Hello and welcome to my little diving page...

I thought you might like a little more insight of what I recently decided to spend my spare time (and money) with.

After I tried a "Discover Scuba" dive 2002, I picked up the virus and decided that is views like the ones above, or in the background of this page, that are worth going back there again and again. Thanks to Beat Bracher, my swiss dive instructor, for making that first experience a great and lasting one. 

Since I felt, that one single dive at the Australian Great Barrier Reef wasn't enough, I went back to where I could find some water that had acceptable temperature and get a diving license ASAP. You figure that this might not be the easiest thing if you're living in Germany and its the first week of December. 

That's how I happened to get my first diving license in Egypt. Since that was a lot of fun (except getting pulled away by a very strong current and struggling your way back to the boat together with your instructor) and I liked to learn more, I also went on and did my advanced open water diver (AOWD). Thanks to Marion from the Pirates.

Still wondering how our diveguides always managed to get us back to the boat, find stuff or know where to turn so that none of us went out of air - you guys know me - I also like to know where I am. So appending some lessons in underwater navigation seemed quite natural to me then.

Although back in Germany, it was still too cold for me to be diving around here, I started reading about diving and found out that Nitrox-Diving and especially Rebreather diving might just be the ideal thing for me.  

Since I fiddle around with hightech in my work all the time, doing "hightech" diving and literally "recycling" the air that I breathed sounded quite appealing to me. Never to mention the facts that rebreathers operated very silently and almost bubble free. 

Most intrigueing of all is that by recycling your breathing gas, and not just taking compressed air. Your bottom time is by far greater that with usual scuba gear (so called open circuit) and you can stay definitively longer .

End of April, I took a short leave from work, to again do some diving... Take pictures from Reefs around the Sinai peninsula and to get a license as a wreckdiver at Sinaidivers.

BTW: Thanks Rob, for taking the above picture.

Back in Germany, I finally got warm enough to continue with my lessons about Nitrox usage, the Rebreathers Dolphin and Ray, and an 'improvement' from AOWD to Rescue Diver. Thanks here go to Karl, Guenter and Klaus from Tauchcenter Atlantis

Some say, people who made their diving licenses in tropic waters would be either scared to death if they first dived in German lakes, or simply not 'really' being able to dive properly... Well I have to admit that apart from temperatures, the visibility is somewhat different that what one would expect from the RedSea:

But the cold didn't really affect me, since I'm wearing my 7mm semidry suit and an ice west - and green has been my favorite color all the time  - so who cares if German lakes are green and have a vis from 0 to 5 metres in average?  Fortunately, I didn't. :)

Wildlife might not be as color- and plentiful as found in tropical waters, but they can be interesting too - and its fun getting as close as about 20cm to them with your camera in your hands...

In the meantime, since, I have moved into a new city, I've joined the local diving club - Sundivers. I hope I don't run out of buddies and air too soon... And I'm diving a rebreather, whenever I have the chance to.

Since April 2005 I successfully certified as an Open Water Scuba Instructor... and now I hope to spread the passion of diving to new divers - while I work as an instructor at the local diving club.

I spent October 2003,  in Safaga, Egypt and passed my training as a CCR Rebreather diving. I'm now certified to dive an APD Inspiration rebreather - man those devices are great - you have to try them some day...

Since february 2004, I have an Inspiration rebreather of my own.

BTW: I did my training with the International Association of Rebreather Trainers (IART). It seems like the right place for me to be...

I'm a member of the local Diveclub called Sundivers - maybe you visit our homepage there...

BTW: Don't forget, if you want to contact me, my real email adress won't show up on this homepage for security reasons. If you like to contact me, and have ICQ installed, ask me at #8547447.

Alternatively, write to "metacon (at) web.de" and allow a few days for me to reply, since web.de features my "spam-goes-here" account which I check from time to time and reply to non-spam mail by using my real address...