Buoyancy control

I went SCUBA diving this weekend with a friend from work. This was my first dive after getting my open water certification, so I'm pretty green. Fortunately my dive buddy was patient and helped me out with some buoyancy control exercises, which I really needed. One is supposed to be able to hover at a single depth, maybe plus or minus 10 cm, but I occasionally took a deep breath and started to rise at an alarming rate. By the end of the second dive, my control was improving, but it still wasn't that great. We also toured around at about 40 feet for a while, and saw a bunch of snails and a couple of fish, one of which was dead.

The water was about 14 C, which was warmer than when I did the open water dives. I was able to swim around for 49 minutes in a 7mm wet suit and didn't get cold though. Still, the next course I need to do is dry suit. I may do another dive on the blockhouse in Minnewanka before I do the dry suit course, although I've been cold that there is a sharp thermocline at about 60 feet. If I had access to a boat, I could dive on the town site too, which would be interesting.