Under the Sea

It's official! I have now scuba dove! It's fun! It's relaxing! It's challenging! It's interesting! And everything is so new! Like a lot of hobbies SCUBA is very social, in my certification class in Cairns there were about 15 students and on the live aboard boat we total 37, 31 divers and 6 crew. I passed my dive medical exam despite my injuries. The doctor gave me instructions to keep it clean and rinse with freshwater after each dive. Getting into and out of a wetsuit was a bit painful but it was all worth it. Once I was in the water there was no pain at all, even if there was, it would be easy to forget with all the fish and coral to look at.

The course I took is a 5 day Learn to Dive course. The first two days were spent in Cairns learning about the equipment and theory of diving, then for the next three days we went out on the ocean, living on a boat on the Great Barrier Reef! Our instructors warned us the schedule for the next three days would be little more than eating, diving and sleeping. The first day out on the boat my class went on two dives in the morning working on attaining our open water certification. It's difficult to explain the feeling of diving. The compressed air you breath is very dry, it's louder underwater than I expected it to be, a lot louder. I found diving relaxing though, focusing on my breathing, moving slowly and looking out for Nemo and his friends was quite enjoyable.

At the end of the first day while all of the students were watching from the top deck, the already certified divers were preparing for a night dive. It was so spooky! Sharks were circling behind the boat right where the divers were jumping in. As the divers descended, the beams of their flashlights eventually faded out until you could no longer see them. I couldn't wait for when we could go on a night dive the next day.

Day two was an exciting day since it was the day we'd gain our certification and be able to dive unguided. We still had two dives to complete and perform some skills in the water, by noon we were all certified divers! For my first fun dive I chose to go with my dive buddy whom I knew didn't use much air. I wanted to spend as much time underwater as possible and I'd gained the reputation in class as the one who uses the least amount of air. Our dives up to this point had been between thirty and forty minutes long. On our first fun dive, my buddy and I stayed under for fifty three minutes! It was a blast, even though we kind of got lost and didn't know where we were going most of the time. I noticed that without a guide, I didn't see as much because I was always concerned about where to go next or where my buddy was instead of just following the leader. Over the next few dives I worked out how to navigate better underwater and it made it much more enjoyable when I knew where I was.

Night dive! Just like the last one, sharks were circling the back of the boat as we jumped in. We descended to the bottom and made a loop through the coral and back to the boat. The reef is interesting at night, I'd like to do more night dives. Little shrimps were out on the coral peering up at us with their orange eyes, the soldierfish who are tucked away in holes and under shelves during the day, are swimming about at night. We came across a painted crayfish too which is like a lobster. It's antennae were huge! At one point I was following Oscar, our guide, through this hallway of reef. He shined his flashlight under a big shelf and there was the biggest green sea turtle I've ever seen! It was bigger than the leatherbacks I'd seen in Costa Rica! He was sleeping and had to be over 7 feet long. His tail was as big around as my arm! I couldn't believe it.

We didn't see much else as we made our way back t the boat. We held on to a bar that had been suspended about 5 meters below the boat. Oscar pulled out a plastic pop bottle and began rolling it between his hands and crinkling it, twisting it and bending it. It made a very loud sound underwater, it was a deep, loud rumbling sound... and it was attracting sharks! We couldn't see the bottom and our visibility was limited to the faint glow of the boat's floodlights from above, coupled with our flashlights. Oscar pointed to the edge of our visible limit and I could just make out the green eye shine of the shark. Then it disappeared! Pretty soon it came back again and left again .It was getting closer and closer, staying longer and longer. It was a grey reef shark about two meters long. I was focusing on it with my flashlight when two others came up underneath us! Whoa! It was so fun! As we ascended to the boat ladder the bigger one came closer. I was following it with my light when it turned and came towards me! Ahh! It wasn't enough to get me swimming towards the steps but it definitely got the adrenaline going. That was a really fun dive!

The first dive the next morning, my seventh, took the cake. I had a new dive buddy for this dive, Adam, also from America. Where do I begin? It was very early and we were in the water just as the sun was rising so all the night-time stuff was still out and the day-time fish and turtles were coming out too. We saw the usual things, Christmas tree worms, some really good clown fish in anemones and then a shark! A black-tipped reef shark just swam past and Adam didn't see it! I was trying to get his attention but I didn't want to miss the shark so I kept my eye on it while swimming backwards to grab Adam. He missed it in the end which I thought was a bummer, we probably wouldn't see another one right? We went around a corner and I took a course about 3 feet above Adam and there was a turtle eating! We could have gone right past it. After Adam snapped a couple pictures of the turtle we went around a mound of coral and there was a white-tipped reef shark sleeping on the sand! Wow! We watched it and tried to get closer and closer until finally it woke up and slowly swam away. A little further away were some other divers coming our way, something wasn't right though, one diver looked funny. As it got closer I realized it wasn't a diver at all, but a turtle swimming gracefully towards us! I thought, "This couldn't get any better!." I was wrong again. Only a few seconds later as Adam was taking pictures of some blue staghorn coral I just happened to peer between two towers of reef and I could just make out the outline of a sleeping shark about ten meters away! We swam over to it and watched it for awhile. It was bigger than all the others at about 7 feet long. Sharks look pretty peaceful when they're sleeping. Their gills move a little bit and they open and close their mouths slightly but generally they just lay on the bottom. By this time it was time to go back to the boat and eat breakfast. Nobody could believe everything that we saw in that single dive!

All in all, I went on nine dives, ate some great food and met some interesting people. I'm not ready to sell the farm and make my living from diving, but I am looking forward to diving some more. I would especially like to go with some friends of mine, and maybe, just maybe my parents will dust off their certification cards they got way back in the day and we can be dive buddies someday.