Oceandate 2262014
My wake up knock was at 5:40am. I was to begin with my deep dive and I was very nervous. I was happy to be going with my dive instructor Charlie. It was pitch black outside and the sun was just starting to rise just as we got in the water. Charlie used his torch to help us descend along the mooring line. He brought along two eggs, a water bottle filled with air, and a red can on the five. Some 20 meters later we were resting on the bottom. I had to a motor-skills test to see if I was experiencing the martini affect (nitrogen in my blood). I didn't feel it at all Charlie. Showed me the water and it was crunched up and the red can appeared green. Then the eggs came out. He used his torch to crack them open. Because of the pressure the yolk and white stayed perfectly together. I got to play with them for the amount of time I need to be at depth. Charlie smashed his and had me smash mine. It took me two tries to break the yolk. We pushed off the bottom, it was silty and sticky from the detritus, and we were off to explore. The sun was rising higher as we went shallower and we watched the ocean wake up. The fish were funny because they were groggy and slow moving. The colours slowly came out as the sun got higher and higher. It was the most beautiful and peaceful sight. Some fish were coming to say good morning to us (more likely what the heck are you?). Towards the end of our dive we saw a turtle. It had just come from his resting place during the night and was going to the surface to breathe. As we got back to the boat there were hundreds of fish swimming under the boat and very curious. They swam all around me as I did my safety stop a 5 meters. It was a beautiful way to start the day.
After breakfast, I got back in right away. I had to do my navigation dive for my certification. Charlie briefed me on me on what I had to do. Ocean we got doen to depth. I had to use the compass to swim a straight line back to Charlie. Then it was time for the reference point navigation. I swam along with him as he pointed out coral or "nemos" to use as reference pointed to find my way back to the boat. I did alright. I was too excited about other things, a really large anemone with big clownfish, to remember two of the reference points, but I at least knew where the boat was the entire time. I got us back to the boat and I went to the sun deck to dry off and warm up.
The next dive was at 10:30, but I didn't dive this one because I wanted to save my dives for the later dives. I ended up snorkelling. I wish my camera was working because it was spectacular! I found an eel, a nudibranch, and saw countless numbers of fish. The colours were AMAZING! It was exactly like all the pictures I looked at when I was a kid. I stayed in for an hour before lunch. We all ate lunch on the sun deck and relaxed. Only the newbies were allowed to go out for the 1pm dive. I was able to hire a camera for the next 4 dives. The camera guy noticed I had gained some wonderful wetsuit tan lines, so the rest of the afternoon I napped in the sun hoping they would not be as noticeable.
I got my camera set up for the 4pm dive. It was an even better location than before. The site was called the "Fish Bowl." It didn't look like t was going to be a good sire from the surface, but once we were underwater it was phenomenal! We saw a shark, eel, and thousands of fish! The camera appeared to work and I was on cloud nine! I got out cleaned up and a few of us went up to watch the sunset.
Dinner was ready and then we got to a master chef class from the crew's chef.
The music they were playing was very fitting!
Abbie got in on the fun too!
Caramelised sugar sculpture
Then it was time for our night dive! The camera worked for awhile and then it stopped reading the SD card. I just shut it off and enjoyed the rest of the dive. Charlie started crushing his bottle int he rhythm of a heart beat. I had no idea what was making that sound at first though. It was very unnerving. We turned out of lights and rested at the bottom. After a few minutes a white tipped reef shark came out of the darkness. It was eery at first but still an amazing sight. He eyed me up then swam away. There were also these big red fish that would chase after the fish we put our lights on. It was funny to watch. We also saw two turtles swimming. It was a great night dive minus the camera issues (I haven't been able to get any photos of the SD cards yet).
We were back on the boat logging our dives and laughing together. There was a new instructor on board who was ver intimidating, but a good man when you got him talking. We all laughed together for awhile before heading to bed.
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