shoots the world’s first underwater documentary film; “Stalking beneath the Sea” which is followed by countless films and publications in the years to come.

In 1939, American, Dr. Christian Lambertsen designed the first fully functional ‘Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus’ for the U.S. military. It was part of secret war plans under the code name SCUBA. Lambertsen’s scuba gear worked for shallow dives, but too much oxygen in the gas mixture killed the divers in greater depth.

Two years later, in 1941, Hans Hass comes back to set yet another milestone in scuba diving history. He  teams up with Hermann Stellzner and begins diving with a “Draeger Oxygen Rebreather”, which he modified together with Stellzner. The two coined the term, “swim-diving” to differentiate their activities from the surface-supplied “walk-diving.”

The last stage in our journey through time belongs to the two men who are widely responsible for today’s scuba equipment. In 1943, the two Frenchmen, Jacques Cousteau and Emile Gagnan invented the so called demand regulator. Their regulator was connected to three cylinders, each holding 2,500 psi of air. As the name states, the demand regulator would only release air, when needed – thus by breathing in. The complete diving equipment, or “autonomous diving suit” with the pressure regulator, was called the “Aqua-lung”. The “Aqua-lung” is the basis for scuba diving equipment used today. Historians refer to Cousteau Gagnan as and the “Founding Fathers of Modern Scuba Diving Gear”.