SCUBA diving on the reef
Number of hours of continuous sleep: 2
Today is SCUBA diving day. Our 3-dive tour is scheduled to pick us up at 7:30AM. Getting up wasn’t too hard, because I’m used to being up at 8am for my early class for the past few weeks. Like I mentioned in the last post, drunk people kept waking me up last night, so I was a little tired. Hopefully, I can sleep on the boat a bit.
We arrive at the marina, which is loaded with very expensive boats that I should own one day. Our coach for the day turns out to be a 25 meter (82 feet) catamaran that appears to be fairly new. These guys are cut out for the high seas, thank goodness. A friendly crew greets us, about 15 or so young divers and ship mates. After a humorous debriefing by who appears to be the head SCUBA guy (bug the captain, don’t piss off the chef, etc), we lounge around for another half hour until we get to the reef.
The boat itself is a two-story twin turbo-diesel catamaran which moves quite quickly, about 30-35 knots from what I can tell. The lower deck is specially designed for diving and contains a recharge station for about 40 diving tanks and a special deck that lowers to water level to help a diver loaded with 50 lbs of gear to get out of the water relatively easily.
Our first dive was scheduled for 10AM. We were split into groups of four with an instructor/guide per group. Since noone in our group was certified, there was a brief lesson and limits as to what we could do in the water (“Do NOT push this button!”). Fortunately, our guide has a good sense of humor and liked to have a good time.
By this point on the trip, I now know my wetsuit size after wearing them 4 previous times. This is strange. We get geared up with a wetsuit (which we turned out to not really need because the water was warm), flippers, goggles, a weight belt, and of course, an air tank. I had forgotten the secret to getting goggles not to fog but was quickly reminded – hawk up a nice loogie and rub it around on your goggles before putting them on. Brilliant!
We hop in the water and we practice a few important SCUBA maneuvers, like recovering you regulator and getting water out of your face mask. After we get our basics down, our instructor does her trademark happy dance and we go for a swim. On one of the tanks we were using, you can last for about 20-30 minutes under water before having to surface. They were pumped up to about 3100 PSI. Lotta air in a little space.
This was my first time diving, and it was an incredible experience. Being under water for more than a minute is fascinating. You can’t hear anything, it’s like you’re in a dream world. Once I got the hang of only breathing through my mouth, it was natural and I almost forgot about my SCUBA gear. I was initially scared that my ears wouldn’t be able to handle the pressure, but once I mastered equalizing the pressure, it didn’t bother me at all. The ecosystems on the Australian Great Barrier Reef are nothing short of amazing.
Floating around down there is like visiting another planet in another dimension where you’re weightless and hearing isn’t a sense. The colors were absolutely amazing, and the pictures don’t often do justice to what we saw. Right away we saw some of the millions of corals, anemones, and other animals and plants that made up the reef. The size, shapes, and colors were like nothing seen on land. The variety of fish was nothing short of amazing, either. Between gigantic schools of little tiny fish to beasts the size of us, there was everything imaginable just in the small area that we were in.
Our instructor led us to a sandy spot and we found a sea slug the size of a football that you could toss around. She explained the creature’s anatomy to us by referencing her own—pointing to the slug’s mouth and then her mouth, the slug’s butt then her butt, etc. Laughing underwater can get you in trouble, so I had to resist.
We swam along, and basically went on the Finding Nemo tour. We saw a clownfish in its respective sea anemone Of course, we took a bunch of pictures. I was in a tough position seeing as I have a very itchy trigger finger and only had 27 exposures at my disposal. So, I was a little more judicious with the photos on this dive, and with 3 dives in all, that makes for 60 pictures… We’ll find out soon if they came out.
After 20-30 minutes of quality diving, our guide ushers us back – Clark managed to run low on air first and thus earned the title “Air Slut” well before any of us were getting close to the critical 50 bar (500-1000 PSI) range. Maybe he just had big lungs…
Surfacing was painless. You don’t have to clear your ears as you go up; the air just seeps out of them. We swam back to boat, climbed in, toweled off, and prepared for our next dive. I reloaded my underwater camera and prayed for it not to leak anymore.
The other two dives were more of the same, except we had more freedom since we didn’t have to go through a training session again. My camera seemed to leaking a little bit, but I hope the pictures still turned out (film is pretty tolerant of water). For some reason, I felt like I was a little too counterweighted and had problems sinking a little too much, so when my instructor wasn’t looking I put some more air in my vest (which they told us not to do). Oh well, it helped me out. Apparently, if you put too much air in your vest and you start rising, it expands and you rise faster and the next thing you know you’re on the surface with the bends and busted eardrums.
The trip back was uneventful and consisted of a combination of reading and sleeping. I managed to hop off the boat and leave my hat on, of course I don’t realize this until after I returned to the hostel.
From what I hear, 8 people a year die diving in Australia. Fortunately, no one on our trip became a statistic.
We call it an early night after eating a delicious AU$7 buffet (all-you-can-eat, hell yeah) at the hostel. We have to be up early for a 6:30AM depature on our deep sea fishing trip!
