Pulling on their scuba gear and flippers at a swimming pool in Brussels, Nicolas Mouchart and his wife Florence are not just going diving – they’re going out for dinner.
Lowering themselves to the floor of the pool, an especially deep one built to train scuba divers, they swim to one end where their restaurant awaits, five meters (16 feet) below the surface.
“The Pearl” is a two-meter wide white sphere tethered close to the pool’s floor. The diners jettison their weighted belts before swimming underneath and up into the pod that looks like a cross between a lunar landing craft and a giant spaceman’s helmet.
Food is served by expert scuba divers who deliver foie gras, lobster salad and champagne in waterproof cases before leaving the diners peering out of the portholes, enjoying the strange tranquillity of eating in an air pocket, completely submerged.
“We are launching a new era of restaurants,” said John Beernaerts, who founded the NEMO33 pool in the Belgian capital a decade ago.
The restaurant, where an underwater meal costs 99 euros ($106) per person, took more than a year to build and multiple attempts were needed to perfect the design, mechanics and food delivery system.
“It was a wonderful experience,” said Mouchart, 41, his hair still wet after the return swim through the warm – 33 degrees Celsius (91 Fahrenheit) – water to the pool side.
“It was the first time in our life that we ate underwater, which was really fun. It’s a unique dinner and we will remember this all our life.”
Royal Caribbean is now the only cruise line out there with onboard Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI) Five Star Dive Centers, where guests can become certified scuba divers as part of their cruise vacation.
Program Details
Royal Caribbean’s partnership with PADI offers a range of programs; from a 30-minute Try Dive program ($29) for those who just want to get their feet wet, to PADI’s Reactivate Program for certified divers who want a refresher ($59). Those who want to center their vacation on diving can enroll in the Open Water Diver course to earn their complete certification, which starts at $599 per person.
The course begins at home, with an online course that will ultimately leave more time for actual scuba diving while on the cruise. Once on the high seas, divers will test the waters in the ship’s pool before heading out to complete the four mandatory, open-water training dives in some of the world’s most beautiful waters. The training dives will be split among two ports, and upon returning home guests will be certified divers that will be able to plan and execute dives on their own.
How to Book
Guests can book their PADI course before boarding through the Cruise Planner, or while onboard at one of the PADI Five Star Dive Centers found on ten ships across the fleet: Oasis-class, Freedom-class, and Voyager-class ships, as well as Anthem of the Seas.
It’s not every day you get to flipper-kick your way through the staterooms of a sunken ship and gaze at artwork while you’re at it. But for scuba divers who visit Fort Lauderdale, it’s as simple as paying a visit to the Lady Luck, an underwater art exhibit located off the coast of Pompano Beach.
It’s the latest addition to Shipwreck Park Pompano, a cluster of shipwrecks off the coast of Pompano Beach. The centerpiece is the Lady Luck, a 324-foot tanker vessel built in 1967 that was sunk off Pompano Beach on July 23, 2016.
As divers swim in and around the ship (which is as long as a football field), they are treated to underwater artwork created by local artist Dennis MacDonald. We’re talking poker tables, “card sharks,” slot machines on the ship’s deck, a cascade of gigantic dice, starfish and an octopus dealing craps.
Carrying around heavy guns can get tiresome. Don’t you wish that somebody would get off their rear end and design a motorized gun carrier system for our under water hunting needs? A Scuba Diving Gun-Rack! -Me too! Looks like there’s no more need to wait on such an ingeniously helpful device! Enter the…
Sea Doo Seascooter DPV Dive Gear Mounting Board
Not since the Bass-O-Matic has there been such a clever and useful water-sports invention. I can’t wait to get my hands on a test model. Enjoy this video product explanation!
Underwater cameras provide an amazing service. They take pictures UNDER THE WATER! Underwater cameras that keep-on taking pictures under water provide an even MORE AMAZING service in my book. I wish that I could say that the SeaLife Micro 2.0 64GB camera is “MORE AMAZING” than other underwater cameras, but I can’t; can’t do that because the SeaLife camera broke and malfunctioned on us while scuba diving in the Cayman Islands. The real kick in the nuts here is that the SeaLife Micro 2.0 64GB underwater camera along with a SeaDragon 2500 light system, were Christmas presents for my son. Made me feel bad to have gifted such a POS camera to my kid. Maybe I should have spent more on his gift to get an underwater camera that actually works for more than about one hundred photos? -Yes, I should have done more research before spending around $1,000 USD on the camera and light combo.
