Your Investment In Diving (Where To Dive?)

hey guys are on again from Lake Hickory scooter Moran and this video as you can tell by the title is gonna be the investment of scuba diamond and I want to talk a little bit about how you get the best bang for your buck when you get into the sport of scuba diving now there's several things that people get scared of one it's costly or they assume it's costly and we've showed in the past that compared to other sports you know hunting for example Dobbin is very very inexpensive - it is gear intensive and that one that is one thing that is true diamond is very gear intensive meaning you have to have the right gear to go diving or you just simply can't do it safely so it is gear intensive number three is the opportunity to go diving and a lot of people this is where it really catches them they feel like that the only time they can go diving is anytime that their own say a vacation they're down at the beach maybe they're in Florida maybe they're in the Caribbean the Bahamas or wherever they want to go on vacation they feel like that's the only time to go diving and they neglect their local environments so I'm gonna show you just how many local environments or how many diving opportunities there are in your local environment and I'm just gonna use ours here in North Carolina because these are the places that we dive on a day-in day-out basis if you follow us here on YouTube you have seen a lot of our treasure hunting videos where we get a lot of the wildlife accesses and we treasure hunt them and we've started doing historical dials here on our lake and as well and we're gonna try to get some videos up from those but I want to take you on a little journey here and I want to show you just how many dive sites we have not just here on our lake but within other lakes that within a 30 minute ride of our shop here and show you just how inexpensive going diving really is so let's take a really quick look at some maps here and I'll show you a ton of da sites that if you're in our area that you can dive but I just about bet you're area has some of the same cool sites alright guys what you see here in front of you here this is just a Google map image of our lake if i zoom in here you'll see our dive shop here where it says Lake Erie scuba marina you'll see if I scroll over to the right you'll see the dam where it breaks off and goes in the lookout here's the dam here so there's so many things that we get from using tools like this such as a Google map imagery to find dive sites that that are practically free to dive and let me talk a little bit about why it's free to dive these dive sites if you go to the beach right now you're gonna pay 75 to 150 dollars a day for a charter where you only get two tanks you go so many miles offshore you get an hour and a water per dive then you're coming back to land well anytime we try to find a local environment one thing that we got to remember most of these lakes are public lakes are free to for anybody to use if you got a boat there's public accesses and I'll show you some of those here shortly and if you've watched some of our treasure hunt videos you've seen the accesses you see what we find on those and those are themselves are some really cool dives to do but here on this map alone like I said I can zoom in the cool thing about Google Maps there's two parts to it there's a Google satellite imagery and there's a Google map energy imagery now to find a dive site initially I stay away from the satellite I'm gonna go back to the map mode and I'm gonna show you why in satellite mode if i zoom way out alright so here's the state of North Carolina on the screen and it's very difficult to find a doubt site that way I have to really zoom in and kind of scroll on the screen to try to locate something but if i zoom back out and i go right back over here and hit map mode now it takes away all the streets and everything that you see in blue are bodies of water that can be do here is Lake Norman here is Lake look out here's our Lake Lake Hickory way up here's Lake James and most of these you know of course Lake Hickory it's where our shop is Lake James is within a 40 minute ride of us Lake lookouts within a ten minute ride of us and of course Lake Norman we're anywhere between 40 minutes an hour to any cool dive site so that's a lot of local environments that I can find simply just by going to Google and looking for blue if I stay in the mat mood so once I find they dive or a body of water that I'm interested in there's two things that I'm gonna do first of all I'm either gonna pick up say a lennick mapping map or say the Kingfisher style maps and if you're not familiar with them they are both topo style maps they're gonna save you bodies of water they're gonna show you depths and contours of what's on the bottom stuff like that but the one I really like comes from Atlantic mapping Incorporated and they don't have maps for every body of water in the United States but there are several states where they've got a lot of lakes and local environments mapped out on it and I'm gonna take a quick second here to show you some really neat things on this map and how we use it to find dive sites for free because like I said we want to make the best investment out of our diving so once again I zoomed in I found a lake or a body of water that I wanted to find and this one here of course is Lake Hickory I picked me up and of course we sell these as well this is just a GPS map of Lake