Scuba Day

Hello readers!! 

Everyone recovered from Christmas? 

Today I finally got to do some scuba diving and Emily did some snorkeling. 
The visibility was not real good and most of the reef is rock so it wasn’t great scuba, it was scuba though. When we went to the boat after signing waivers and paying the balance they took us to the marina to get on the boat. Rocket Frog was there, same place, I’m not sure why they couldn’t have brought out a waiver last week and had me do it there. 
Pacific Coast Diving had a pontoon boat that was maybe five and a half feet wide that was used to shuttle us out to the dive boat. The marina just has moorings on the bottom for the boats to park off shore, no docks. It was a little rough, well used. The green astroturf on the deck gave it a old jon boat vibe. I thought it was a cool way to shuttle people, it had some benches and the front end had to ladders for boarding from shore. They tied up to the dive boat sideways across the back to get on the boat. It definitely was purpose built. I don’t have a picture of it, I think Emily has some of me on it though, hopefully she will post one. 
The dive boat took us out a ways so we had a good boat ride there and back. 
I was worried about how I would do diving. When I was in Jamaica by the last day I was feeling pretty good about it. The discover scuba that Emily and I did in Columbia and Bonaire was just us so if the dive gets cut short it’s just us. On a dive with other divers it’s possible someone else may get their dive cut short. Here they took to guides per group so that if someone had to surface early the rest could stay. It does take a little getting used to and that will cause you to breathe faster, using your arms to swim makes you breathe faster and kicking with your knees instead of from the hips also makes you use more air and then it’s time to go back to the top. A tank is normally about thirty to forty five minutes worth of air. Breathe in for four seconds, breathe out for four seconds. Slower is better. 
I didn’t know anyone and we didn’t have a lot of time to get to know our guides who hopefully you can trust. The guide did come find me on the boat and gave the safety chat and what to expect. 
Once at the dive site I geared up and washed my goggles. I was in the first group, diver two. There were four to a group, diver one was part of a large group of people on the dive, he must’ve drawn the short straw. Divers three and four were a mother/ son from Texas. The son was doing his first ocean dive, he learned scuba in a dirty lake back home. 
Once I was in the water I knew it was low visibility, I take the big step off the back platform and it’s dark blue and I can’t see diver one and the guide until I surface. I look down and it’s just dark, I can’t see the bottom, it’s nothing like any of the other dives that I’ve done. In the Caribbean you can see the bottom even if it’s just shadows, at least so far I’ve been able to except on the night dive. 
We’re all in the water and it’s time to go down. There was a period that I thought I wasn’t going to see anything. But once we were down a ways I could see a little better. At the bottom the visibility was okay, maybe 25 feet. I could see the bottom and I knew the light was coming from the top so things were okay. 
Seen some fish, a lot of rocks, another sea snake like the one yesterday (I couldn’t find it in the video, I can’t find the next one either), a lobster and some rays (I found those). On the second dive I seen the head of an eel but it was too well camouflaged to film well. 
The dive lasted for thirty nine minutes for me and the son, diver one and the mom went for forty four. They must’ve let the son go a ways or he didn’t say he was at the dive limit, for this dive it was seventy bars or one thousand pounds per square inch. The son said by the time he surfaced he was at forty, I had fifty and I had told the guide when I hit seventy. 
After we were back on the surface, after a safety stop, there was a couple other groups up already so we swam to one that was close and waited for the boat. 
The dive boat had to go around and pick up dive groups scattered around the ocean, not very far apart but far enough that they can’t park the boat and have everyone swim to it. They drop everyone off in slightly different spots along a reef so some end up close to other groups but some are not. 
After all the divers were on, we went to get the snorkelers. There we did a surface interval. Depending on depth and time under divers have to spend time on the surface before the next dive. 
Dive two was more of the same as dive one, slightly deeper and we went along a small island. Dive one was sixty feet and dive two was sixty eight. 
The second dive I was a little more comfortable again, I was getting used to the equipment and being under the water. 
For some reason the second dive was shorter though, thirty five minutes and mom and son both went up same time as I did. 
I’m going again tomorrow. I debated it since it will be the same places as today. The Pacific is really different from the Caribbean. It’s interesting and still cool, not as pretty though. I’m hoping for better water clarity and more things to see! They talked up sharks on the boat but I didn’t hear that anyone seen any today. 
We didn’t get back from diving until after one so it was time for lunch. After that we just relaxed, Emily had tea, read and had a conversation. I took a nap and then went through videos to get some pictures from. It takes a surprising amount of time to get just a handful of pictures out of all the video. 
The camera still seems like it gets warm. I didn’t have any problems with it today on the dive, the battery lasted for both but was at three percent. When I am back home I am going to check the temperature of the camera and the batteries. The super suit seems to work as it should. The filter does improve the colors on today’s pictures. Things were not as bright. I may have needed the darker one, for bringing the least amount of stuff I went with the midrange filter. 
The handle works well but you do have to remember to check it before getting in the water, yesterday I had put some money in it and didn’t tighten it, it will fill with water and then it doesn’t float. The money dried, it dries fast. 

I don’t have much else for you today, join us tomorrow for another exciting post!