Scuba Diving

Would you share the main stage, or the secondary stage?

I just got my open water certification from SSI, and I think I remember my manual saying you should share the main stage, and use the secondary yourself - also called the octo, I think? But when I dived with my instructor, she taught me to share the secondary.

My instructor is certified under both SSI and PADI (maybe others), and when I looked it up I did see some people mention that sharing the secondary/octo is the PADI way, and sharing the main is the SSI way. Is that true?

Which way were you taught? Which would you do? If you're an instructor, which way do you teach? And more importantly, why?

To me, how my instructor taught me makes the most sense, because what you hear in most rescue situations is that you have to make sure you are safe first so you can be in a position to help; so it follows that you should keep breathing out of your main and share the secondary (instead of interrupting your breathing to switch).

Trying to dive more consistently (located in the socal area) and I wanna find people I can dive with.

While looking for open source dive log applications on F-Droid (in preparation for my Advanced Open Water Certification) and I found an app called Subsurface and apparently it is as developed by none other than Linus Torvalds himself.

I also found this neat YouTube video of Dirk Hohndel talking about scuba diving with Linus.

In my area they're around $400-$800 seems pretty big in difference depending on the dive shop.

Since this community looks completely empty, I thought I would start a discussion and just ask - what has been the best dive of your life?

I've been diving for a few years and haven't made it to some of the places I would love to go to but I would have to say my favorite dive so far was in Cozumel - I got to see a lot of awesome reef formations, barracuda's, I heard dolphins (didn't get to see them) and tons of fish life.

How about you?

Welcome and happy bubbles, everyone!