Simon Pridmore has 5 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 3 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.9★ across 8 ratings. The most-rated is Scuba Confidential.
Scuba Fundamental
Summary
If you do not yet scuba dive but are thinking of learning, then this book is for you. It takes you from the germ of the idea that you might like to try scuba diving up to the point where you have done around 20 dives. This is not your standard how-to manual. It is very different. The purpose of Scuba Fundamental is not to teach you how to dive. A dive instructor will do that. But this book will make the learning process much easier. It will help you make the right choices and avoid the pitfalls that await new and uninformed divers coming into the sport. It will also set you well on the road to becoming a capable and competent lifelong diver. Scuba Fundamental tells you how to make sure you are prepared for a scuba diving course and what a good beginners course should entail. It tells you how to choose a good instructor, how to decide which operators to dive with after you have finished your course and what sort of dives you should be doing when you first start diving. You will learn the many ways in which diving will change your life and also acquire some extremely valuable advice on the etiquette involved in the sport. Throughout the book you will be entertained, educated and encouraged by anecdotes from people who are now experienced divers but were once beginners too. There is also an entire section devoted to diving safety, much of which covers vitally important aspects of scuba diving that standard training manuals don't emphasize enough or even leave out completely. The book's message is: start scuba diving the right way and you will be relaxed and ready for the adventure. You will have more fun, make fewer mistakes and be confident in the fact that you are well informed, have made the best choices and have spent your money wisely.
©2016 Simon Pridmore (P)2016 Simon Pridmore
Scuba Confidential
Summary
Scuba Confidential is a unique audiobook packed full of valuable tips and expert advice, giving you unprecedented access to the secrets of dive professionals and technical divers. With Scuba Confidential, you will learn how to master skills and techniques that will make you a more confident, capable, and safe diver. It offers an informed, balanced view on some of scuba diving's most contentious issues like going solo, deep diving, and rebreathers and includes a comprehensive analysis of how diving accidents happen and how to make sure you do not become a statistic. Scuba Confidential also gives you valuable insights on a vast range of topics such as what it is like to do a cave diving course, how to make sure you buy the right equipment, what to consider when choosing an instructor, things even the pros get wrong, and where to find the best diving in the world. This is candid, no-nonsense practical advice from a professional who has been involved over the last three decades with virtually every aspect of the sport. Scuba Confidential answers a whole host of questions. For example, have you ever wondered... How the professionals look so comfortable in the water? What it is like to dive under ice and inside shipwrecks? Which training courses are worthwhile and which might just be a waste of time? If you would make a good technical diver? If you should be considering a rebreather? How you can reduce your air consumption? Whether you might actually be safer without a buddy sometimes? Or: How muck diving can possibly be any fun? Scuba Confidential has the answers to all these and many more.
©2013, 2014 Simon Pridmore (P)2014 Simon Pridmore
Scuba Professional
Summary
Scuba Professional is the natural successor to Simon Pridmore's first book, Scuba Confidential - An Insider's Guide to Becoming a Better Diver. Whereas Scuba Confidential focused on how to scuba dive, Scuba Professional looks at how diving is taught and how dive operations are conducted. Scuba Professional is an excellent source of out-of-the-box ideas and independent, objective advice for instructors and dive operators. It is also an indispensable guide for those aspiring to become dive professionals with chapters such as Do You Have What It Takes? and Which Training Agency? In short, this is everything you wanted to know about working in scuba diving but never dared to ask. Scuba Professional is not only for professionals. Serious divers who take more than a passing interest in their hobby and want to know what goes on behind the scenes will be fascinated by the topics addressed and the insights offered. From a dive safety point of view, Simon looks at the bigger picture and, in a series of chapters on avoiding and handling accidents, sets out a framework for developing the safety culture within our sport. He also examines the present state of key aspects of the dive industry and speculates as to the future.
©2016 Simon Pridmore (P)2016 Simon Pridmore
Scuba Exceptional
Summary
Scuba Exceptional may be the fifth in Simon Pridmore’s Scuba series, but it is the true follow-up to the first book in the series, Scuba Confidential. Scuba Exceptional reflects the same philosophy of safe diving through the acquisition of knowledge and skills. The themes are new, there are some wonderful and extremely useful new cautionary tales, and the focus this time is more on issues that face experienced divers. For example, there is more technical diving content, but, as usual, Simon covers complex issues in his usual clear and easy-to-listen-to style. In many cases, the concerns of technical divers reflect those of scuba divers at every level. After all, as he says, technical diving is on the same spectrum as conventional sport diving: It is just a different frequency. Scuba Exceptional also deals in detail with the psychological approach to scuba diving, broaching topics from new angles and borrowing techniques and procedures from other fields of human activity. While most of Scuba Exceptional focuses on the diver, it also takes a look at the wider picture and highlights a number of areas where scuba diving professionals and the “industry” as a whole are letting divers down. As always, Simon is realistic in his assessments. He may shine a little light on the dark side of the scuba diving world, but he does this in order to illuminate bad practice and encourage change while offering solutions. He also provides insights on a wide range of topics. For instance, do you want to know: What makes someone a good diver? How to swim against a current without getting exhausted? How you can be out of air while you still have plenty to breathe? What the concept of failure points is? How to be a defensive diver? How preconditioning applies to scuba diving? How long you should really wait between diving and flying? When to call DAN (and when not to call)? How corals could possibly be animals when they look like rocks? How to avoid being left behind in the ocean? What’s happening in the world of rebreather diving? or What the perimeter of ignorance is? Scuba Exceptional has the answers to these questions and a lot more.
©2018 Simon Pridmore (P)2019 Simon Pridmore
The Diver Who Fell from the Sky
Summary
Maverick, innovator, entrepreneur, environmentalist, and sheer force of nature, Francis Toribiong would have been a unique and significant individual no matter where in the world he was born. As it turned out, he was born in the island nation of Palau in the Western Pacific at just the right time to apply his special set of skills and attributes to the task of helping his country find its place in the world. He arguably did more than anyone to build Palau’s economy and help it develop into an independent, forward-looking nation. And, improbably, he achieved all this via the sport of scuba diving. Francis Toribiong is a Pacific Islander like no other. He is the father of Palau tourism, a scuba diving pioneer, and an effective, tireless ambassador for his country and its abundant marine resources. For his whole life, he has been a devoted friend to strangers and an implacable opponent to anybody who, through malevolence or negligence, threatens Palau’s considerable natural treasures. He has also been the perfect host to generations of scuba divers from all over the world, who have visited Palau to see those treasures for themselves. And, as well as all that, he was Palau’s first ever parachutist - known by people throughout the islands as the Palauan who fell from the sky. They were speaking both literally and figuratively. He was so completely different from all of his contemporaries in terms of his demeanor, his ambitions and his vision, that it was as if he had come from outer space. Palau had never seen anybody quite like him and there was no historical precedent for what Francis Toribiong did. He had no operations manual to consult and no examples to follow. He wrote his own life. Francis Toribiong was the first Palauan ever to seek and seize the international narrative. No Palauan, in any context or field, had previously thought to go out into the world and say: “This is Palau - what we have is wonderful. Come and see!” This is his astonishing story.
©2020 Simon Pridmore (P)2021 Simon Pridmore