While I've snorkeled for years, I have just recently begun scuba diving--it is quite a blast!  Got certified through the Weaver's Dive Center (recommend highly) in early February, 1999, with open water certification dives in a 92 degree "hot pot" in Utah called "Homestead."  I'd already planned my first dive trip, a Weaver Package week from the 19th to the 26th of February in Bonaire, from which I survived!
    Bonaire  is one of the Netherlands Antilles (the "abc's" of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao), in the Southern Caribbean, just off the coast of Venezuela.  Weather was great, though could have had a higher percentage of sun.  Expected weather was 82 degrees, both air and water; the actuals were a bit cooler, though still very pleasant.  Saw seahorses, octopi, the usual fish (French and Queen Angels, a myriad of parrotfish, nice varieties of moray and snake eels, etc.), and great coral formations.  Had very nice night dive, too.  Overall, great fun--makes a winter visit to an exotic, warm place far more interesting!
    Second trip was to the Bahamas, off Florida (specifically Stuart Cove's dive center, next to the Clarion South Ocean Beach Hotel, roughly opposite Nassau town on New Providence Island).  They had two very fun shark dives.  The first was at 80 feet and you just cruised along this coral reef wall with several sharks.  The second, a bit more "circus-like" in nature was the Shark Arena dive where you are in a circle of divers, roughly 20 feet in diameter.  A shark feeder descends in the middle and begins feeding the sharks who zip in and out of the circle, brushing past you continually.  (I had pectoral and caudal fins bumping against my nose, with other incidental contact).  On a night dive, I petted (and was petted by) an octopus--very odd texture!
    Third trip to French Polynesia (Tahiti, Rangiroa, Moorea) in the South Pacific.  The fish were the impressive things here...corals mediocre, but there were amazing amounts of fish.  Saw *huge* manta ray (looked like a car from above), nice turtle, and many different types of sharks (lemon, nurse, reef, black-tipped, white-tipped, crescent tipped, grey).  Large school of barracuda.  Interesting dives in the "passes" which were where water passed in and out of atoll lagoons into the ocean--drift diving is quite fun!  It was summer there and just missed the monsoon season, but the water was very warm and extremely clear.
    Fourth trip to Little Cayman in the Caribbean.  Among readers of Scuba Diving Magazine, voted first place for favorite wall diving in the Caribbean and second place for favorite reef diving.  The late Phillipe Cousteau considered Little Cayman on the the three finest dive areas in the world.  I found the color of the deep sea, looking away from the walls (which go straight down 6,000 feet to the ocean floor), to be the most beautiful deep blue I have ever seen.  The dive sites all had many sea turtles (possibly due to a breeding program on Grand Cayman?) and I saw a large number of lobsters.  I think, overall, that I had a slight preference for Bonaire, but it is very close.
    For those who are thinking about recreational diving, but are nervous about equipment failure (which basically never happens, anyway!), there is a product called "Spare Air" that is essentially a tiny supplemental tank with a mouthpiece attached that you clip on your apparatus.  It contains 48 breaths of air that can get you comfortably to the surface from any reasonable depth.  You just fill it from a tank at the beginning of your dive trip and empty it before getting on the plane to come home (you are not likely to ever need it, but it sure is nice knowing it's there!).  Nice insurance for $300!