Can Skunks swim? Yes, if they have the right equipment. Your Friendly Texas Skunk started SCUBA diving in the early 1970’s, in the East China Sea, when he lived in Okinawa, Japan. SCUBA equipment then consisted of air tanks and a connected regulator and mouthpiece, weight belt, fins, mask and a Mae West type CO2 inflated life preserver. If you got into trouble, you dropped the weight belt, inflated the life preserver and came up like a breaching whale. Was there a lot of Decompressions sickness (DCS) or Bends? Yes there was. luckily the Skunk never had to do an emergency assent under those conditions.
I stopped diving when I left Okinawa and did not get back into it until the late 80’s during my work assignment in Saudi Arabia. One of the ARAMCO Oil employees I was working with was a PADI (Professional Association of Dive Instructors) instructor.
We got to talking about diving and he suggested that I start again as there are some tremendous dive sites in that part of the world. Because SCUBA equipment had changed greatly since I had dived and because you now had to be licensed to dive I took the standard SCUBA Open Water Course. very glad I did as I learned a lot.
I have had the privilege of diving, as mentioned earlier in the East China Sea, , and in the Saudi Arabian side of the Red Sea, the Andaman Sea off Phuket, Thailand, The Arabian (Persian) Gulf, the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and the Caribbean. I have never dove in US waters. No reason, the opportunity just never presented itself.
The following photos were taken in the different places previously mentioned and are presented in no particular order. They were taken with a SEA&SEA 35 mm underwater Motormarine II camera and a YS-60 flash. Pretty sophisticated for then but rather archaic based on todays standards. I hope you enjoy my underwater world.