More Scuba Diving
Back to our Advanced Open Water course today with another two-tank dive in the morning. First site (Masda) was where we would complete our Deep Dive. On the boat ride out Tim explained again what we would be doing this time and explained all about pressure (a refresher of our OWD course 6 years ago!) with the help of a 500ml plastic bottle. He got us to try and squeeze the sides in until they were touching to see how much force it took us to do so. We also had to do a timed task that involved writing our name backwards and completing a sum. We would then have to do this again at 30 metres and compare the times to see what effect nitrogen narcosis has on us.
We descended slowly down the reef to 30 metres and after a check on our oxygen levels we then did the timed tasks again. Oxygen use at this level is greater and so just sitting around, not doing much for 10 minutes, we used about 40 bar. Because of the depth and the fact that we used our air quicker the dive only lasted for half an hour, fifteen to 20 minutes shorter than a normal dive to about 15 meters.
The second dive of the morning was our first fun dive and was at a site (Medhu Giri) that had a lot of Batfish around. The Batfish would come very close and followed us around for the whole dive, swimming between us. We also saw a Scorpion Fish that was extremely well camouflaged, and a very large Moray Eel. The gf’s fogged-up mask meant she had to get really close to it to see it. The cutest part of the dive was watching lots and lots of small fish swimming in and around the top of different types of table coral.
We only had a short amount of time to relax (read books and sunbathed!) after the dives before we headed out for the 3rd dive of the day. This was to be our night dive, something we were both a little excited as well as a bit nervous about. Heading out at 6pm from the jetty we only had a short ten minute journey to the site (Gaathu Giri) and Tim briefed us again on how to dive at night, use of torches, hand signals etc.
We entered the water just before sunset so that it was light enough to see what we were doing and we made our descent to about ten metres. We slowly swam around the reef as Tim pointed out Feather Star fish, sleeping parrot fish that were hiding very well amongst the coral (it must have been uncomfortable for them), small shrimp and large crabs.
It got dark very quickly under the water but our torches were pointing out some amazing things. There were some really bright fuschia pink anenomes as well as some small Rabbitfish (spiked dorsal fin) in blue and green colours. I also saw a Spotfin Lionfish (peach and pink colour).
At the end of our dive we knelt down and blacked out our torches and manically waved our left hand around in the water to see the bio-luminescence in the water! Once we were on the boat we headed back to the hotel and we saw some lightning of a thunderstorm off in the east. Here’s hoping it stays away from our little island!
