Divers- what's your best scuba diving experience?

My best SCUBA experience was in the Philippines, back in the early 1990s. I not only got to certify Basic Open Water, Rescue, Search and Recovery, and Advanced Open Water, I got to do them all in the pristine waters of the Philippine Islands! PADI certs was a blast, and I got up close to a black tip shark, stonefish, lionfish, and more different kinds of anemones than you can shake a stick at. Good times, those, and, unfortunately, the last time I got my gills wet. Sure wouldn't mind a recert class, for sure...

My first dive after completing my dive certification in Pensacola was a penetration wreck dive at 80ft using Nitrox in Thailand.

I go to do a reef dive off the coast of Puerto Rico about 40 years ago
We took a
Out out to the reef where we geared
Up and selected diving buddy’s
The captain of the boat explained that
There was a strong current at the designated depth a dwe were instructed to Relax and go
With the current he would follow us and pick us up down stream
We
D ended to 40, or 50 feet and we drifted for the entire dive
At that depth the water was clear and visibility was about 30 feet
The reef was beautiful and so alive with fish including barracuda
Huge schools of fish encircled me .....as they ignored me somehow seeming to Minos I
Meant them no harm
I had about 50 dives logged in my PADI log book at that time
None of them as memorable as this one
The dive continue and we spotted so many
Different specific of life on and around the reef. I hardly had to kick at all
In fact
I spent most st of the time with my knees together and legs crossed at my ankles
It was. A
Wonderful dice in a spectacular place on earth that no longer
Exist . I went back. A feweee
Years
Ago and attempted to re live the experience. And it
Almost brought tears to my eyes to see how man had allowed or caused that portion of the ocean to die. I asked The young boat captain “where are all the fish “ he could not understand the question
Because the ocean had been this dead for his entire life
Live Responsibly....dive responsibly and be a part of the

Never been scuba diving.

My wife and I spent a week in Negril, Jamaica for our honeymoon, many moons ago. One day, we took a guided dive but she stayed on the boat because she wasn't certified. This was back in 2004, right after a major hurricane tore through the GOM and caused much damage. Lucky for us, our resort suffered zero damage. Preparation paid off. However, the ocean was a different story. Lots of broken coral everywhere. But, because the hurricane stirred up the waters, the water temperature at depth was warm. Our dive was about 30 minutes, not counting our safety stop. The max dive depth was 80' and the temperature was a nice 78 degrees. The visibility was outstanding at +/- 80'. That was the strange part. You would think it would have been murky but no, everything settled fast.
We encountered a very large grouper along the way, saw some turtles, heard some dolphins, and some other fish.
That was the first time I dove without a wetsuit. That's me getting ready to jump. Notice just shorts and t-shirt.

My best experiences SCUBA diving would have to be the South Pacific and the Eastern Pacific. Guam was a nice place to dive, diving the wrecks in the harbor was great, feeding the fish at the Piti bomb holes was nice also. The best place I dove in Guam was at Gunn Beach, we found a Japanese Zero. Now diving Palau was a real treat, I dove The Wall a couple of times, the Wall is what the name implies, it's a reef that drops off into about 3000 feet of water. The sea life was abundant, turtles, dolphins, sharks and rays. I logged about 200 dives in Palau during the 2 years I was there. The next place I had a chance to go to was Chuuk in the FSM. I was doing some work for the company I worked for, I always took my dive gear when traveling in the Pacific, one never knows when an opportunity will arise. I got to dive the Chuuk Lagoon, aka Truk Lagoon, the company I was doing the work for arranged for me to dive the lagoon, man, what a dive, well, dives. The wrecks are every where, your allowed to look just don't touch. As for the best spots to dive, well, anywhere you can and are enjoying the dive.

While conducting L/E training with the Air Force security detail at Kwajalein Atoll, we had the opera unity to dive on the wreck of the German Heavy Cruiser PRINZ EUGEN. It was a fantastic dive in tropical water. One of the best dives I have ever done.

When I was in, the pool where I was had a PADI course, given by a civil servant in my unit, who was apparently really experienced...he did, I'd gathered, serious wreck diving...we only went for real once, full wetsuits, weight belts, all of it...we got about 28-30 ft down, just above decompression depth, what I found most unnerving, aside from the cold water, was that, after awhile, my jaw ached horribly from the regulator...plus, the guy I was with had some weird penchant for chasing lobsters every 30 secs...I needed somethin like 10-15 mins to swim to the suface, which, thank God, I was able to do, as it was also incredibly fatiguing...I'd also gone flying a cpl of times with the aero club where I'd been, and, between the two, trying to fly a light plane and keep it from slipping and sliding and banking every 5 secs, and scuba, candidly, I quite honestly found scuba by far the more nerve-wracking of the two...we also spent a LOT of time in the pool where I was before we went out for that for-real dive, learning to find the regulator by tracing down from the other end of the hose from the tank, which was quite literally pounded into our skulls to do it that way, rather than fishing for the regulator, which could lead to panicking...as well as learning to cough through the regulator, which, in all honesty, hadn't occurred to me was, in fact, even possible, honest, rather than taking the regulator out of ones mouth, by sheer conditioned reflex action....

Maui Diving 50 feet down ...!

Open water certified, 1978 Truk Lagoon. Instructor, Bill Spurlock of Island Scuba Repair, Guam. First dive, Fujikawa Maru.