Release the Kraken

One of my children may have an interest in marine biology as future career.  I thought it might be fun for us to take scuba lessons together. I investigated doing this for myself last summer but ran out of time.

The deep end of a swimming pool has always made me uncomfortable. I wouldn't call it a fear as much as a strong unease. I can swim fine but I do not know what could be lurking beneath the surface waiting to drag me down. It is kind of like the feeling when you are walking up the stairs from the dark basement, but stronger.

The Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI) offers courses to get people certified in various levels of scuba diving. I was interested in the very first level which is the Open Water Diver. Eastern Iowa has 3 or 4 shops that offer the course. The first part is usually an taken online with a computer or offline on a tablet. After that is finished, the next step is confined water dives. You get to put on all of the equipment and apply what you have learned so far. I can handle 8 hours in a pool where I can touch the bottom if I need to. The next part, which is sometimes a separate class, is the open diving. This is where I will have to overcome my strong unease. Open dives can be done through any PADI dive center and there are a lot of different places where they do the dives. Some are in a quarry near Cedar Falls, some are in Lake Michigan looking at wrecks, others are in the ocean off the coast of popular vacation spots.

The Library has a few books on scuba diving which I looked through. I immediately flipped to the indexes and made sure none of them listed Kraken, Dagon or mermen. But I do see things like barracudas, scorpion fish, fire coral and territorial biters!