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I have thought about this a LOT recently. I was considering investing in a new camera rig, since I'll need one for not just scuba but other things as well. $1600 Nikon Z7, $4000 Nauticam housing, $600 Atomos Ninja V, $2000 Ninja housing, $2600 for two Keldan lights, plus a couple hundred more for the arms and floats. The costs for many things are absurd in scuba, but especially for photography/videography. What I decided was to get a Hero 7 and make my own dive housing, which took about two weeks of time to design but ultimately will only cost me approximately $560 in parts.

As part of that, I decided to go with some inexpensive dive lights from Amazon for about $65/each. I actually tried the Hero 7 with the supersuit plus this light in my hand using the goodman handle, but even with the image stabilization the footage was too shakey for my tastes, and overall it's really hard to control a GoPro with one hand and a light in another hand. This is why I decided to build my own rig.

Regarding the light though, there are several vendors selling the same one and some of the reviews caused me concern about leaks, but I have tested 2 of them in the water for 3 dives now, as deep as 60 feet and had no issues. What I did however was put a liberal amount of silicon grease in the threads to really make sure it's sealed (and even a little around the edge of the glass between the glass and the metal frame), and I would recommend doing the same. They are very bright and have attachments to connect to ball adapters or be used in-hand with a goodman handle, but their primary downside compared to professional lights is that they will dim as the batteries get drained further and further into the dive. If you are looking for an inexpensive, powerful solution however, that is what worked for me.

My custom Hero 7 rig isn't built yet (still waiting for a part from China) but when I finish it and fully test it I'll post about it here in /r/diving and/or /r/scuba. In a nutshell it has a 10" 2k screen contained in a sealed acrylic frame, attached to an acrylic housing which is itself flooded, only there to add flotation and provide some additional utility/storage and support the arms/lights along with the attachment point for the Hero 7 which is inside of its own slightly modified supersuit housing. It is being built with a single 3/8" thick 24"x48" cast acrylic sheet. I'd be glad to share my work-in-progress notes if you want to do something of your own before I wrap up in the next month or two. Just let me know.

There is no Live aboard options, however I highly recommend the Aquarius dive shop, they rent great gear and have excellent guides. Figure about $100-150 a day for 2-3 tanks of diving. In cold water it’s tough to do more than 3 dives unless you are diving dry.

If you are looking for a buddy there is some great Facebook groups (Monterey Bay open scuba group is one) and people will buddy up there. I have met some great buddies from it.

There are several hotels that are diver friendly, the travel lodge even has out door sinks to rinse gear.

Water will be 55-60F down to 50F at depth.
This is a fantastic book about all the sites in the area - A Diver's Guide to Monterey County https://www.amazon.com/dp/0986257206/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_mtm3Cb8PD9H48

August can have some great swell conditions but visibly can be low with algae blooms. Carmel Bay has better visibility than Monterey Bay but has tougher entries than Monterey.

If you want liveaboard then look at Truth Aquatics out of Santa Barbra which will also go out of morro Bay to dive big sur. It’s not luxury liveaboard like an aggressor but they are good boat with great crew.

The shore diving around Monterey is great and shouldn’t be missed, the guides are reasonable, and know the area much better than diving alone.

This doesn't answer your question, but personally we use something really similar to this

The scariest part is if we decide to transfer the camera. I keep the wrist band quite tight on my wrist and was not afraid to drop it at a moment's notice, and in fact I did drop it a couple of times. I was really focused on making sure my partner had enough air and was doing okay and all those routine checks and just dropped it a few times.

I'm not sure what your motivation is to be hands free. You shouldn't be compensating your buoyancy with your hands and you shouldn't be touching anything, unless you are thinking about holding a light or thinking of emergency situations. But for an emergency situation you can just drop the camera if it's on a wristband and not worry about it. I could see advantages to being hands-free, but I think I'd personally prefer having a hand mount.

(Our diving instructor let us use the gopro on the last dive because we had finished the training and it was just us and him because the other couple had left, so he was able to keep a good eye on us and felt comfortable with it and we felt comfortable with it too.)

I bought a a Tovatec for my primary and an Orcatorch for my backup. Both are 1000 lumen rated and are quite bright.

1. The Tovatec has adjustable focus, so depending on what you want to do, it makes sense, but it is quite heavy. I am not joking, the weight is substantial. It comes with a rechargeable battery, charger and a socket for 3 AA batteries as well.
   
2. The Orca d550 is very capable still. Light (pun totally intended), bright, has a back magnetic switch (which I find better and the rocker on the Tovatec) and comes with the rechargeable battery, charger and a wrist strap.
   
   Both have 3 light modes + strobe and come with additional o-rings. I hope this helps!

Fins are great for really moving around, and I would recommend them. In reality you dont need that extra propulsion to casually snorkel. I picked up a set of gear for around 50 last year and they work great.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01G7LX56Q/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Also if you want great fins for a decent price here ya go...