Cheers,
--P
Today is SCUBA diving day. Our 3-dive tour is scheduled to pick us up at 7:30AM. Getting up wasn’t too hard, because I’m used to being up at 8am for my early class for the past few weeks. Like I mentioned in the last post, drunk people kept waking me up last night, so I was a little tired. Hopefully, I can sleep on the boat a bit.
We arrive at the marina, which is loaded with very expensive boats that I should own one day. Our coach for the day turns out to be a 25 meter (82 feet) catamaran that appears to be fairly new. These guys are cut out for the high seas, thank goodness. A friendly crew greets us, about 15 or so young divers and ship mates. After a humorous debriefing by who appears to be the head SCUBA guy (bug the captain, don’t piss off the chef, etc), we lounge around for another half hour until we get to the reef.
The boat itself is a two-story twin turbo-diesel catamaran which moves quite quickly, about 30-35 knots from what I can tell. The lower deck is specially designed for diving and contains a recharge station for about 40 diving tanks and a special deck that lowers to water level to help a diver loaded with 50 lbs of gear to get out of the water relatively easily.
Our first dive was scheduled for 10AM. We were split into groups of four with an instructor/guide per group. Since noone in our group was certified, there was a brief lesson and limits as to what we could do in the water (“Do NOT push this button!”). Fortunately, our guide has a good sense of humor and liked to have a good time.
By this point on the trip, I now know my wetsuit size after wearing them 4 previous times. This is strange. We get geared up with a wetsuit (which we turned out to not really need because the water was warm), flippers, goggles, a weight belt, and of course, an air tank. I had forgotten the secret to getting goggles not to fog but was quickly reminded – hawk up a nice loogie and rub it around on your goggles before putting them on. Brilliant!
We hop in the water and we practice a few important SCUBA maneuvers, like recovering you regulator and getting water out of your face mask. After we get our basics down, our instructor does her trademark happy dance and we go for a swim. On one of the tanks we were using, you can last for about 20-30 minutes under water before having to surface. They were pumped up to about 3100 PSI. Lotta air in a little space.
This was my first time diving, and it was an incredible experience. Being under water for more than a minute is fascinating. You can’t hear anything, it’s like you’re in a dream world. Once I got the hang of only breathing through my mouth, it was natural and I almost forgot about my SCUBA gear. I was initially scared that my ears wouldn’t be able to handle the pressure, but once I mastered equalizing the pressure, it didn’t bother me at all. The ecosystems on the Australian Great Barrier Reef are nothing short of amazing.
Floating around down there is like visiting another planet in another dimension where you’re weightless and hearing isn’t a sense. The colors were absolutely amazing, and the pictures don’t often do justice to what we saw. Right away we saw some of the millions of corals, anemones, and other animals and plants that made up the reef. The size, shapes, and colors were like nothing seen on land. The variety of fish was nothing short of amazing, either. Between gigantic schools of little tiny fish to beasts the size of us, there was everything imaginable just in the small area that we were in.
Our instructor led us to a sandy spot and we found a sea slug the size of a football that you could toss around. She explained the creature’s anatomy to us by referencing her own—pointing to the slug’s mouth and then her mouth, the slug’s butt then her butt, etc. Laughing underwater can get you in trouble, so I had to resist.
We swam along, and basically went on the Finding Nemo tour. We saw a clownfish in its respective sea anemone Of course, we took a bunch of pictures. I was in a tough position seeing as I have a very itchy trigger finger and only had 27 exposures at my disposal. So, I was a little more judicious with the photos on this dive, and with 3 dives in all, that makes for 60 pictures… We’ll find out soon if they came out.
After 20-30 minutes of quality diving, our guide ushers us back – Clark managed to run low on air first and thus earned the title “Air Slut” well before any of us were getting close to the critical 50 bar (500-1000 PSI) range. Maybe he just had big lungs…
Surfacing was painless. You don’t have to clear your ears as you go up; the air just seeps out of them. We swam back to boat, climbed in, toweled off, and prepared for our next dive. I reloaded my underwater camera and prayed for it not to leak anymore.
The other two dives were more of the same, except we had more freedom since we didn’t have to go through a training session again. My camera seemed to leaking a little bit, but I hope the pictures still turned out (film is pretty tolerant of water). For some reason, I felt like I was a little too counterweighted and had problems sinking a little too much, so when my instructor wasn’t looking I put some more air in my vest (which they told us not to do). Oh well, it helped me out. Apparently, if you put too much air in your vest and you start rising, it expands and you rise faster and the next thing you know you’re on the surface with the bends and busted eardrums.
The trip back was uneventful and consisted of a combination of reading and sleeping. I managed to hop off the boat and leave my hat on, of course I don’t realize this until after I returned to the hostel.
From what I hear, 8 people a year die diving in Australia. Fortunately, no one on our trip became a statistic.
We call it an early night after eating a delicious AU$7 buffet (all-you-can-eat, hell yeah) at the hostel. We have to be up early for a 6:30AM depature on our deep sea fishing trip!
Cheers,
--P
posted by Paul at
8:57 PM
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