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Published: March 13th 2011
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Marlo and Swinn
Our dive master and the boat driver Today our dive leader let me borrow his dive computer. It’s the first affordable computer sold to divers called the Skinny Dipper. It tells you how long you’ve been down, your depth, and the time you have left to safely dive. No memory, no beeping, no buttons, no fancy graphs, warnings or features. Bare bones necessities and it is great. Plus, it works, which is a major improvement from the one I rented.
I couldn’t get down at first because I got rid of some of my weights on the previous dive. Alex followed the wrong group and was long gone before I got down. The boat driver gave me another weight and I buddied up with our dive master, Marlo. She carries around a three-pronged spear. There are these awesome looking Lion Fish that are not native to the area. Without any predators, they are multiplying quickly and wreaking havoc to the ecosystem. Part of her job is to help eliminate the problem. Every now and again you would see Marlo with one or two dead lion fish and victory written on her face.
Our groups finally merged at the end so Alex and I scoped out a
trumpet fish, lollygagged around for a bit, then finally started our safety stop (three minutes at 15 feet) before heading back to the boat.
As it turned out, his group saw a group of spotted eagle rays. We saw close to diddly squat. The second dive, Alex came with the right group and the other group got to swim with a sea turtle for most of their dive. I’m half tempted to start following the other group, but I’m sure that will be win my group sees something. We did find two slumbering nurse sharks.
My head was pounding, so I opted to skip the after-lunch dive. Alex joined me for a long nap. They reported back an uneventful dive.
Tonight the owner, Steve, informed us that about three weeks ago a diver on the Utila Aggressor (a live-aboard boat) went out for a night dive and never came back. They sent out search parties, but still haven’t found him. Their only guess is that he went to deep and got narc’d. If you dive too deep, you can lose your mind a bit and it is equated to being drunk. You make stupid decisions that can
cost you your life, unless your buddy sees you are out of your mind and forces you to go up a bit until you come back to your senses. Night diving is tricky because you can only see where your flashlight is. If he got
narc'd he could have decided to shoot down a lot lower, got stuck somewhere, took off his regulator and tried to breathe water…who knows.
Alex and I often hold hands while diving (....awwwe....). It makes it easier to get each other's attention when there is something cool to see and then we don't lose each other. There is no way we’re risking someone kicking our goggles off or having any issues while down there. Hopefully there is more to see. Aside from the whale sharks, the diving here is pretty weak. The water is beautiful to look at, but the coral is in pretty rough condition compared to other places we've dove. I guess we've been kind of spoiled when it comes to great reef though. The fish aren’t in abundance like other places we have dived. I did hear that the dive we missed after lunch had a lot of fish, so there
is hope.
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