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Fitness in general is important for everyday activities and sometimes in SCUBA and Freediving we underestimate the physical requirements for diving. So, in this new series I’ll be sharing general fitness tips and ideas to improve our physical fitness for different types of diving. As many of us know diving from the beach is different from diving from the boat, but both can be equally taxing on the body. So, today’s skill work is going to focus on general fitness using the pool to improve our overall stamina and endurance and of course a little breath hold practice. 😉 If these skills look familiar it’s because they are from your swim eval during your open water pool exam. But like anything skills are perishable and even though you did it once, you should probably keep up with it. So! Let’s get started - 1st Exercise: Tread Water 10 minutes -       Move your hands back and forth, side to side, with your palms facing towards the direction of your movements. This is called sculling, or you can imagine spreading jam on toast if that’s a better visual for you. -       Use your legs with smooth controlled kicks to assist your upper body in keeping your head up. Flutter kicks are effective for this and improve your overall finning technique. ADVANCED Treads: Increased Difficulty -       Use only your hands or only your feet to keep yourself afloat. -       Add some weight to your ankles and wrists for an extra level of burn. Remember the goal here is to keep yourself upright using your body to keep yourself afloat. Treading water will help to build coordination with your upper and lower body, improve your finning technique, and increase your overall endurance. 2nd Exercise: Swim 200 metres, No Time Limit -       Preferred Swim Stroke – Freestyle, taking a breath every 8-10m or 3-4 strokes -       Keep your eyes down towards the bottom of the pool, following lane lines on the bottom help -       Extend your hand forward, fingertips first into the water slicing in. Once your arm is under pull keeping your elbow high or tight to the body, using your forearm as a paddle to move you forward. -       Complete the pull, raising your arm out of the water and repeat the stroke. Your body should rotate slightly with each stroke, similar to when you kick with fins. -       When you need to breathe rotate the head to the same side as the arm pulling back for the next stroke. Bubble out as you complete the swim stroke so you can take a fresh breath as soon as your head is clear. Try not to overextend on the rotation. ADVANCED SWIM: Increased Difficulty -       Complete the swim in 5 minutes -       Swim 400m in 10 minutes -       Swim 800m with mask, snorkel, & fins in 15 minutes You don’t need to be an athlete or a college swimmer for this exercise, but you should have enough stamina to swim continuously without rest for 200 metres. Remember, the stronger your swim skills are in the water, the more comfortable and confident you will be. 3rd Exercise: 20x Deck Ups -       Using your upper body, push yourself out of the water raising your body above the swim deck or side of the pool. -       Start with your both hands on the side of the pool facing towards the wall. -       Submerge pushing yourself under. -       Kick with your legs as you begin to pull yourself up and out of the water. -       As you get higher, pull your elbows in towards your body and press down, extending yourself up and out of the water. -       Hold and then ease yourself back down, repeating the exercise. ADVANCED Deck Ups: Increased Difficulty -       Add a weight belt or weights to your ankles -       Strap on your BC, Tank, and Reg instead of weights. Put some fins to compensate for the added mass and muscle yourself up out of the water Deck ups will increase your upper body strength improving your strength and endurance for climbing back into boats, up swim ladders, in general picking up all that heavy scuba gear. 4th Exercise: Underwater Swims -       No pool training would be complete without a little breath holding -       Swim 10m underwater -       Swim 10m underwater on half a breath -       Swim 20m underwater -       Swim 20m underwater on half a breath ADVANCED Underwater Swims: Increased Difficulty -       Don’t Swim, Crawl -       Go slow and focus on relaxing Underwater swims in general will help to improve your underwater confidence and coordination. This skill can be done with fins or without depending on how challenging you wish to make it. As always, this Brian (owner of Bamboo Reef) your fearless leader. I’m always lost, but happy to share the journey with you.

