Swimming with the fish - Day 1

Man I was tired this morning. We had to wake up extra early because we didn't yet have a rental car, so we had to rely on the diving company to transport us to the ferry.  Since we lived in the suburbs, we caught a ride in with Rick on his own way to work at the Dive Centre -- so we arrived about an hour before our ferry departure, but hey -- better that than biking in with our scuba gear! 

Ian snapped this shot as we were cruising on the morning ferry. He was surprisingly more alert than I.  I guess it has to happen once every two months.  

 

We had to take the ferry to get to our liveaboard. These diving companies are pretty smart. They essentially run this liveaboard permanently out on the outer reef and then get ferries to deliver their customers out to sea every day. That way, the liveaboard itself can offer diving to their customers all day long without having to worry about coming to shore. We got to the boat around 10:30. We were going to be diving (if we wanted to, that is), at 1PM, 4PM, and 7PM (a night dive!) today, and 6AM, 8AM, and 11AM tomorrow. With an additional snorkel at 1PM tomorrow if we felt like it.

 

Our first dive was in a big group (besides us, there were 4 other certified divers on the trip) so that the divemaster could be satisfied that we all knew how to dive. For those who aren't scuba divers, a quick little primer on some of the facts.  We were only open water certified, so we're only trained to go down to 100 feet.  The deeper you go, the more air compresses.  That means a few things:  deeper dives will require more air (read: Ian's air will run out more quickly), deeper dives will require more decompression/safety stops on the way up (because more nitrogen and other gases will have built up in your body), and deeper dives will require more equalization on the way down (because all the little pockets of air around your eyes, nose, ears, etc, become little vacuum-like places -- especially for your ears -- you need to equalize by swallowing or blowing air out of your ears every few feet otherwise it gets very very uncomfortable). 

If you stay above 30 feet or so, you don't have to worry about decompression stops -- then all you have to do is exhale the whole way up.  Since the air in your lungs will expand as you go up, you'll just keep exhaling and you won't run out of air.  Due to all the decompression calculations (your body can only take so many minutes at such and such a depth every hour so that all those gases have time to get out of your system), the general rule is to go to your deepest depth on the first dive and then get shallower and shallower.  We were supposed to reach 18 meters on this first dive...but maybe we all got excited or something, because none of us made it deeper than 13.  Luckily, most of the stuff that's cool at the reef was above 13 meters.

Unfortunately, we didn't get an underwater camera for the first dive. Wouldn't you know it though -- that's when we saw one of the coolest things all trip. This HUGE starfish. Must've been at least 3 feet long from end to end. If Ian wasn't convinced before, that definitely sealed the deal on underwater camera rentals for the rest of the dives! 

Diving with the liveaboard was MUCH nicer than all of our other diving trips. My favorite part was that you didn't have to put together your own equipment. I hate hate hate that part of scuba diving. Here, someone else puts the BC and the tanks and the regulators and everything together for you. All you have to do is put on a wetsuit and strap on the BC. Sweet.  (P.S.  BC stands for buoyancy compensator, which is basically a vest that allows you to control your depth.)

Within minutes of our second dive, Ian had some good photo opportunities.  I thought we weren't supposed to touch anything...but the divemaster diving with us picked up this sea cucumber and started handing it to everyone to hold. It was like terrycloth underneath!

He was licensed to feed the fish -- so as soon as he pulled out his cat food (that's literally what he feeds them), the fish came swarming from all around.

  

The wrasse came too -- these guys were about half the size of our guide!

  

Or the full size of me...

Check out the turtle! 

And the sting ray being chased by a fish!

As you can see from all the bubbles around us, this dive was a little crowded.  We figured we'd go without the divemaster next time and stick with just one of the divemasters-in-training from yesterday.

 

Ian was always focused on the fish, so it was up to me to capture some shots of the actual coral and the smaller fish.  Here's me in action!

I have no idea what all of these coral bits and pieces are -- but aren't they cool???

 

I got a couple shots of the sea cucumber up close.

 

And the flute fish.

 

And some kind of parrot fish. Colors were way better in person - oh well.

The coral as ecosystem as an action shot!

 

All too soon, our air ran out so we had to surface. Turns out the sun was starting to set back above the water.

Pretty soon it would be time for our night dive.  For now though, it was enjoy the sunset time.

I admit I'm a little obsessed with my new-found sunset-mode on my camera.

We didn't take the camera on the night dive -- and to be honest, while it was cool to see the creatures that lit up for nocturnal feeding, it actually wasn't all that amazing for me. I think because we had to go as a big group again, it was mostly torch light that you were seeing and not so much wildlife. Also, the people up front would undoubtedly scare away the cool animal, which meant that I didn't actually catch a glimpse of the crab or the lobster.  I did see a turtle swimming around though -- that was pretty cool. We'd seen the other turtle during our day dive, but it was just sitting on the ocean floor. This guy was actually swimming around. 

Anyhow, the night dive was very short and we were out of the water and into our rooms by 9PM. They restricted everyone to only 3 minutes of freshwater for showering everyday so getting ready for bed was pretty quick.  Plus, we wanted to be alert for our 6AM dive.