Anyways, the actual dive. We had to be ready for the van to pick us up at 7:30 to take us to the dive shop. 7:30 isn't all that early unless you've stayed up late the night before. I grabbed a banana for breakfast and was worried about getting hungry during the dive.
After getting all outfitted with wet suit (next time I'll get a full wet suit, I went with a shorty this time and had to worry about getting cut by coral), fins (they made fun of me since my feet were so small I needed kid's fins), BCD (what? Buoyancy control device or something like that), we headed out to the dive boat and got the safety rundown from our guide, Thomas. He was in charge of me, Ben, and a Japanese tourist who didn't speak English. Part of the safety talk included where we were going: to the lemon sharks.
I've done a bit of swimming with sharks at this point--but mostly just black or white tips that are nice and small. Lemon sharks can grow to be more than 3 meters!! Combine that with not diving before and wondering how I'll do that far underwater...I was getting a bit nervous. But nervousness and stress is probably more dangerous than anything else underwater so I tried to calm down and enjoy the boat ride.
Once you strap yourself into the tanks and BCD and all that jazz it's really hard to maneuver around the boat but once you're in the water (a giant step off the boat, not a jump!) you barely feel any of the gear. That first dive I didn't quite have it figured out that you can control your buoyancy by letting air out or into your vest so Thomas kind of had to hold my hand with that by deflating me and giving me more weight.
We descended by way of the mooring rope, and I went really slow. Slow enough to probably annoy the other diver with our group but I wasn't taking any chances of hurting my ears. And I was learning how to breath with a regulator. Since Thomas hadn't mentioned anything about either sipping the air, breathing normally or anything else I just tried yoga breathing. Long slow inhales and even longer, slower exhales. Worked pretty well.
Unfortunately the coral is pretty dead around the lemon shark feeding area but there was still plenty to see. A huge cyclone ripped through the area about 5 years ago, which killed a lot of the coral. In some places it's started to make a comeback but not here. I stuck pretty close to Thomas and didn't see too much since I was focused so much on breathing. After what felt like seconds Thomas checked how much air we had left and had to take the Japanese tourist back to the boat. While Ben and I floated under the safety bar (which is at 5 meters under the boat) someone pointed behind me.
Turning around I saw one of the lemon sharks. Holy guacamole that thing was HUGE. Thomas later told us it was about 3 meters but it's body was so much thicker in proportion to the black tips that I've seen. It looked like a pure muscled killing machine. Ok, maybe not that bad but the word predator definitely flashed through my mind when I looked at it. I'm very proud of myself for not freaking out when I saw that sucker. It wasn't close by any means and he (or she) was just minding his (or her) own business, completely ignoring us. I'm ok with being ignored by sharks.
Once we hit 50 bars of air in our tanks Thomas took us up to hang out on the safety bar for 3 minutes before heading to the surface. When we got up there we were surprised to see most everyone in the boat already--Ben and I have good lungs! Our air lasted quite a while :)
Between dives the guides made us coffee and gave us pineapple. An aside: Moorean pineapple is famous and beyond delicious. We boated over to a place on the island where sting rays congregated and jumped in to swim with them. They're really acclimated to people--they'll swim right up onto your shoulder to say hello. You have to be careful about stepping on them or petting their stinger but other than that you can grab their wings and pet them. They're really silky. It's like petting a really cool, flat eel.
The second dive place had a lot more live coral and by that time I was comfortable enough in the water to be able to really see it. Again the Japanese tourist used up his air pretty quick and went back to the boat. Thomas was comfortable enough with us to let us explore the coral under the boat while he took the other guy up, then come find us and take us to see really awesome things.
We swam by an overhang, and then under it to see the lion fish that had stuffed themselves into little depressions and a HUGE moray eel that actually swam out of it's cave and into another one. Ben has a video of it but from my angle it looked bigger. After the eel went into the different cave Thomas stuck his arm in to try and get it out again which kind of freaked me out. Luckily he didn't get bit!! He probably dives here often enough to know what not to do, which I realized later.
We saw urchins and an octopus and sharks (of course). Again, I really regret not having an underwater camera because the only pictures I have are of things Ben noticed. I would have taken hundreds of pictures of all the different types of fishes, the cool tiny spiny urchins tucked away in little places of the coral, the little organisms that looked like cartoon pine trees that would retreat into the coral if you touched them, etc. Some sort of snapper hung out with us for awhile, they would come right up to your mask and give you the eye if you stayed still long enough.
Everyone was teasing me after the dive for looking so incredibly happy. Like I said, I can't stop smiling and was happier than a kid in a candy store. I asked how long we had spent underwater, convinced it was only about 20 minutes but apparently we spent an hour down there! I think the deepest we went was 45 feet, the experienced divers went as far as 90, maybe. Someday that'll be me!
A big big big thanks to Joe and Liz for the amazing weekend and dive and everything. We'll sail back to Tahiti and our poor broken Kyanos on a boat named Dragonsbane with Dale, Jacques, and Adam tomorrow.
Pictures:
Fishy! Can't remember the name.
Power boats go so much faster than sailboats. Taylor, this picture is for you: look how flat the Pacific is.
Lion fishes.
Me and sharks.
View from below: sharks.
Friendly snapper.
Coral rebuilding itself.
Wendryn used to dive, and knows which dive shops to hit in Reno. When you get back, you might want to speak with her. Also, unless we got rid of it all in the move, we may have some equipment that you can have.
ReplyDeleteVery well done with the post.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for sharing this one.
Awesome clicks by the way.
discount scuba gear packages