Hello everyone, today we are providing a quick refresh on how to assemble your gear and why it is important to check your equipment before going out on a dive. This will be a multi-part series working our way from the tank to the BC, looking at the weight systems, and finally the regulator. If it’s been a while since you’ve put your gear together or you are used dive masters and instructors putting your gear together then listen closely. It doesn’t matter if you are a new diver or an experienced diver, every diver should know how their equipment works and how to trouble shoot it. BCD: The Buoyancy Compensator or BCD as it is more commonly referred to is the jacket or back inflate you wear when scuba diving. It holds the tank to your back and is responsible for providing inflation at the surface, deflating to allow us to descend, and most importantly ASSIST in compensating for our buoyancy. If you have read the Breath Work Articles, then you know that your lungs are the true buoyancy compensators when diving. The BC only assists with your lungs as your body position changes in the water column (shallower or deeper). Tank Strap: Since we have already completed our checks on the tanks in the last article it’s time to assemble our equipment and test our BCD. First, open the tank strap and slide it over the tank. Every tank strap is a little different so consult with your dive shop or instructor on how to properly tighten the strap. Before you secure the BCD to the tank make sure the tank valve is facing towards the back of your BCD. “Air to Hair”. The air should always be blowing towards the back of your head. Second, make sure the BCD is positioned at the right height. The top of the neck roll should be level with the top of the valve. This way when we attach the regulator later, it will be perfectly positioned to where it doesn’t hit us in the back of the head, but still high enough to reach over our shoulder and find our hoses. (If you have the shoulder flexibility for it) Now, whatever the strap style, make sure it sits flush with the tank (not at an angle) and secure around the tank. You should not be able to move the tank strap up or down when it’s locked in place. When you test the strap, don’t pick up the BCD and shake it up and down to see if the tank slips. Why you ask? Because if the tank slips it will fall. And the last place you want it to fall is on your foot. So, with your hand see if you can move the strap up and down. If the strap doesn’t move, then it is secure. If it does move, then redo the strap. Oral Inflator: With the BCD secure to the tank, it’s time to test it before moving on to the regulator. Grab the inflator hose and begin manually inflating the BCD. This does 2 things: one it tells you if the exhaust button is working both to blow air in and keep air out. If the inflator is leaking, you will hear the air leak around the button. Second, this will test the air bladder. We want to ensure that the BCD is both inflated and that it will hold air. If the BCD begins to deflate and you don’t hear air escaping from the inflator, then that means there is a leak somewhere else. Either way you should exchange the BCD and have it serviced. Straps, Clips, Velcro: Our last inspection on the BCD is similar to the tank inspection in our last article. It’s a visual inspection of the BCD and all its parts. If you are renting a BCD, you will want to familiarize yourself with the BCD and all its pieces. Check the shoulder straps to see how they tighten down. Does it have a chest strap? Does it have a single waist strap or a Velcro strap and a buckle strap? Is the BCD weight integrated or will you be wearing a weight belt? How do you release the weights in an emergency?Check to see if there are trim weight pockets in the BCD. If this is your own BCD, then you should already be familiar with all of this. What you want to do is double check your zippers, pockets, and clips, ensuring that they are still functional and in good condition. Plus who knows what kind of goodies you’ll find in your pockets. Weights: Our last thing to do is figure out our weight and where to place it on our body. Now everyone’s body composition is a little different and only you know yourself best. I for example am dense like a rock, mentally not physically hahaha. No, but seriously my legs sink, and I have to wear a wetsuit for buoyancy even if I am snorkeling. So, for me I put roughly half of my total weight into my trip pockets where they are positioned higher on my body closer to my lungs. This helps to balance out my trim and allows me to swim more efficiently through the water. No matter how much or how little weight you wear you will need to adjust how much is going to be in the trim pockets, in the weight pockets, or on a belt. Then you’ll need to play with where you distribute your weight to give you the best trim in the water. Lastly, however much weight you use, no less than half should be ditch able. Meaning you need to be able to dump at least half of your weight in an emergency. This is part 2 of our series. Next article will focus on the final piece of gear in our equipment assembly, the regulator. As always, this Brian (owner of Bamboo Reef) your fearless leader. I’m always lost, but happy to share the journey with you.

