Ok! Here I am ready to ramble on about scuba diving... it is a big passion of mine and it is actually how DH and I met!

So!

You can do what is called a "try dive" - most scuba companies will offer this. Its a one off chance to try it out and see what you think. You can do a try dive with only a short amount of theory beforehand - enough that you will be safe and know how to breathe properly.

If you decide you want to do a course, then you do what's called the "open water" course. That's the four day course and the most common provider is PADI. Most training agencies offer PADI as its the most widely-known around the world. Most dive shops are PADI-affiliated.

Once you obtain your open water certification, you are able to dive without an instructor, in a buddy pair (never dive on your own!), to a depth of 18m. That's pretty much as deep as you need to go for places like the Great Barrier Reef as all the prettiest corals and fishies are closer to the surface.

If, however, you are like me and live in Melbourne, lots of our cool stuff (shipwrecks!) is deeper than 18m, so you can do some further training to obtain the next certification, which is called "Advanced open water". Basically you do some depth training and other stuff and you can then dive to 30m, but still with a buddy.

There are two golden rules in scuba diving - the first is breathe normally and the second is always dive with a buddy!

Breathe normally just reminds you to take normal, calm breaths, no holding your breath (you learn more about that if you do the course) but I'm mentioning the second rule because if you dive with a buddy, chances are you will never be left alone or left behind.

If you've watched that stupid movie Open Water, and have a bit of a worry about that happening, there are lots of ways to make sure that doesn't happen - make yourself known to the crew on the boat (skipper, divemaster, anyone else happening), talk to lots of other passengers, dive in a big group. When we go out diving in Melbourne, we generally know the rest of the divers and the boat crew by name (its a small industry!) so chances of being left behind are slim slim slim.

Also, most charter companies now have very strict protocols about entering and exiting the water - most companies I've dived with (here, NSW and Qld) require you to sign the log when you get back on board the boat after your dive and the boat does not move until every single diver who logged out has logged back in.

When we dive with bigger companies, DH makes a point of chatting to some other passengers and crew on the boat so that even if somehow there's a slip, there will at least be someone who might say "Hey, where's that big Aussie/Melb diver with his gorgeous wife?"

Being left behind is rare and nothing to worry about!

As for sharkies - well - they just make a dive more fun in my opinion!!!! There is only one shark that I would ever be worried about seeing and that's Great Whites - and I just don't plan on ever diving where they have been sighted. All other types of sharks that you may encounter are generally more concerned with smaller fish - most humans are too big to be considered a tasty snack by sharks. Why bother chasing after a strange looking, bubble making, noisy THING when they can go for a fish that's right in front of them??

Where do you live? I might be able to give you some contact details of local companies for you to chat to if you tell me where you're located.

Another option is to train privately - my DH is a qualified instructor and he's taken a few of our friends through their certifications, he loves it and its really intimate teaching - one friend has been just her and DH, so she's getting one on one teaching! But you'd need to know someone. Again, let me know if that option interests you and I'll see if I can help out. As I said above, the industry is very small so chances are DH may know someone near where you live.

As for snorkel-scuba - scuba diving is massively different to snorkelling, but snorkelling does give you a bit of a taste for the undersea world. For me, it basically whet my appetite and encouraged me to try scuba.

I'll also mention that even if you try scuba and have a freak out, it might be worth persisting - I had a full-blown panic attack on my first "open water" dive, but thanks to a wonderful instructor (not my DH sadly!) we debriefed and I continued with the course and met my DH!

We spent a large proportion of our honeymoon underwater - we were away for 9wks and did 60 dives, which is a lot - it is a passion that we both share and love to do together.

There is nothing quite like it... you are completely weightless, the only noise is your breathing and your bubbles, and the things you see, WOW. I could tell you some stories... let me know if you are interested. As I said right at the top of the post, I can ramble on about scuba diving til the cows come home!!!!