My name is Michael Macdonald (macado) and unlike a lot of the real hardcore “internet” divers out there I actually scuba dive.
I teach recreational SCUBA diving through one of the major “alphabet soup” agencies, Although I am not saying which, it should be very easy to find out and fairly obvious. 🙂 I like to take an agnostic approach to agency bashing and treat everyone equally. I try to teach all my open water skills neutrally buoyant and encourage my students to do the same. I don’t like to teach “on the knees” SCUBA but I’m not as regimented about it as others.
When I am not teaching SCUBA then you can usually crewing or playing pretend boat captain on a couple six-pack dive charters that run out of Boston Harbor and Cape Ann, MA . There aren’t too many so this should also be pretty easy to figure out. This blog does not represent the view of the dive charters or dive shop that I work for. These opinions and rants are entirely my own.
I dive as frequently as I can rather than sit on message boards and Facebook while stroking my glorious neckbeard and posturing about how awesome I am at diving and how everyone else “does it wrong…” Although I spend an unhealthy amount of time on the Internet I’m also on charter boats / shore diving or teaching at least every weekend.
I don’t claim to be an expert on anything nor do I claim to be perfect at any skill I do. . For that I leave that to world’s foremost internet experts. I believe there is room for improvement on EVERY dive. Self-learning and proper mentoring can be just as important as formal training.
This blog was built to contain my some of trip reports as well as some of my SCUBA DIY (do it yourself) projects. Against the advice of most “experts” and dive shops, I like to rebuild my own regulators, service my own gear and blend my own mixed gases. It’s really not rocket science regardless of what the scuba industry tells you or wants you to believe. If you ask a rocket scientist they will probably tell you the same thing.
One of my other hobbies is restoring vintage dive gear from 1950s-1970s. I have a small but growing collection of double hose regulators that I occasionally can be seen diving with. I don’t believe there is anything inherently wrong or unsafe with vintage scuba gear provided it has been properly rebuilt and adjusted properly.
Recently (just about three years now), I starting diving a rEvo mCCR rebreather.  I’ve definitely been enjoying CCR diving and now have about ~400 hours of diving on the unit. I hope to write about some of my CCR dives and my experiences with the unit.
EDIT August 2023: Wow.. When I wrote this I realize I was a pretty brand new rebreather diver. Almost 10 years and over a 1000+ hours later on the loop I’m not afraid to admit of my opinions have changed. I’ve since gone from my rEvo to an SF2 Rebreather and finally most recently to a Subgravity Defender.  I did sell my SF2 last year but I still have my rEvo as my backup rebreather with my Subgravity Defender being my primary rebreather these days.  3 rebreathers later and eyeing a 4th sidemount unit I certainly have developed some more opinions. 🙂
Not Actually Reckless
Since I have been called a reckless diver by many that is where the name “wreckless” diver comes from if you can excuse the pun. I don’t enjoy being “reckless” and actually like to support safe and good diving practices. I enjoy wreck diving and hunting for artifacts, cave diving and taking bad pictures with my little point-and-shoot camera.