Welcome to my short Breath Work Series discussing breathing practices and how they apply to multiple aspects of diving and our everyday life. Today’s article is focused on Freediving and a common question for newer Freedivers or anyone looking to get into freediving - How to relax and improve your freediving. When I was first getting into freediving and improve my breath holds, everything I read online said the same thing - relax. Today, I understand what that means but back then I didn’t know how to relax or how that would improve my freediving. Back then I was only able to dive to 30 feet and maybe stay underwater for barely a minute. I was pushing myself harder to get to 40 or 45 feet and I never felt comfortable underwater. All my freediving friends also kept telling me to relax, but no one could explain how you’re supposed to do that. But now, for anyone looking to get deeper underwater or stay down longer I’m going to share some freediving secrets with you. Well, they aren’t really secrets, but they are things included in most freediving textbooks. This is called relaxation breathing. So just relax. 😜 Hahaha! What I mean is I want you to start with closing your eyes, taking a deep breath, and as you exhale let your body slump down; release the tension in your muscles, and take a second or two to yourself. It should almost be like falling asleep. That same feeling when you let go and let all your muscles relax just before you drift off to dream land. Repeat this a few times and every time you exhale, I want you to try and release more of the tension in your body. NRP & Box Breathing: Next, we need to modify how we breathe. First, we are going to extend our natural respiratory pause (NRP). This is the brief period of relaxation in the natural respiratory cycle between our inhale and exhale. This is when our diaphragm and chest muscles are their most relaxed. This technique is typically used by the US Military and marksman to improve the accuracy of their shots. Where the rise and fall of your chest would cause the sights of your rifle to sway or move off target, the natural respiratory pause is extended to allow the marksman to keep his sights on the target while squeezing the trigger. To help extend our natural respiratory pause we are going to incorporate this into box breathing. Box breathing is a breathing technique that is used in yoga, by the US Navy Seals, and by top athletes to activate the parasympathetic nervous system. The parasympathetic nervous system is part of the body’s relaxation response and helps to regulate digestion, heart rate, and breathing. Practice: To begin we are going to inhale deeply through our diaphragm for 2-3 seconds, followed by another 2-3 second pause. Slowly exhale through your teeth counting down from 10. Don’t fight the exhale and try not to stress if can’t control how quickly you breathe out. Just let your body relax as you exhale out. Your goal here is to let go of the tension in your muscles and allow yourself to relax mentally and physically. At the end of your exhale, pause again for 2-3 seconds before starting the breath over again. Remember, you don’t need to keep exactly to this rhythm. As you become more relaxed you may find that the pattern of your breath changes. The longer it takes you to complete one breath (in and out) the more relaxed you will become. Try this the next time you are out freediving and see if it helps. Next time I’ll cover how to improve your diaphragmatic breathing and really maximize your breath hold. As always, this Brian (owner of Bamboo Reef) your fearless leader. I’m always lost, but happy to share the journey with you.

