Silent Empowerment

The convulsions were becoming more constant … “2 min 30 seconds check” … a deep voice in the background and a poke on my shoulder. Almost by instinct my hand goes out and signals…OK. My diaphragm is punishing me as I push further… “it’s the carbon dioxide…ignore it…push through…” I hear the voice again and it pounds in my head as I feel my arms and legs tingle and my diaphragm pulsing begin to slow. “TIME”, I lift my head as I hear Stephanie say “BREATH” and count 1…2…3… I had done it…static breath hold of 3 minutes. Stephanie is beaming and gives me a high five.

I have been scuba diving for 8 years and have hundreds of dives from sunny coast of California to remote islands of Papua New Guinea. It has always been fun and exciting, but the time when I feel the most at one with the ocean is when I shed my tank, throw on my mask and fins and dive beneath the surface into the silent but dynamic world on just one breathe.

For years, I have spent countless hours eye to eye with myriads of species as I silently cruise along after a duck dive, a pull with my arms and a few kicks driving me downward. But those beautiful moments are always ended within 30 seconds by my body saying, “breath dummy!” This reflex sends me propelling to the surface with remorse that I cannot spend more time with my marine friends below. I have long thought about getting formally trained in freediving to increase my bottom time and learn the safety aspects about of the art and sport of freediving, but never pursued it. That all changed the day I received an email from filmmaker and conservationist Shawn Heinrichs with a video attachment labeled, “Tigress Shark- Woman Dances with Tiger

As a diver, a blogger and the founder of a blogging platform built for Divers, I am obviously a big fan of reading scuba related blogs myself. Here is my roundup of my 5 favorite Scuba Blogs online today.

1. ScubaDiverLife.com

This is a great blog with one of the largest social media following.

Their founder, Nadia – did a fantastic job with creating a really rich content blog and authority site. She did a great job with maintaining a really good standard of quality in the writing, in the media and the tone itself.

The blog is extremely consistent with really useful and/or entertaining posts.

Some numbers:

• Home Page PR 3
• 1m+ facebook fans (!!!), 17k twitter followers and 45k G+ Followers.
• 13k backlinks from 350 domains. Ahrefs domain rank = 50

2. Padi.com/blog

The Padi blog is a close second. The PADI entire webpresence went through a pleasant upgrade and even their content strategy altered. The blog is very well designed and usually has some really good, non self promotional content that is both useful and interesting.

Frankly, its no surprise that PADI, being the giants that they are have such a resource, it was coming for a long while.

Some numbers

• Blog Page PR 5
• 1.1m+ facebook fans, 63k+ twitter followers and 600k+ G+ Followers
• Although PADI.com/BLOG has few inbound links, PADI.com has over 1.7m which gives the entire domain super power level rank.

3. ScubaDiverGirls.com

This is a relatively new blog that has taken over the webesphere rather quickly.

The two ladies that run it have a very fun approach to blogging and rather than trying to be super informative or ‘useful’ perse, they focus on just really entertaining blog posts and vlogs of their dive travels and adventures.

I also like their approach to monetization which is to promote a line of clothing rather than sell ads. Its a great approach.

Some numbers:

• PR 3 Home Page
• 750k+ facebook fans, 45k twitter followers
• 4.6k inbound links from 237 sites

4. DeeperBlue.com

DeeperBlue is a site that is not just for scuba divers, however its definitely an interesting resource, especially considering that most divers are atleast somewhat interested in free diving.

They often have very useful tutorials and in depth articles about different aspects of diving and have a rather clean reading experience aswell.

Some numbers

• 32k+ facebook fans and 50k+ twitter followers
• 15k inbound links from ~ 1000 domains

5. Wetpixel.com

This blog is great and focuses primarily on the underwater photography aspect of scuba diving, which however is super useful to any diver, most of whom also happen to have a camera with them.

Camera reviews, tutorials and trip logs.

Very cool blog.

Some numbers

• PR 5 Home Page
• 5k+ twitter followers and 3k+ facebook fans
• 164k (!!!) inbound links from 2k domains.

Thanks for reading.

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