Thank goodness we had our trusted GoPro cameras with us at the time or else, we would have been S.O.L. when it came to getting some cool underwater shots on the many scuba dives during our dive trip, like on the Kittiwake wreck for example. Stingray City for another example. Dive sites that are very special and cost a load of cash to get to when you consider the aggregate vacation price.
Check out these pictures of the leaky housing that caused the diving death of our SeaLife Micro 2.0 64GB underwater camera:
NOTE: The deepest depth the camera went to on our trip until its death the second day into our dive trip was about sixty five feet. -Not very deep!
Be VERY CAREFUL when it comes to buying underwater and dive cameras! I will be staying away from SeaLife cameras from now on or until I’m comfortable that they’re making a better product. SeaLife Micro 2.0 64GB FAIL.
saltydog@sd
Here’s how much the SeaLife Micro 2.0 64GB costs.
Condensation kills!
Are those water droplets INSIDE the camera housing?! YES, those are water droplets INSIDE the camera housing! Dammit!!!
What are Dive Badges? -They’re fun records of your dive achievements! Like our visual Dive Logs, Dive Badges enable viewers to very quickly understand where you’ve been with your scuba diving career. Check it out, they’re FREE!
saltydog@sd
And if you’re a Boy Scout, check this out! CLICK HERE!
Sometimes having a compass with you while scuba diving is extremely handy. And some of the electronic compasses that you find on higher end dive computers (electronic compasses) need to be calibrated too often in order to be useful if you forget to do so right before your dive.
I ordered one of these ScubaPro compasses and it’ll be here in a couple of days. After I receive it, I’ll take some pics and edit this article with their addition. Also, we’ll get these into the water soon and check them out and report back.
Precise Navigation Anywhere in the World
The FS-2 compass provides a unique tilt angle of up to 35 degrees, making it easier to read and operate in almost any position.
With a floating magnet separate from the compass rose, the FS-2 has greater operating freedom than conventional compasses. This means you can use the same compass for both Northern and Southern hemispheres, making it the perfect navigation instrument for traveling divers.
Technical Information
Scratch-resistant and durable oil-filled polycarbonate case.
Highly luminous dial for easy reference in low light conditions.
Side view window for easy and accurate navigation.
The build quality and feel of the Phantom Aquatics Compass is decent. -Not great. Not terrible. I like that it’s made in Taiwan as opposed to being made in China. That usually means better build quality and attention to detail IMHO.
-Nobody likes to hear about them when they’re swimming, let alone see one in the water with you. But, when you’re scuba diving, MOST of the time, it’s cool to see one or a few or even a bunch! Non-hungry, small and timid sharks don’t often eat scuba divers and that’s just science. My how scuba diving can change the way people think about the ocean’s treasurous creatures. And in a good way! Myself included.
Before my thinking was changed, my family and I went on vacation to Akumal, Mexico years back. None of us were scuba certified at the time, other than my show-off wife! So, ocean activity comprised mostly of snorkeling and swimming in really close to shore. And during one exciting time while we were splashing around in the very warm sea as I remember clearly, my daughter right next to me, let out a piercing and crisp shriek…, “SHARK!”; then proceeded to hop onto my back, with her legs and arms locked around my neck and torso for protection selfishly all her own. That word, screamed in that manner, about made me come out of my skin. Mind you that the movie JAWS screwed up my psyche along with any chance of me having a long distance ocean swimming career. I wasn’t going to be much help to my daughter or myself if I didn’t quickly get a grip with calm perspective and fast restorative action back to clear thought and surroundings analysis. Also, reminding myself here, that Akumal, Mexico is an absolute haven for sea turtles to do their egg-laying, hanging out and swimming around very close to the beach. I mean that these turtle creatures are all over the place. We saw many dozens of them, may over a hundred. Daily! -These last sentences being the important bits of information my brain was able to process which was able to bring me worry-relief during my body’s fight-or-flight computational environmental triage. Were we about to get eaten by a big ass scary shark or not?! The answer after about five seconds of wonder while my daughter was hanging for dear life around my neck was… nope. My learned offspring followed up her one word of information for me, “shark”, with a comment that it must have been a turtle that bumped her. No shark after all. After hearing that new info, I began to nervously laugh and happily torture my kid for having put me through shark fear. All’s well that ends well!
