BY LAURA PAVIN From Buffalo Grove  Sun-Times

Chicagoland Scuba staff and customers went on a diving trip to the Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands.

LAKE ZURICH — Scuba diving might be the best remedy for breaking away from the influx of information that saturates every inch of daily life.

That’s because an iPhone must either stay behind or get turned off by the water — permanently.

Katy Detlefsen, a rescue diver and staff member at Lake Zurich’s Chicagoland Scuba, said many area residents may not know about the local business, but they should.

It’s located at 756 S. Rand Road, in the same plaza as Wal-Mart.

“There’s nothing better than going under the water, and seeing everything down there,” Detlefsen said. “You forget about all this – this disappears… you are just in a whole different world.”

Chicagoland Scuba owner Bill Harting, who also is leads instructor developer courses (IDC), likened scuba diving to a vortex because “once you get in, you never come out sometimes.”

Many of his staff members agreed, having been with him for a decade or more.

More than a one-stop shop for scuba gear, Chicagoland Scuba is a Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI) five-star dive center that offers scuba diving lessons all year-round. The target audience includes people who are hoping to learn, explore, prepare for a trip or take up a new hobby.

Harting, who has been with Chicagoland Scuba since 1998, said he knew his life would be all about scuba diving after going for the first time when he was 28 years old.

Similarly, Detlefsen said she was scuba certified in 2002 and hasn’t stopped diving since.

Harting says become a lifestyle that’s further facilitated by the group trips that he takes with Detlefsen, his instructors and anyone else that wants to come. They will even certify people on the trip after taking the academic and pool skills portion beforehand.

The shop is associated with the local Buccaneers Dive Club that meets at 7 p.m. on the second Tuesday of every month at the TGI Fridays in Lake Zurich. Last week, the shop and club held a cookout, which wasn’t short on diving stories.

Harting said that some of the coolest diving he’s ever done has been right here in Lake Michigan.

“It’s phenomenal. The dive industry here has worked together to create more tourism — they sank two giant wrecks after cleaning them to EPA standards to create dive sites for us to go on,” said Harting, explaining that the sites were created to allow training in safer conditions.

He noted that Chicagoland Scuba runs charter operations in Lake Michigan and dives the sites at least once or twice a month for fun and for training.

“When I take people to a 250-foot steel car ferry and bring them to the engine room to show them the giant engine, they can turn around and see a really cool picture,” he said.

More training is required before trainees can dive wrecks that were not intentionally sunk, and are more historical in nature.

In North Carolina, for instance, wrecks will have wiring harnesses hanging down and be broken in half on different levels, which may lead to confusion regarding which level one is swimming on.

Because he realizes that people only have a certain amount of free time, Harting said those who are interested should take the training one step at a time.

“We tell people, ‘OK, we can go down to Lake Michigan on Saturday, you’ll be home Saturday afternoon and have that training,’” he said. “Training is one day, as opposed to a whole week, and you are not tied up for a whole vacation.”

Within three years, people gain the skill to dive at Truk Lagoon in the central Pacific Ocean, while diving in Lake Michigan every two or three months during the diving season to keep their training up-to-date.

Detlefsen said Chicagoland Scuba is currently running a summer special on its Open Water Diver Program, which is the program that gives divers the education and training they need to make the leap from the pool to an actual body of water.

Harting says that some of the coolest experiences he’s had were involving interactions with sea lions, massive whale sharks and actual sharks, though they were not great whites.

Lake Michigan is often the most affordable option for divers looking to make scuba a hobby. Fortunately, Harting said, a whole world of history lies in its waters.

“For instance, the Chicago Fire. Chicago is under water right now; there are fields of debris that we’ll go out to,” he said. “Also, during prohibition, they took weapons that were welded closed out on a barge and threw them out in the lake.”

People have found artifacts like weapons, bottles, silverware and bricks, Harting said.

For more information on Chicagoland Scuba, visit chicagolandscuba.com.

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