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0071B9FBG/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I like these kits from cressi. Cressi Scuba Diving Snorkeling Freediving Mask Snorkel Set, Clear Transparent https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01CILSU78/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_RdL4AbYNDM2VK

There’s better but those are good enough to dive so very much good enough to snorkel.

Advice: use a lighter and burn the glass deep black then clean before your first day on the water to prevent fogging

The chest straps work fine under water, but you have to get one like the Garmin HRM Swim (more targeted to pool swimmers) or the Garmin HRM Tri and pair it with something like the Garmin Fenix 5. None of these will give you a live reading, but the devices will sync when you're out of the water and end your workout to give you a plot of your workout intensity.

The wrist-based HRMs are fine when you're out of water, but they rely on light, so they don't perform well under water.

Edit: I apparently just gave bad advice: According to the Garmin Support page on using a heart rate monitor strap while diving, their straps are rated only for depths up to 5 ATM.

I would strongly suggest the book Deco for Divers.

Buhlmann (ZHL-16C is the current iteration, I think?) is a standard deco algorithm, all the compartment values for different gasses and M-values are published. Most computers also implement gradient factors on top of Buhlmann. Here is a primer.

VPM is another algorithm, but it's on shaky ground when applied to mixed gas diving. RGBM is an extension of VPM (Suunto computers use RGBM).

This is probably also something you should read.

If you want to support different gas mixes, you need to be able to let the user specify the % of O2, N2, and He in each mix (I don't know if the M-values for H2 are readily available, but almost no one uses H2 outside of deep commercial diving and medicine), and you will have to treat each gas separately in the decompression model.

And please don't set the limit of the number of gas mixes to something stupid, like two (looking at you, Oceanic).

Well, you can find a couple 1/2 decent lights for under $150. There's also things like a nice dive knife, air fill cards at her local shop, tickets on a local charter boat, a tank, a safety sausage, set of extra O-rings, braided hoses, hose protectors, retracter clips, new dive bag, maybe a scuba tool like this:http://www.amazon.com/Scuba-Multi-Tool-by-XS/dp/B002YGG2I2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1322518668&sr=8-1 , if she's advanced enough in the hobby to be maintaining her own equipment, maybe a line an reel if she does wreck or cave diving.

That's what I was thinking. Nearly all of them are okay to use at depth (often far deeper than I'll be going) but say that while snorkeling with it is okay, scuba diving is not. My only concern is that while short dives might be okay, longer dives in rapid succession might not be (that's why I threw in how long the dives will be in my edit).

I was thinking something like this but check out the description.

TankH2O Scuba Tank water bottle, I have one in yellow and it gets a lot of attention on the dive boat:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07JLTQV7C/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_gcUUDbRWQT8M8


A cool wall map of the world where he can scratch off the countries or areas he has had the opportunity to dive :

https://www.amazon.com/Scratch-Poster-Buttons-Scratcher-Vibrant/dp/B06XRXDNDL/ref=mp_s_a_1_5?keywords=scratch+off+map+of+the+world&qid=1572528441&sprefix=Scratch+off+&sr=8-5


A new dive knife

A light (torch)

A gopro with head mount

A carry bag for his gear, I have this one and love it! :

https://www.leisurepro.com/p-tbtmbpbk/tusa-mesh-backpack-2017-model-black?gclid=Cj0KCQjwjOrtBRCcARIsAEq4rW4n387WopvauBL4Q949mh_iJifG2bzHUoi2akN-2xkYG2-wBhxzHjgaAoFnEALw_wcB

Don't know of a great app, but there are lots of great books on the subject. They are all location-specific, so recommendations may be based on where you dive.

For the Caribbean, I can highly recommend this book:

Reef Fish Identification - Florida Caribbean Bahamas - 4th Edition (Reef Set)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1878348574/

It is part of a set that includes books on fish identification, other creature identification, coral identification, and then a book on fish behavior.

Invicta. Legit dive watch, sub $100, my friends that are watch guys have given me compliments on mine, and I always laugh because its so inexpensive.

https://www.amazon.com/Movo-GB-U70-Underwater-Diving-Mounts/dp/B0734772HY/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?keywords=gopro+dive+mount&qid=1572217629&sr=8-1-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUExNzFTMVBCSzNWSVhMJmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwNDEwOTY2MzQwQko5QlpYWVMxRSZlbmNyeXB0ZWRBZElkPUEwNTU2NTI5MUhTR1JYNVBXVTdZSSZ3aWRnZXROYW1lPXNwX2F0ZiZhY3Rpb249Y2xpY2tSZWRpcmVjdCZkb05vdExvZ0NsaWNrPXRydWU=

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I got this for my GoPro and it works great on my dives and has attachment points for anything light arm options

totally with you on extending! opens up so many more possibilities if you're willing to give up some stability.

i use this guy: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ZOEFNWW/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

not sure if it's still too big for you, but i find it to be a nice balance between extendability length and size when retracted.