Hello everyone, today we are providing a quick refresh on how to assemble your gear and why it is important to check your equipment before going out on a dive. This will be a multi-part series working our way from the tank to the BC, looking at the weight systems, and finally the regulator. If it’s been a while since you’ve put your gear together or you are used dive masters and instructors putting your gear together then listen closely. It doesn’t matter if you are a new diver or an experienced diver, every diver should know how their equipment works and how to trouble shoot it. Valve Faces: So, let’s start with the simplest one – your tanks…or cylinder, or bottles, or whatever else you like to call the pressurized metal bomb strapped to your back 😜 The first thing I like to check is the O-ring (if it’s for a yoke). Look and see if the O-ring: A) is there B) what condition it looks to be in If the O-ring looks worn out or has little scratches and cuts in it, then this could be an indication of a potential failure in the water. Last thing you want is to hear a loud pop behind you followed by hiss of air escaping from between your regulator and the tank. While you are looking at the O-ring take a minute to inspect the valve face. Does it have threads? If it does, then most likely you have a DIN valve which is designed for a DIN regulator to thread into. Do not be alarmed. There is not supposed to be an O-ring here. Air Check: Next, I like to sample my air before hooking up my regulator. Remember, high quality air should have a refined dry taste in your mouth, leaving you thirsty at the end of your dive 😂 AKA cotton mouth. To test the air place your hand over the valve and carefully open the valve until some air blows out over your hand. What we are looking for is dry odorless air. Anything else like oil, water, dust (brown or white), or any funny smells means you should not use that tank. Oil and water can mean the filters on the air compressor are old or expired and should be replaced. Water can also be a sign of moisture inside the tank from a “Wet Fill”; when water is blown back into the tank during the re-fill process. Red dust can be a sign of excessive rust from a steel tank and white dust can be a sign of excessive oxidation in an aluminium tank. Yes, I spell it AL-U-MIN-EE-UM. Cylinder Markings: If everything has passed so far, then it’s time to move onto the more technical aspects of your tank. The tank markings. While it’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with what all the markings mean the ones we are focusing on today are the material, the tank pressure, size of the tank, and the most recent hydrostatic test date. Remember tanks can be made of steel or aluminium and different sizes and pressure ratings can affect your buoyancy. Now chances are you will most likely find aluminium 3AL (3ALM), 80cft (11 litre), 3000 PSI (310 BAR) on most tanks you rent when on vacation, but that doesn’t mean that will always be the case. Especially if you are a gas guzzler or are more of a floater than your buddies, you may want a high-pressure steel. Most aluminium tanks start to gain positive buoyancy when you are more than halfway through your air. Now that’s not a big deal when your deeper than 30 ft (10 metres), but as you get ready for your safety stop you may find it more difficult to maintain neutral buoyancy. Steel tanks will retain their negative buoyancy qualities even as the tank pressure decreases, which means it is easier to maintain neutral buoyancy at your safety stop and you won’t need as much weight as someone in an aluminium tank. Also, steel tanks are available in 100cft (12.9 litres) giving you a larger volume of air to use on your dive. It’s always prudent to do a weight check with your dive leader if you don’t remember what you use. And don’t worry about how much weight you use, everyone is different. I’ve seen 6’4 250lb man use 2# in a 5mm wetsuit and 5’3 120# woman use 20# in a 3mm. Some people float and some people sink. I am a sinker, but personally I wish I could just float and not have to kick to always stay up. Inspections: Last thing we are going to check is the hydrostatic test date. This is stamped into the neck of the tank near the valve. They are stamped with the month first in big numbers, followed by a funny symbol or 4 smaller letters and numbers in 2 columns and rows, and then lastly the year. Tanks are required to be tested every 5 years in which the tank is over pressurized to 5/3 of its working pressure. During this process the tank is submerged in a sealed chamber and the inspector looks for changes in the volume of the tank or any other noticeable differences. After the hydrostatic test the tank is visually inspected externally and internally for any damage. If the tank should fail any of these tests or inspections, then the tank is condemned and pulled out of service. If you find a tank without a visual inspection, not the worst thing in the world. Who knows it could have come off during a dive or it’s on the bottom of the tank where we don’t always think to look. However, if your tank is missing that 5 year stamp, meaning it’s been more than 5 years since it was last tested, then DO NOT USE THAT TANK. This is part 1 of our series. Next article will focus on the BCD and the assembly and testing process when setting up your gear. As always, this Brian (owner of Bamboo Reef) your fearless leader. I’m always lost, but happy to share the journey with you.

