Don't let these common misconceptions hold you back. By Michael Ange

Diving is only for people who live in the tropics.

There are few things that equal or rival the experience of being suspended weightlessly in warm, clear tropical water while floating effortlessly along a colorful coral reef. Unless, of course, it is the experience of drifting through a California kelp bed with a pod of sea lions. Or exploring the amazingly preserved ruins of a wooden shipwreck in Lake Michigan. Or finding a million-year-old shark tooth completely intact in South Carolina's Cooper River, or ... the list goes on and on.

No matter where you are, chances are there's a popular dive site somewhere nearby. Don't believe me? Just ask anyone with the red and white diver down flag on his car. Lakes, quarries, rivers, flooded mineshafts--almost anywhere there's water, you'll find divers. Heck, outside of Abilene, Texas, you can even dive in a flooded underground missile silo. Each of these sites provides its own unique dive experience and a chance to get started in the sport. Not every dive site is for every diver, but scuba diving is not just a sport, it's also a lifestyle and a very social activity. So even if your local swimming hole isn't a world-famous dive site, an outdoor grill, a cooler, a couple of tanks of air and a dozen of your new best friends can still make for a whole lot of fun--palm trees, optional.

I have to buy a ton of gear just to learn.

Scuba is a gear-intensive sport, but you only need three basic items to start lessons--a mask, a snorkel and a pair of fins. These are personal gear items and they need to fit well for you to have a good time, so it's worth buying them even if the shop provides loaners.

All the other gear is available to rent, usually at a discount rate to students and sometimes the use of the more complex equipment is included in the dive package price.

Once you are a full-fledged diver, you will ultimately want to purchase your own gear. It will be tempting to max out the plastic and buy everything in one fell swoop, and if you've got the room on your cards, go for it. But most beginning divers continue to make use of rental gear and acquire their own items one piece at a time.

Diving--that was my grandfather's sport.

If you think scuba isn't extreme enough for you, you're not seeing past the first step. Sure, a lot of people never go beyond puttering around in nice, calm water, looking at nice, calm fish. But if you get the right training and equipment, you can get radical with this sport. Try swimming through the surf zone off Southern California and it's you who'll need the Geritol, not Grandpa. Need more? Ever hand-feed a shark? Explore the far reaches of a flooded cave? Chase a 400-pound fish through the legs of an offshore oil rig? Go inside the rusting hallways of a sunken ocean liner? Swim beneath the polar ice caps? These are just some of the experiences that divers--and only divers--get to have. But you've got to build up to it, junior. So check your ego at the door, show Gramps a little respect and take the first step--earning open-water certification--before you start talking smack. Or better yet, pull Grandpa aside and ask him to tell you about that dive he never told Grandma about.

There are sharks in the ocean and they eat divers. Don't try to deny it--I saw Jaws and Open Water.

Don't tell Hollywood, but the factual record on shark vs. diver is pretty dull: Sharks just don't make a habit of munching on divers. In fact, except in certain conditions and environments, they don't even stick around when divers get in the water. Let's look at it from the shark's point of view. You're out cruising the depths, when out of nowhere this noisy, bubble-blowing pack of creatures that looks and moves like nothing else in the ocean drops into the water and starts flashing lights (i.e., camera strobes) at you. It's got to be the shark equivalent of Close Encounters. The first thing most sharks do? Turn tail and run.

It used to be that divers could go their whole lives without ever seeing the beauty and majesty of a shark up close. Today, carefully managed encounter dives--from cage diving with great whites off Australia to hand-feeding reef sharks in the Bahamas--abound, and there is no better way to gain a true understanding of these amazing creatures than to see them up close.

Still not convinced? Then let me give you something serious to worry about instead: your dog. Yep. Behind those puppy dog eyes and that happy-to-see-you personality lurks the heart of a cold-blooded predator that's statistically far more dangerous than any shark. According to emergency room records, "man's best friend" killed 27 and seriously injured or maimed 4.7 million people in 2005, and that was just in the U.S. According to the International Shark Attack File, only four people worldwide died from shark attacks in the same 12-month period, out of 58 total recorded incidents. Based on those odds, you're safer in the ocean than taking Rover for a walk.

Diving is a macho sport that is not female friendly.

This might have been true, back in the 1950s Sea Hunt era when men of steel like Mike Nelson (played by the late, great Lloyd Bridges) were out there spearing fish with their bare hands and rescuing damsels in distress. Only it wasn't really true then, either. The lovely Zale Parry, the actress who played the damsel, was one of the most accomplished divers on the set. And when Sports Illustrated decided to feature the young sport of scuba diving in its May 23, 1955, issue, it was Parry who made the cover.

It is true, however, that men have always participated in the sport more than women, but the gap has been closing steadily since the 1980s. Today, the male/female ratio is roughly 60/40 and everyone from equipment manufacturers to tour operators offers products specifically for female divers. And there's no glass ceiling to this sport--there are female instructors, divemasters, boat captains, resort owners and dive magazine publishers.

But you don't have to take my word for it that diving is an excellent sport for women. Turn to page 60 and see what our "Women In Diving" columnist has to say on the topic.