Fast forward to today. I actually want to see sharks while I’m in the water,,, scuba diving! -Still not while I’m swimming though. I can’t stand the thought of being a tasty fishing bobber just hanging out there waiting to get bump tasted by an inquisitive sea cleaner. Yuck! Bad thoughts. Having the scuba gear on and hopefully a camera rig with defensive big flash system in my hand out in front of me, brings me a minor sense of invincibility to shark attack. I much prefer the latter feeling. Sharks are extremely well designed and awesomely cool animals that nature got right. They’ve been around for millions of years and hopefully they’ll be around for millions more.
If you want to feel better about being in the water with sharks and want to enjoy Shark Week on the Discovery channel during the summer time much much more than you ever have, you need to run out and get yourself certified to scuba dive! I’ve never ever met a diver that thinks that diving is JUST OKAY. They all LOVE it. See what all the craze is about, settle your shark fears, enjoy Shark Week more. These are all valid reasons to go scuba diving. I can’t wait to do it again.
So, is it worth it to go through an Enriched Air Diver course to be able to suck on Nitrox while scuba diving? We always see those alien yellow and green stickers around on tanks that usually Instructors and Divemasters like to wear on their back. What the hell are they? -They’re tanks that are filled with Nitrox (A mix of Nitrogen and Oxygen). Well, my tank of AIR is also filled with Nitrogen and Oxygen, what’s the difference between their stickered up tank and my plain-Jane regular ol’ aluminum missionary style beige tube thingy, you ask? Their Nitrox tanks are filled with a different mix of Nitrogen and Oxygen, more Oxygen than what you find in regular AIR. The benefit to rocking Enriched Air = Nitrox while SCUBA diving is that by increasing the Oxygen in the Oxygen to Nitrogen ratio, you’re taking in LESS Nitrogen and extending your allowable bottom time. Cool, huh?! Absolutely! What an awesome tool to have in the box when you’re on a nice long dive trip racking up the day-after-day two tank and three tank dives! Lessening the Nitrogen load on your body during such a holiday is a good thing. However, there is some give and take to keep in mind when scuba diving with Nitrox so, don’t ever think about diving with Nitrox without taking an Enriched Air Diver class and getting yourself certified. And hopefully no reputable dive operation would ever sell or rent you a Nitrox setup without verifying that you’re indeed certified. None of us would do something idiotic like that anyways. We’re all extremely respectable Salty Dogs here wanting to keep our families and ourselves safe to dive and have fun another day!
Also, you should use a dive computer when running Nitrox. Remember this article I posted a little while back…
The PADI Enriched Air Diver course took about 2.5 hours of study and another 2.5 hours of classroom work including exam. I went through the class with my daughter and had a good time talking about getting too much Oxygen and SCUBA diving. Also had a fun lunch with my kid afterwards. Not a bad day in my logbook.
Go out and get your Nitrox cert! It’s a good time.
“The programme is complimentary; however, space is limited
and we recommend booking early to avoid disappointment”
“The dive sites are in some of the most exotic and pristine
waters in the world. The exact days and dive locations will be
determined by tides and local conditions. The notification of
the locations will be announced on board”
These are two quotes taken from the SILVERSEA brochure. The taste wetter also explains that you need to be at least Advanced Open Water Certified from an accredited Certification Agency.
I like “complimentary” diving programmes! Makes me wonder exactly how much money we’re talking about having to shell out for the cruise itself… I’ll bet LOTS! Maybe when I get rich I’ll take the time to find out how much one of these ‘cruises’ even costs. In the mean time, maybe I’ll open up one of those Carnival Cruise get-ya emails that I receive about daily and see what the latest cruise, $300 drink package and family snorkel will cost me these days.
If you’ve recently won the lottery, are made of money or average scuba diving travel seems to be a monumental let down these days, make sure to check out SILVERSEA right now and part with that wad of cash that’s been weighing you down lately. Also, if you have ever been on a SILVERSEA voyage or know anybody that has, please do post a comment here and let us all know how good the travel life really can get! I guess that I’m curious to know more now. 😉
