Dive Madness, Day Two :)

My initial fear about older and superior divers not liking me were firmly dispelled almost immediately; everyone was SO very friendly (and I started observing people right away and literally taking notes so I could remember everything). I'm pretty terrible at remembering people's names, but I did my absolute best because everyone was so nice and friendly and I wanted to know and remember them all.     

My lovely fellow passengers :)

After this trip, I realize how fortunate I have been to get the chance to dive in such pristinely superb locations, with some even cooler divers. Gwen and Troy, an Irish/Australian married couple from Sydney were great fun, as were Martijn and Nicole (originally from Eastern Europe somewhere, but now current residents of Australia). Paul and his 16-year-old son Justin live in Sydney, and were quite fun to chat with. John and Jane Winters (who wore Hawaiian shirts a lot), and their grown son John (all from Wisconsin) were excellent additions to the jovial bunch, and documentarian David Ireland and his cameraman Grant told some RIDICULOUS (and often mildly inappropriate) jokes. Tor was a very tall amateur photographer (who took excellent pictures) from Norway and Andre was a friendly and bald man (with cool tattoos) from Holland. Sascha and Aaron were both from Australia. Rayna had worked for Mike Ball previously, but she and her mother, Faye were just passengers on this voyage. Faye had awesomely colored slouchy beach pants. My dive buddy was a pleasant German woman named Suzanne who was on holiday from work. She was a good person for me to dive with because neither of us particularly wanted to go super deep or super far, so we had nice relaxing dives (except for the one where I almost ran out of air, but that's another story). Also, her reluctance to lead dives (she wasn't that good with a compass) allowed me to work on my navigation skills and take charge of leading our dives. I never got us lost once :D     

Potato Cod

  After our 7AM breakfast, our first dive was at Cod Hole. The water temperature was a pleasant 83 degrees Fahrenheit, the visibility was about 30-40 feet, and our average depth was 26 feet. We had Shea, one of the instructors, lead our dive so we could get used to the site. The best thing about this dive was seeing the potato cod: giant mottled fish (1.5 meters long) who were not remotely afraid of people whatsoever. I got courted by one who followed me around the whole dive and swam all the way back to the boat with me! Courted by a cod :) Other cool things I saw were Moorish Idols (Gil from Finding Nemo), Clownfish, Zebrafish, White-tip Reef Sharks, these little fish that looked like white fish dipped in black paint, and too many corals and sponges to name. This was my first real dive on the reef (excluding my first dive I did on the day trip which was really more of a dive to get used to using my new gear) and it was ASTOUNDINGLY wonderful.       

Blue Christmas Tree worms. They live on coral and retract like the large plants in Avatar (these are what those plants were based on, but these ones are barely an inch high).

After an hour of surface interval time, we headed back into the water (after wriggling and squeezing ourselves back into already wet wetsuits--an attractive process for everyone). On this dive, we saw an Undulated Moray Eel, Trumpetfish, Pipefish, White-tip Reef Sharks, Peacock Grouper, a Bull Shark (!!!!), Squirrelfish, Christmas Tree Worms, and, of course, the Potato Cod. Suzanne didn't want to lead this dive, so I stepped up to the plate and reluctantly did. I was super OCD about checking my compass every few minutes--I'd never led a dive by myself before, other than swimming in a 30m x 30m square with Dan for my navigation dive for my Advanced Open Water certification. When we were nearing the end of the dive, I began to panic because we should have been back at the boat and I didn't think we were anywhere close to it. Then I looked up. We were directly under it. Navigation win :D I grinned throughout our three minute safety stop. I need to stop being so excited underwater because grinning with a regulator in makes seawater leak into both your mouth and your mask.

Sand goby in his hole

  We motored off to Challenger Bay while eating a delicious lunch (the food alone would have made the trip worth it). Diving here, I saw a free-swimming (not hiding in the coral) Moray Eel! They are HUGE! We saw three cuttlefish, which are one of my top three favorite underwater creatures (the other two being nudibranchs and Christmas Tree worms). We hovered and watched the cuttlefish for a while; they are quite mesmerizing. We also saw sand gobies and their crab roommates. They have a super cool relationship: the tiny little translucent crab digs a hole while the goby keeps watch, then when danger comes around, they both dart into the hole for safety. Sand keep getting in the hole, so the crab just digs it out again. It was fascinating to watch, even though they are both so small.    

Giant Trevally. They have a lot of teeth.

  We stayed at Challenger Bay for our night dive. First of all, everyone should go on night dives, they are AMAZING! We tied glow sticks to our tanks so that we could all see each other, and we had our dive lights as well, so we could see where we were going. The highlight (although it got annoying after a while) was that groups of Giant Trevally would use our dive lights to hunt by. It's quite resourceful of them, actually, but you'd be looking at some cool little fish and then BAM a three foot long fish would shoot past you and eat it. After a while, we got good at diverting them with our lights so they wouldn't eat everything we were trying to look at.      We had an excellent dinner and all chatted about the fantastical things we saw that day. Four dives in a day is exhausting, and everyone had gone to bed before 9pm, myself included. We motored through the night and we were crossing a patch of open water not protected by the reef, so it was pretty rough and choppy, but I managed to get some sleep.     Next post: Day three of the trip, including stories about.....the Hammerhead Shark!!!     _________________________________       Song of the day: Bend & Break by Keane