Scuba Diving - Kerama Islands

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Scuba Diving - Kerama Islands

Oh gosh...what a miserable experience this turned out to be! I suppose I should start from the begining of the trip.

The boat ride out to the Keramas was terrible. 12 people were jammed onto a tiny little boat which had no protection from the outside elements. Being the genius that I am, I decided to sit at the bow of the boat. There was room for me to stretch out my legs so I thought it'd be a good spot. Wrong! Because the seas were choppy, I ended up getting soaking wet from the waves that crashed over the side of the boat. The sun wasn't out and the wind off the water made it impossible for me to warm myself up. All in all, I probably sat there and shivered for about an hour while we were going out to the dive site.

The dive site wasn't that magnificent either. Much of the coral was broken apart and dead. There were lots of fish but only a few of them were new to me. Dora (from finding Nemo) is actually a type of fish (called a palette surgeonfish)! I was able to snap a photo (though not a good one) of one while diving. Other interesting wildlife included a 4 to 5 foot long yellowmargin moray, barrier reef anemonefish, comet fish, emperor angelfish, flagtail grouper, freckled hawkfish, oriental butterflyfish, redtooth triggerfish, yellow-edged lyrefish, spotfin lionfish, and a massive spotted burrfish. If the spotted burrfish (a type of pufferfish) had actually filled itself up with water, it would have been bigger than my torso. It was humongous! The other really awesome animal I saw while diving here was an octopus. I was able to snap a few photos of it before it hid itself in some coral but none of the pictures came out very well. The photos I have posted shows how the octopus was able to change it's color from dark red to white, and also how it changed the texture of it's body from being smooth to jagged. It was very cool to see in person!

The boat ride back to Okinawa was absolutely horrendous. I decided to sit in the back of the boat to avoid the water splashing on me. Unfortunately, the weather was starting to turn south so the water got even rougher, the wind picked up, and we were getting rained on. I had a dry towel which I wrapped up in and managed to fall asleep under for about 30 minutes. I woke up shivering while being splashed with the water and rain. The boat ride back took about 2 hours. By the time I got back to my room in the evening, I was completely worn out. I ended up ordering pizza, cleaning my gear, and hitting the rack around 8 PM.

Would I do this again? No way. Even though I got to see some interesting fish, the boat ride out and back ruined the experience. If I were to do it again, I would wait until summertime when it's really hot and sunny out.

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