Welcome to my short Breath Work Series discussing breathing practices and how they apply to multiple aspects of diving and our everyday life. Today we are going to talk about Breath Holds and how they can benefit your everyday life. If you think about it, when we are dealing with stress or find ourselves under a lot of tension (physically or mentally), we unconsciously hold our breath. Not all the time, but more often than not. STRESS: There are a variety of reasons why you hold your breath, but a common reason is because you are trying to focus on the task at hand. Holding your breath when you are trying to focus temporarily stops the unconscious act of breathing and redirects that energy towards your stress response. So, you might be asking, but Brian why would I want to hold my breath if it’s part of my stress response? Well, that’s because while a short breath hold to focus is ok, prolonged breath holds or holding too often can cause more stress. This goes back to our last article: Are You Breathing Properly? and becoming aware of your breathing. Well, just like I want you to become more aware of the breath in and out, you should also be aware of when you are holding your breath. Training your breath holds can increase your focus, reduce the anxiety and/or stress from the buildup of CO2, and raise your awareness of your stress response. Best of all it will improve your air consumption underwater and your buoyancy control, if properly paired with your breath awareness. Breath Holds: I want you to start off with something easy. Take a deep breath and then hold. Don’t take in too much air, just enough to get a good breath in. AND! Don’t do this while driving, walking, or any other activity. Sit down and hold your breath. Hold for as long as you comfortably can. Now let the air out in a slow controlled manner and catch your breath. Let your heart rate settle if it came up a little. How did that feel? Good? Bad? Great? Not So Great? Doesn’t matter. This was just the warmup. If you found it easy to hold for a long time, then you already have a good sense of your stress response. I want to trigger a stronger response. That’s right. I want to stress you out while holding your breath. Let’s do it again. This time as you are holding your breath, DON’T focus on the breath hold. Instead focus on yourself. Where are you holding tension? Try and relax. Let your body ease into the breath hold and relax the body. If the first breath hold was easy try this one on a partial exhale. Repeat this process every once in a while, or whenever you find yourself in a stress response. -       Clenching your teeth? Hold your breath and relax. -       Getting angry or frustrated? Hold your breath and relax. -       Can’t breathe? Hold your breath and relax. Breath Awareness: The more you practice this the more aware you will become aware of when you are stressed and how to de-stress yourself. This is a common practice for Freediver as they must overcome the urge to breathe and stress response by learning to relax when they are 30+ underwater on a single breath. In a future article I will teach you some basic Freediver techniques for relaxing and improving your breath holds. But for now, just get comfortable with being uncomfortable 😜 As always, this Brian (owner of Bamboo Reef) your fearless leader. I’m always lost, but happy to share the journey with you.

Happy New Year everyone! It is a new day and a new year! Yesterday, I was riding bikes with my son to enjoy the temporary lapse in the rain, and I was reminding him to be aware of his lane position when passing others or when being passed. He was having so much fun, going fast and just enjoying the outdoors that he wasn’t aware when someone came up behind him. This reminded me of diving with friends and how we sometimes lose track of each other or miss the whale swimming by. You know, when your friends are all excitedly dancing underwater waving their hands up and down pointing at nothing. Yup you missed the whale that just swam by. So why is that? Diving is a sensory deficit sport. Sensory Deficit: What does that mean? Well, if you compare it to being outside you have a much greater sense of what is around you. You can hear the birds chirping nearby, you can feel the wind blowing across your face, you have full peripheral vision, and you can smell the roses (unless you are nose deaf like myself, hahaha!) Underwater you lose most of those senses. Sound travels too quickly for us to differentiate where it’s coming from. The wetsuit inhibits your sense of surroundings, or if you don’t wear a wetsuit the immersion in water is enough to inhibit your senses. Masks, while helpful in seeing underwater, minimize your vision to a narrow 3x6. And there is no sense of smell unless you like sniffing sulfur clouds. Fun Fact: When diving in sink holes, caves, cenotes, or any freshwater location with a sulfur cloud you can actually smell the “rotten eggs” through your mask. And it doesn’t go away…it lingers there for your aromatic pleasure. So, because we cannot easily sense what is around us it is important to maintain a greater awareness of your surroundings. Next time you go diving I want you to start with keeping an eye on your buddies. If you are in the lead turn around and make sure they are still there. If you are behind them, keep an eye on them or any other buddies nearby. If you can’t find them, look up or look down. Chances are they are hovering slightly above you or down below. Do this every time. Doesn’t matter who you are with or if there is dive leader or someone more experienced in the group. This is a team sport and we all need to be accountable for each other. As always, this Brian (owner of Bamboo Reef) your fearless leader. I’m always lost, but happy to share the journey with you.

