Simon Pridmore has narrated 3 audiobooks on Listento.it by 1 author, with an average listener rating of 5★ across 5 ratings. The most-rated is Scuba Fundamental.
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 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