Why you took up diving as a sport?

[Eddie]

I was at the local swimming pool when a divers club started getting ready for their weekly training session, from then on I was hooked! how about you guys and gals?

[Driftwood]

I want to be able to take my clothes off in public and wear rubber......

[PaulC]

Frankly Eddie, the Lonely Planet Guide to Australia said that if you went diving you'd see lots of pretty fishes and attractive corals. And I believed them. I also thought it would give me a wind swept and interesting air and make me attractive to the opposite sex. :rofl: By the time the truth dawned on me in the yacht marina at Coffs Harbour it was too late - I was hooked. I shall however be sending the LP editors a copy of my new book "Silts and Effluents of the North Sea - A Study" (Bollo Publications, £9.95 + p&p) as a token of my appreciation for introducing me to our fascinating sport. :book2:

[Driftwood]

Okay, truthfully my reason was female... So I'm shallow so what! :small:

[Davey Willo]

It was one of those things I'd always fancied doing but never gotten around to.... If I'd known how much i was going to enjoy it I'd have started years ago....
Skydiving next... :scared:

[Jay]

Same as Dave without the plan to Skydive. Like most men, I have also got caught up in the equipment / physics of diving (like the nitrox reply I posted) and the dive planning aspect. I love understanding how things work and why they work and this applies to diving more than anything else I know. I am still totally in awe everytime I make a dive and I hope I will NEVER lose the feeling of total humility and respect I have when I enter the underwater world. I know it sounds cliched but I feel priviledged on every dive I do that I am able to be a part of something more than the mundane trivialities of living on the surface.

[Mr T.]

A mixture of most of the above (except Drift's Rubber Fetish ;) ), plus the fact that the Man Upstairs didn't give us lot wings.....so we'll never be able to fly. Diving, especially on a ripping drift dive, is the closest I'll ever get. Hanging perfectly upside-down whilst going plenty across a reef and being able to adjust your trim, attitude and depth just by either breathing in or out, or with the odd twitch of the ankle to play your fin, is sheer relaxtion and is, for me at least, the ultimate chilling session.

Oh go on, I'll even admit to the Rubber Fetish as well then;)

[Paxo]

T'was a very hot day on Heron Island, a coral cay on the Barrier Reef, and I had booked to go snorkelling of the dive boat.
On the way back to the boat after nigh on an hour floating around in a technicolour paradise, I spotted a white tip reef shark circling at around 10-15 mtrs down. I'd taken one of those flashless underwater cameras you get at these places for a couple of bucks, so a piccy of the beast was a must. Try as I might to duck-dive to within decent range, I'm afraid all I managed was a fuzzy sharky shaped smudge.
But that was it, I decided on the trip back to the resort that the next time I was on the Reef, I would be a qualified diver and I would stay down there all bloody day if I could!
That was 4 years ago, I'm now PADI Advanced and I'm back in Oz in October. Guess what I'll be doing a lot of while Our Lass catches up on the gossip with her best mate!

[Davey Willo]

Now see if I'd seen a white tipped reef shark circling below me while I was snorkeling alone out at sea, I'd scream one of the those silent internal mind screams and get me the f*ck out of there....

[Frog]

Seen all these lovely underwater scenes on TV, and wondered if they really did look like that.  My father said there was only one way to find out.  Learn to dive and see for myself.  I love water, being in it, and at his suggestion, got off my backside and contacted the local pool.  There was a club, they put me through the swimming test, and since then I've never looked back.  Well and truly hooked on diving, and get withdrawal symptoms if out the water too long!  Dive safely.