Hickory from the Atlantic mapping company and I or Atlantic mapping Incorporated I'll actually put a link for their website in the description below and you can go and check them out yourself but if I open the map up here something I want to show you is here on the bottom of the map and usually there's two sides to it because that they're usually expanded out where you can see a lot on one side then they'll do the other part of lake on the other side but each one will have this little key here and what the key does is it shows you different points in the leg it shows you the latitude and the longitude it shows you how deep it is and it'll actually show you what it is so for an example let's go over to a different map here real quick and show you exactly what we're looking at all right all right so I find a body of water that I'm interested in I find a corresponding map for that body of water and then you know I'm just gonna use our dive shop as a point of reference here to show you and I apologize it's very difficult to do this with one hand all right so here on Google Maps you'll see Lake Hickory school in Marina and if I look down on the GPS map by Atlantic mapping company I found our location now I know it says Taylorsville beach marina that was our name prior to us becoming the dive shop here but if i zoom in on the map you will notice that number 11 is highlighted and it's a red color you'll see a line that kind of goes out to it and all these numbers our correspondent was something that was under the water prior to this dam over here being built so all I've got to do is just find a number find out what it is by simply going over here to my key and wanna zoom in on number 11 you'll see number 11 it gives me the coordinates the GPS coordinates it says it's in 22 feet of water and it says it's over ruins so an easy thing for me to do to try to locate that dive site is I'll go back to math and you can either do this on the satellite imagery of Google Maps I actually like using Google Earth I'll switch over to Google Earth and all go up here to the search bar I'll type in those exact GPS coordinates and it will pinpoint that location then all I do is simply rename whatever it is and since the GPS map said it was old ruins it was in 22 feet of water that's what I renamed that dive site to and if you notice here's our dive shop here for the ones that stove here before you'll know this point comes way out into the water out in front of the store here it's only about 8 foot deep you'll notice the dive site it's only about 22 feet but the really cool thing is I can actually triangulate that and I don't even need a boat to get here I can triangulate from the point here there's a buoy right here that I can use and I can also triangle it off the edge of our dock here and I can actually find this dial without even needing a boat of course this is private of course so we've got access the even if you had a but you had your own boat you could do the exact same thing that I did here find you a dice I go out there anchor it up if you had a debt finder or sonar on your boat makes it a little bit easier and then 22 foot of water man you could spend an hour at almost two hours searching under water just to to look for this so it makes it a very easy site and this is just one if we go back to the GPS map this is just one of the many different dive locations there are just on this into the lake and I want to show you another cool tool about using multiple maps as far as the GPS F there's a GPS map and Google Earth or Google Maps at the same time if i zoom out you will notice that I have pinpointed a time there's a ton of markers on here of oh da sites like here's a house and five foot of water or the foundation on one here's one an 18 foot of water one in 25 foot of water here's a couple and forty feet here's another one an old bridge and 18 feet of water so there's so many different dive sites just here on our lake that people are completely unaware of and like I said people make the mistake well I can only go diving in those warm tropical environments if I continue to zoom out let's go down to Lake Norman for an example and just show you all the different pinpoints and all I did is I got the Lake Norman version of this map and just went on there and typed in the GPS coordinates save those in and then change it to whatever it said it was for an example if I go down here to the lower side of Lake Norman you'll see there's a ton of houses that were sunk whether it's just a foundation or old rubble in them but there there's a ton of different dive sites here's one an 8 foot here's one in 10 foot and it looks like it's right out in the middle of the lake but even with it being in the middle of Lake a lot of these areas are shallow and it's great for beginner divers to dive if i zoom out one more I want to take you up to Lake James and show you all the cool dive sites there here's another lake that we dive a lot and when I made this map up I was actually surprised that some of the locations that I had no clue a lot of these I have Dover before there's several bridges on this one here's an old steel bridge it's in 44 water there's another bridge here it's a hundred and ten foot of water it's a little bit deeper a lot more advanced diving but there's so many other things in the lake that I didn't know about I'll see if I can find one for you here here's ruins on a hump at 18 feet old footbridge and 30 foot there's actually several graveyards that we