For my underwater photos, please see: www.DivePics.ca

I've been diving since mid 2002.  I've done about 400 dives as of late 2006 and typically do about 40-50 a year depending on vacations or summer weather in Ontario.  From the early days I was hooked and there are few things I'd rather be doing than spending time underwater.  For me, there is no other feeling like it and the overall experience is both exciting and relaxing at the same time.  Where else can you spend time looking at the most colorful and beautiful things on the planet while being weightless and floating around in three dimensions?  The excitement comes from knowing you might see something you've never seen before and you never know what surprises each dive has in store.

So far, I've travelled to Mexico (Cozumel), Cuba (various locations), North Carolina, Florida and several areas within Ontario.  Its all different and every location is excellent in it's own way.

Ontario diving is far more challenging than Caribbean diving if you want to take advantage of a full dive season.  If you're brave you can dive all year long and even get under the ice.  I have yet to try this and the odds get slimmer every year as I lean towards diving in warmer water.  Winter diving holds its own challenges wether its under the ice or just in open cold water.  The chances for a regulator freeze up are far increased as you get to temperatures below freezing.  The latest (earliest?) dive I've done so far has been January which lasted for about 15 minutes until my reg froze up which ended the dive.  After that I didn't see the point in getting all the gear prepared and travelling to the dive spot to risk such a short dive so I haven't really attempted much northern winter diving.  I do intend to change my cold-averse attitude someday if I every get to do one of my dream dives in the Antarctic.  Take a look at some of Nortbert Wu's pictures and you'll see how stunning that could be.

No one says that winter diving can't involve a few trips to the sunny south, though.  This is where the diving gets exciting because you can shed all the heavy gear necessary for cold water and just dive in a bathing suit if you desire.  Usually, we end up wearing a thin full body suit no matter where we go as there are quite a few stinging creatures down below and the thin suit protects you from unfriendly tentacles.

The water in the caribbean is warm, clear and full of abundant colorful life.  Ontario can have warm water in certain locations (some of the shallower in-land lakes or the St. Lawrence in July and August, for example).  Ontario will never have the colorful saltwater fish that the ocean contains.  But then the ocean doesn't preserve the one jewel that Ontario has in abundance: shipwrecks!

Shipwrecks in the ocean tend to degrade over the course of a few decades unless they're unexposed.  Wrecks in the great lakes are reasonably well preserved because of the cold fresh water.  Their main enemy is boat anchors and these have done a lot of damage in the past but thanks to heritage conservation agencies like Save Ontario Shipwrecks.  Wreck preservation awareness is increasing and measures have been taken at the educational level along with more material activities like permanent moorings to remove the need for anchoring.

Wreck Diving

Diving on wrecks in fresh or salt water is an excellent opportunity to get some personal experience with history and see something very few people have the privilege of seeing.  Some shipwrecks are sunk on purpose to create artificial reefs, others to discard a weathered hull and others are torpedoed into oblivion due to the ravages of war.  Nature has taken its toll as well - many sailors never made it home to their wives as they fell into the jaws of the unforgiving sea.  Events like this are inevitable in the course of time, but fortunately we have the opportunity to reawaken the past  to discover the history surrounding each shipwreck.

Wreck diving in Ontario is a mixture of experiences.  As I mentioned above, the St. Lawrence can be very warm in the summer months.  Luckily you can find some great wrecks in the Brockville area and these are warm to the bottom and not terribly deep (usually < 120 feet but some in the 70 foot or less range).  Some of these can be in pretty high current though so if you want to make the dive relaxing you need to go with the flow, so to speak.  Fighting current is pointless so you try to avoid it.

Lake Ontario diving is usually colder all year round - the nice warm surface can be deceiving as you hit the first thermocline and realize just how cold it can get down there.

Zebra muscles have also taken their toll on the experience - wrecks are so completely covered now that in some cases they look like nothing more than a pile of zebra muscles in the shape of a shipwreck.  The upside to that is that the visibility has been very good in the past few years because they filter a lot of the small stuff out of the water.  However, gobis have made their way here as well now and are eating the zebra muscles.  I've noticed declining visibility in the past year or so but with any luck that trend won't continue.

Inland Lakes

Honestly, these are rarely very exciting but can be quite relaxing.  I'm fortunate enough to live in an area where we're surrounded by lakes.  These can get beautifully warm in the summer but diving usually ends up being farely low visibility due to the debris that permeates most inland lakes.  I don't mean to imply that they're not worth doing though - you can see things no one else gets to and can often find items that some people like to collect.  There are old bottles, historic garbage and in some cases some Indian relics.  Personally, I think most of it belongs down there as it's pretty mucked up.  When the visibility is good (usually early or late season in colder water) you can see some very interesting rock structures in the lakes found the Canadian Shield.

The local fish aren't terribly exciting either - pickerel, musky, northern pike, bass, american eels, sheepshead and carp are usually the big ones and there are many different smaller ones around all colored in some combination of brown or green.  Muskies can be large but seem to be very skittish, bass are very territorial when they're watching their babies and at other times can be curious and follow you for a small distance.   I've had large schools of perch follow my bright green fins and had some curious sheepshead come up and inspect my mask and camera.

Ocean Diving

This is where it gets very exciting.  I love ocean diving for a lot of reasons.  The visibility is usually excellent, there can be interesting wrecks, reefs present a beautiful landscape and the colors of fish and coral are unmatched anywhere.  The amount of life in the ocean dwarfs what can be found in fresh water at every scale - microscopic and tiny creatures right up to the largest living things in the world.  Tropical water temperature makes it so that you can enjoy all these things in very warm and comfortable surroundings (once you get used to salt water in your eyes).

The best way to describe this is in pictures - so I won't say much more here.  Over the next few years I hope to  be taking many more shots of each of these things and you'll find them all on www.DivePics.ca.

Into The Abyss

Thats all I have to say on diving for now.  I'd highly recommend taking up diving if you think it suits your lifestyle and if you have any questions, contact me and I'll see if I can help out.