GUEST BLOG: The Tale of Tater

Allow me to introduce myself to the Team Manta world.

They call me.... Tater.

Hello, they call me Tater and I am a Scubaholic.   Ok now that we have the formalities out of the way, why is it that I am writing on the Manta Blog?   I’ve asked myself the same question.  I’m not much of a writer or even a good speaker for that matter and this is definitely my first blog post of any kind.  The reason I am here is that team Manta at one point asked me to be a guest blogger about my experiences of being a Divemaster Candidate (DMC).  When my instructor, Lisa brought up, I pretty much ignored the request, hoping it would go away!  Actually it did, so I thought I had escaped.  The more I thought about it though, the more I came to the conclusion that one of the many reasons I am a DMC is that I enjoy SCUBA so much that I not only enjoy the dives, I enjoy sharing SCUBA with others.   So while I hate spelling, grammar and word-smithing, I will give it a shot at sharing my experiences with you and hope it helps someone else with questions of what it might be like.

I am on what I call a slow track towards being a DM in that I am in no rush to get ‘certified’ and feel the longer it takes, the more experience I will have when that time comes.  In other words, I have plenty of time for blogs.  So where do I start?

It all started when I was 8year old…Just kidding, but only sort of.   I am of the generation that actually watched Mike Nelson and Sea Hunt when it was on TV and the signal came over an antenna!! Imagine that!!  I was also a fan of Flipper and Jacques Cousteau.  So the seed was actually planted when I was little.  
When I was a freshman in college you were required to take a fitness course to graduate (wow) and one of the options was SCUBA.  I couldn’t have afforded it on my own, but as part of my tuition it was pretty much free to me, making it an easy choice.  I got certified through UW-Parkside by Water World in December of 1980 at the Racine Quarry.  I loved it then and used to drool over the photos in Skin Diver Magazine each month and dream about tropical diving.  But alas I didn’t get much actual diving in and my struggle to carve out a life pretty much put SCUBA on the back burner.

Fast forward to 2010: Having never taken real vacations (other than camping) when our kids were young, my wife and I decided to go someplace exotic and tropical for our 25th anniversary.   Searching the internet for places to go, I was reminded of the pictures from Skin Diver and started to think again about SCUBA.  Discussing my possible plans with co-workers, I discovered one of them was also a certified diver, but he too hadn’t dived in a while.  We decided to take a refresher course together.  I did an internet search for local dive shops and sent off some email questions.  Based on the responses and a discussion with potential shops, I felt that Manta would be the best shop to work with.  My dive buddy (J.0) and I took the refresher course with Manta.  After the book review, we did a brush up in the pool, and then some open water dives in local quarries with team Manta and also on our own.  I was hooked again. 

I did make it to the Bahamas’ and got in a couple of fantastic dives.  Lot’s of firsts for me; my first time in the ocean, boat dive, drift dive, shark sighting (within 3 minutes of hitting the water), Rays, Parrot fish, Hog Fish and much more.  I was not only hooked, I swallowed the hook.

Fish, fish, everywhere!

From that time on, I wanted to increase my skills and diving knowledge.  I began taking more advanced/specialty classes with Manta.  I’ll share some of that training and what it was like in future posts.  Until then, check out the Manta Calendar, maybe I’ll see you in a class.