Welcome to my short Breath Work Series discussing breathing practices and how they apply to multiple aspects of diving and our everyday life. So today I want you to ask yourself, are you breathing properly? Right now, as you are reading this, are you aware of your breathing? And I’m not asking this like some kind of yogi telling you to connect your breathing to your body or a physical therapist trying to help you reduce your stress, although I will talk more about breathing techniques, relaxation, and stress in another article. What I am asking is if you monitor your breathing. Not just during diving, you should monitor it anytime you think about, and you should think about it as often as you can; but you should especially think about during diving. Now, I know we all monitor our gas consumption to some extent and try to stretch our air out as long as possible on a dive. But do you practice how to breathe, how much to breathe, and when to breathe? If not, you should be. Breathing & SCUBA: Breathing is something we do naturally, so naturally we don’t put a lot of thought into it, until it becomes a limited resource. Now if you are a SCUBA Diver you know that when you are neutral you breathe in to create a small rise or ascent and when you exhale you create a small drop or descent. Additionally, when you begin your descent if you exhale as you vent the air from your BC, this will aide you in your initial descent below the surface. Likewise, when you begin to ascend you exhale again, although in a more controlled manner, to control the expansion of air in your lungs. Buoyancy Exercise: Let’s take this a step further and try a little exercise; this is great for newer divers learning to achieve neutral buoyancy. Next time you are descending, as you approach the bottom or the depth you want to achieve neutral, take a deep breath and hold it in. Then add enough air into your BC to achieve neutral buoyancy. Now when you exhale you should begin to sink again. Then take a breath back in and you should find yourself closer to neutral. Add air to your BC as necessary but try to fine tune your buoyancy with your breathing. Big breaths create big changes, small breaths create small changes. And don’t forget there is a short delay between the rise and fall of your buoyancy as you breathe. Personally, I find it helpful to be slightly negative as I like to take deeper fuller breaths. Also, don’t take big gulps of air, but sip the air in through your regulator. Nice and slow. As one of our favorite instructors likes to say, “Sippy. Sippy.” [Full Disclosure: You should not hold your breath when ascending due to the risk of an over expansion injury. I am in no way advocating breath holds on compressed gas when ascending or rising in the water column. If you are not consciously aware of your breathing when diving or don’t have a solid grasp on your buoyancy, then you should not practice this without an instructor. Don’t be dumb.] The Benefits: Having a better grasp on your buoyancy through breathing is going to help improve your air consumption. The more you think and practice your breathing the more conscious you will become of how heavily you are breathing. You’ll become more aware of when you need to adjust your buoyancy. You’ll stop using your hands and legs as much to maintain your dive position and you’ll become the envy of all your friends; even that one buddy who seems to breathe air back into their tank like some kind of mermaid. We all know who you are! Hahaha! The biggest benefit you’ll find, is the more you do this the faster it becomes a habit, and a good one at that. You’ll find yourself thinking about it during the day, when you’re stressed, anxious, excited, tired, etc. etc. The more relaxed and calm you are by controlling your breathing the better equipped you will be for whatever it is you’re doing. I’m not going to talk about all the benefits of breathing for everyday life, because there are plenty of other articles out there which already cover that subject and I’m not a “doctor”. The point is if you want to become more comfortable with neutral buoyancy and all the benefits listed above; think about your breathing. The everyday benefits are nice too ;) As always, this Brian (owner of Bamboo Reef) your fearless leader. I’m always lost, but happy to share the journey with you.

