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Published: November 27th 2006
Extreme closeup!!!
the holding the camera and taking a photo of yourself was much more difficult underwater!That´s the number one rule of diving as we found out in our first class of our open water dive course. We arrived in Utila with numerous recommendations for a dive shop called Alton´s, this was good as it saved us having to wander round with all our stuff checking out what everyone was offering! Alton´s was right at the end of a long sweeping bay that comprised the main town of Utila, a little out of the way but that turned out to be a good thing as the shop and its accomodation were right on the water. We could walk out of our room and see fish swimming around under the dock in the morning and sit at the end of the dock with a beer and watch the sunset over th ocean in the evening.
There was no messing around with getting started on the diving; we started our theory the evening we arrived with homework and everything! By the following afternoon we were all kitted up and in the water. Not very deep water, infact we could actually stand up in it. The first stage of the course is called closed water, this is normally done
Alton's advertising!
Hope you don't mind the butt shot on the net Jess?! in a controlled environment like a swimming pool but because we had a nice clean area infront of the shop we could just jump off the dock and do it right there.
In the closed water portion of the course you learn to do all the things that you would never normally do intentionally but that could happen to you under water. Things like taking your mask off and putting it back on underwater and being able to get all the water out of it underwater and taking the breathing mouthpiece out and replacing it without swallowing a load of water or freaking out! We also did some breathing exercises which were pretty cool; once you learn to control your breathing you can effectively lift yourself off the floor by breathing in and lower yourself back down by breathing out.
With all the closed water exercises and a few more cheesey instructional videos out of the way we were on a boat heading out to our first open water dives on the second afternoon. As the term suggests open water is out at sea, you jump off the back of the boat with all your kit on and
Trumpet fish
This one´s pretending to be coral but we saw them hiding amongst other things having changed colour. descend down into the deep. After doing a few more exercises to make sure all the close water stuff had sunk in our dive instructor Ian and dive master Chris took us on our first trip round a coral reef. We were only at a depth of around 10m for the majority of the dive, but that was plenty deep enough to see loads of cool stuff.
The amount of different fish is pretty awe inspiring along with all the crazy coloured corals and sponges. Underwater you obviously can´t tell someone what you´re looking at but the instrutors have hand signals for different fish types. When you weren´t quite sure what you were looking for there was often a lot of frantic gesturing and pointing; one thing that we didn´t realise was that a lot of the really cool things to see are the really tiny things. This means that they hide in amongst the coral and are pretty difficult to spot!
Back on the dive boat we had to change our equipment over to fresh air tanks for our next dive. Because of our rather eratic breathing on our first few dives we went through air quite
quickly - apparently as you get better you´ll be able to breath slower and last longer! We still managed about 40 minutes on our first dive which was pretty cool. The dive boats were like a party on water, fitted out with big fat stereos blasting out music, Chino (one of the dive masters) dancing and bikini clad ladies sunning themselves on the roof.
It wasn't far to our second dive site (Utila is surrounded by a coral reef so there's diving all the way round). Our second dive was at a site called Black Coral Wall, this was when it really felt like we were diving. We dropped down in a clear area with no coral and then made our way out away from the shore over the top of the reef. As you were swimming you could see the end of the reef and it was kind of like running towards a cliff as you looked out into big blue empty space. We followed Ian off over the edge feeling the pressure increase in our ears as we dropped (like when you come down from high altitude in a plane) and swam along the side of a
huge wall of coral. We were probably not that deep but it seemed like a long way to the surface and you could only just about see the bottom, we were too busy looking into nooks and crannies in the coral for fish and trying to understand Chris's fish signals to be bothered!
We spent our next two dives trying to improve our bouyancy control so we didn't sink like a stone when we got in the water and also practised other key skills like using our buddy's air to breathe and practising how to get to the surface safely in an emergency. We of course also saw loads more cool fish! There were fish of all shapes and sizes and colours; big mean looking groupers, loads of butterfly fish and parrotfish, beautiful angelfish and more unusual fish like trumpet fish trying to look like the coral. We could list all the different types of fish we saw but it would be a long and boring thing to read! My favourites were probably the trumpet fish and the spotted trunkfish both of which could change colour right infront of you.
I liked the goatfish, which were really cute Big barrel sponge
There were loads of these everywhere and we found some cool stuff living in them! and timid and had bizarre goat-like whiskers.
After succesfully completing our open water dive course we shared a few celebratory beers with our fellow Norwegian class mates and Ian. Most of the beers were bought by the norwegians as forfeits; the prime beer forfeit was for wearing your mask on your forehead - a sign of a diver in distress and very easy to do without thinking. The beers at Altons seamlessly followed onto more beers in other places. Check out the pictures of Jade Seahorse bar - it is defintely a crazy place to party the night away.
