Wrecks, Photography and Night Diving

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A little joke for you all: What lies on the bottom of the sea and shakes? A nervous wreck.

ANYWAY...

After almost a whole day of umming and ahhing, Fran, Kate and I decided to do the Advanced Open Water course along with Sarah, Liz and Gemma. The wreck dive sounded really interesting, as did the underwater photography - and as for the night dive? We'll see about that...

There is also no final exam, so less studying than the Open Water - and we convinced ourselves that we'd probably spend the money on fun dives anyway! We get on instructors also said that it was the cheapest price we'd find in many places and I thought it wouldn't stop me diving in Thailand too.

Enough with the justification! The wreck dive last Thursday was really good. It was a ship from Vietnam on its way to Singapore which sank in 2000, I think on purpose for conservation reasons. There were lots of us so we kept bumping into each other (including rather embarrassingly landing on Ronnie's head from above, while Kate looked on and laughed!)! We could see where the captain would steer the boat from and we went up into an air pocket which was very cool. We could take our regulators out and talk to each other. On our way down I knocked my hand against the sharp coral which covered the wreck - I looked down at my finger and it was squirting GREEN BLOOD! First thing I thought was 'I've cut my hand on something that's poisoned my blood!' And then I thought I'd better stop squeezing it because the sharks would be after me! But Ronnie had also cut his hand whilst moving sea urchins out of our way so we had a squeezing contest (he won) - and then I realised that we were so deep down that the colour red looked green. He shone the torch on his finger and it was indeed red. Phew!

Saw a lionfish and small bamboo sharks as well as mackerel and scorpionfish. Not bad!

In the afternoon we did underwater navigation - using a compass and using the reef. Was so sure I'd get my buddy Gemma and myself lost while we navigated a square but we were surprisingly good! (More on navigation later!)

On Friday we went to Tokung Laut for our Deep Dive. Went down to 25metres. Might have gone deeper but unfortunately Fran had a problem with her inflator and rushed up to the surface - she was fine though but we had to wait and see if she could come back down again. We had to do a test above and under water to see if our maths skills were impaired at that depth. Some divers can suffer from nitrogen narcosis during deep dives, which is a bit like being drunk, where your concentration waivers and you do stupid things like give your regulators to fish! We had to point at the numbers 1 to 16 on a board as quickly as possible - however, I got 9 seconds above water and 8 seconds underwater!! So maybe I should live under the sea!

We saw tiny little nudibranches, triggerfish, a blue ringed angelfish, a school of yellow snappers and squid, and a blue spotted stingray.

On Sat we had our underwater photography dive which was great fun. Can't wait to upload some of my pics on here, got a good snap of Nemo! When we got bored of taking pics of the coral, Kate and I took some class pics of each other - again with the Matrix moves and cheesy smiles! We were model students, honest!

The weather has been really stormy the last few nights - monsoon season settling in - so our night dive wasn't until last night. It was quite scary, with very little visibility apart from where you're pointing your little torch - and then we had to do navigation. Sounds easy, going in one direction for 20 kicks and then back again with your buddy- but I got hopelessly lost! Couldn't direct the compass right from the beginning so once we were in the middle of nowhere I had no idea which way was which! Gemma was pointing at the coral and I was thinking 'Don't look at the coral right now because we're lost!' But she meant 'We didn't see any coral on the way here!' So we had to surface and wait for Ronnie to come and get us. We'd gone way out Thankfully Kate had done the same in the opposite direction (thanks Kate) so wasn't quite the class dunce. Very funny though.

We saw crabs (including a scary spider crab that actually looked like a tarantula), shrimps and a flatworm, a stingray swam right past me, and sleeping fish of course (but we let those lie). If you turn off your torches and wave your arms around, or spin round quickly, bright blue phospherence appear before your eyes like sparks - very cool. And that was the end of the advanced diving!

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Comments

[Kez]

Joke
Oh dear - have you taken Mark's joke book with you?!