Hi everyone, My name is Brian, and I am the owner of Bamboo Reef. I would like to introduce you to our new blog where we will be sharing tips, tricks, advice, thoughts, ideas, and anything else that we find helpful or worth sharing with you. Let’s Share Some Ideas: I recently heard someone say, “Information should be free. It’s already available everywhere and gatekeeping that information does nothing to better others. Information should be shared, but if you want real value from that information then invest in training and instruction.” Now, I’m paraphrasing what was said, but I agree with what they are saying. The information we want to improve our diving is out there. We share it all the time with each other, so to pretend like it’s some big secret is ridiculous. Thus! This is my inspiration to share my knowledge and information with you in the hopes you find it useful and helpful in your diving journey. But before we get into that I would like to tell you more about myself and Bamboo Reef. If you don’t about Bamboo Reef, then let me give you a synopsis of our history. Dive Shop: The Story of Bamboo Reef Bamboo Reef was founded in 1961 by Al Giddings. Al Giddings is best known for his work with underwater cinematography in films like James Bond: For Your Eyes Only (1981) The Abyss (1989), The Titanic (1997), and more. Then in 1971 Sal Zammitti took over the business and successfully ran it for more than 40 years. Sal started his diving career on the east coast, moving west, setting up dive shop after dive shop for New England Divers back in their heyday. In 2016, my father and I took over Bamboo Reef and have been running it, working to expand our services and course offerings from simple SCUBA to Technical Diving, Sidemount, Freediving, Spearfishing, Rebreathers and more. Bamboo Reef has a rich history in the Bay Area and Monterey, once boasting 5 stores: from Walnut Creek to Berkeley, Marin, Rohnert Park, and San Jose. Today we have the original store location in San Francisco and Monterey. My Story: As for me, I’ve been diving since 2002, when I was a freshman in high school. During my time in high school my dad and I became more involved in diving and eventually worked our way up to Assistant Instructor. After high school I moved to Maui, Hawaii where I worked for a dive store taking people out on tours, doing simple gear repair, and working in the shop helping tourists. After about 6 months on the island I returned to school, where I realized I didn’t care for college and preferred instead to pursue the glamorous life a SCUBA Instructor! Hahaha! After about a year I moved to Florida where I attended a diving school for 3 months and walked away with far more knowledge than I knew what to do with. Originally my plan was to try underwater treasure hunting with a friend or maybe pursue the life of a deck hand on an adventure cruise, but I found myself at Bamboo Reef while trying to figure out my next move. It was at Bamboo Reef that I discovered my real passion for SCUBA Diving and Freediving and after working for both Bamboo Reef, Hollis and Oceanic, I ended up at the top of the helm with my dad, running Bamboo Reef. Where we are Today: I would like to tell you that this is where I find my dream come true and all is amazing, but the truth is running a small business is hard, and running a dive shop is even harder. I have to give it up to both Al Giddings and Sal Zammitti for doing so well for so long in the diving industry. As we all know too well, times are hard. Post COVID life really took the wind out of our sales and put the hurt on a lot of us financially. So, all I ask is that you keep up with us and our new blog. Don’t forget to share this with friends and family. Invite them out to go diving with you. Come and say hi if you haven’t been to Bamboo Reef in a while. Dust off your equipment and get back in the water. We miss you and we want to see diving again. Get away from the stress of life and simply enjoy the underwater world. And finally, I wish you all a happy new year and best fortune in 2024. I cannot wait to go diving with you all…even if you find Monterey too cold. Hahaha.