located we had we've not actually went and of them yet we want to go find them and and see if they're still good here's one right here old graveyard in 40 foot of water and it's right next to a house and 60 foot so you could actually do a day's worth of diving if you look here here's another cool thing if you look right over here here's a public access that's free to put your boat in that you can very easily get in if you had a debt finder or sonar once you pull in put the GPS coordinates in it's going to take you right to it drop your anchor and simply go diving here's another old ruins and this is a little deeper it's about 92 feet but here's three dice i'ts within you know seeing distance of this public access very similar to what it was for us so guys do not neglect your local environments there's so many diving opportunities out there use all the tools to your advantage do like I do go down here to Google simply go over to Google Maps keep it in map mode don't switch over to satellites you will use that briefly find your state so and like I said we're in North Carolina so let me use North Carolina I simply zoom in and you'll see all this blue streaky lines in here that's bodies of water that's you know more than likely gonna be da bubble you simply zoom in you find the body of water and one thing that I do is I might would zoom in and try to find a road name like waist side Church Road and of course Taylorsville beach court which is where we're located just simply try to find a road name and here you go to eligible beach court here and then when you switch over to satellite mode you can actually do a search for that name Taylorsville beach court and then it's going to take you basically right to it so here's Taylorsville beach court i can see the body of water i can look to see if there's any public accesses anything like that then you're going to go over here to your topo maps such as like I said the one for Millenia I've been incorporated I've got the one for our lake and then I simply just find those dive sites that correspond to what I'm looking at on the satellite imagery here's us here and now start noticing all these red numbers in here all of them red numbers that you see that I've got marked as well on Google Earth it's places that are da bubble and it's even going to give you depths like number 33 here we'll go look at it it's in 15 feet to 25 so it's 20 feet deep on number 33 and all I do is simply go here and find number 33 and see what it says it is so there's number 33 there's my GPS and it's 18 feet deep and there's an old house there old ruins from a house so guys don't neglect your local environment because you're missing out on so many really neat diving opportunities out there that if you've got your own boat that's great if not if a buddy's got a boat you know if you're if you're spending your summer months out on the lake swimming going local sandbars kneeboard and their skin you can also be spending that time diving and getting the best investment from what you put into diving as far as buying you're here getting certified and doing stuff like that so guys as you can see there is a ton of different dive sites here in our area I just about guarantee your areas the same if you've got a local lake or a little reservoir look for some public wildlife access areas get you a topo map I really like the Atlantic map and incorporated maps because they're GPS they already show you things that were under the water prior to the lake being bill it's got the exact GPS coordinates and also show you depth and bottom composition or not composition but bottom contour so get you one of those mounts that'll help you out don't forget about Google Maps both the satellite and the Mount View and of course Google Earth is a very good resource you know I can take a snapshot of any of this print it off take it down on the boat with me if I'm using GPS on my phone or something like that I can I can pinpoint a location by looking at the picture and looking at the GPS on my phone or whatever I'm using so guys get out there go diving explore your local areas get the best bang for your buck by simply going diving don't always go diving when you're on these warm tropical vacations check out your local environments because they offer a ton of great dive site guys I really appreciate you watching this video I hope it opens your eyes to just how many diving opportunities as they are you can see clearly in our area how many we got and I guarantee you in your area you've got about the same so guys I appreciate you watching this video as always make sure you follow us on Instagram and Twitter like us on Facebook pin us on Pinterest subscribe to us here on YouTube and as always guys we appreciate your business

Channel: LakeHickoryScuba

Views: 3,094

Rating: 4.949367 out of 5

Keywords: Lake, Hickory, Scuba, Marina, Taylorsville, North, Carolina, Alexander, County, Diving, Drysuit, Wetsuit, BCD, Regulator, Fins, Mask, Snorkel, Public, Safety, Under, Water, Criminal, Investigations, Mares, OS, Systems, Ocean, Reef, Full, Face, Training, XS, Trident, Charter, PDIC, PADI, SEI, CMAS, Educators, International, Boating, Bait, Fishing, Docks, Search, Recovery, Specialty, Night, Drift, EFR, First, Aid, CPR, AED, Emergency, Oxygen, Provider, Divemaster, Assistant, Instructor, Trainer, Board, Discussion, SSI, School, Commentary, Treasure, Hunting

Id: GRHgFK-B07Y

Length: 15min 42sec (942 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 11 2016