Having completed the course the next morning we had our two free fun dives to go on - no exercises just pure underwater world heaven. We were really lucky as the dive boat was going to the north side of the island to buy some fresh fish for the weekly Alton´s BBQ dock party that evening. Free fun dives are not normally on the other side of the island due to the extra petrol cost. We left with a full boat of excited divers and even the rain showers did not deter the partying on the boat. Alex (one
of our new norwegian buddies) had hired Jessica´s (a dive master) digital camera which had its own underwater housing - go to get myself one of those! Alex took tons of pictures, although we later found out the majority were of us lot pulling underwater poses, than fish!
On our first fun dive I encountered a little problem with my mask which appeared to be getting tighter and tighter the further down we got to the point where my eyes were just slits. I signalled Chris who tried to sort it out for me but Ian just told him to swap masks with me, so Chris had to do the rest of the dive with a prescription mask poor guy, but he grined and bared it! As soon as we resurfaced they were both checking me out. It appeared that I had suffered a huge mask squeeze mainly of my own doing which had caused tiny blood vessles on my eyelids to break and gave me the appearance of pink freckles. No harm was done though and I was declared fit for the next dive - this time equipped with a better fitting mask, only loosely tightened on to
Heading out to the reef
Kev and our fellow norwegian classmates chilling in the sun. my face and orders to breathe out my nose on descent to equalize the air pressure in my mask! Whoops! Both dives were fabulous and followed by fresh fish burger on another island, pre-ordered from the boat´s radio!
Our whole class had decided to stay on a few more days to do the advanced course which we started the theory for that afternoon, this time instructed by Ian´s girlfriend, the lovely Ali. For the advanced course you could pick various specialisms but Ali guided us in our choices as some were more worthwhile than others to improve your diving and capability. A quick thepory session over and done with and we were ready for the Alton´s Dock Party: fresh fried fish and plantain chips washed down with a cold beer on the caribbean ocean and some tunes to groove to!
Our first two advanced dives the next morning were Peak Performance Buoyancy Control and Underwater Navigation - two crucial skills if you want to be a good diver: controlling where you are in the water and not getting lost! The peak performance buoyancy was like circus skills and very amusing. We had to swim through hoops of different
heights, play underwater slow motion karate and knock over weights on the bottom with our breathing mouthpiece - all using just our breathing instead of trying to swim. For the navigation dive we were split into two groups to remember the route out from the boat using brain corals and giant barrel sponges as markers, instead of the buildings and road signs were used to above water. On the return each group had to take it in turn to lead the way back to the boat Kev, me and Alex were in one group, Kev and I were pretty sure of the route back, but Alex did not have a clue as he had been following fish! Nevertheless we got everyone back safely.
Our final three dives on the advanced course we completed all in one go the next day. We did a deep water dive to 30m to a shipwreck which was really cool. I was a bit nervous about the extra depth to begin with but you hardly even noticed it on your way down and you could still just about see the top from the bottom. The wreck had been sunk on purpose for diving but
Going up or going down??
you can´t really tell in this picture! it was still fascinating to explore and we saw lots of creatures we hadn´t seen before including what would have been a nice mountain bike, before it got chained to the captain´s deck by a pissed off dive instructor. A dive master at his shop obviously picked the wrong man to mess with! After the deep dive we did a drift dive where you are meant to flow along under water with the current. Utila does not often get strong currents though, so we did the drift dive Utila style, creating our own current with our fins!
After our morning dives we were relaxing on the dock when one of the boats came back from fishing and said they had spotted a whaleshark (the worlds biggest fish) nearby and did we all want to go out and try and swim with it. Of course everyone said yes so 25 or so divers and instructors crammed onto the little (but very fast) boat and went of looking for the monster shark! To find it you needed to look for fish jumping up to the surface, which made the water look like it was boiling. The first few "boiling" spots we
didn't see any sign of the shark but then suddenly the boat engine went off and we got the shout to get in the water. The sound of 25 people jumping in the water is probably enough to scare off most things so the shark didn't stick around for long, but I did get a brief glimpse of it as it swam off. It was huge; at least 25 or 30 feet long!!
Our final dive was a night dive, which had all been really looking forward to. Armed with two torches each we plunged into the dark depths of the ocean. It was not scary as you may imagine but very peaceful. The plentiful parrot fish of our daytime dives could be seen asleep on the coral. At night there is a completely different set of animals out on the reef and you would think that the colours wouldn't be as impressive in the dark but if anything they were brighter! Loads of tiny brightly coloured crabs and brittle starfish and all the corals and sponges were brighter when you caught them in your torchlight. All in all a very nice way to finish off our diving lessons.
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Gem
non-member comment
Wow!!!!
Your diving experience sounds amazing!! I did the basic one you described in Ayia Napa last summer but found it really difficult to control my breathing and control the panicking!! Did the closed water stuff... taking mask off, mouthpiece out etc... but really didin't enjoy it to be honest as felt like i couldn't breathe in enough air! minor problem hey!! definately couldn't have gone down to 30m so well done to you guys! the Jade Seahorse bar looks well cool. Anyway, i'm off to oxford to look at places to live this afternoon so let you know how it goes! Can't believe i'm starting my proper grown-up job a week today!! aaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!