Sunday's fun dives

On Sunday, I was back at the dive shop at the crack of 10 for a breakfast burrito and to meet the crew.  I found out that I will be the only intern starting next week.  The two that are there now are about done with their Dive Master training, so I've already received a title: Tank Bitch.  You see the Dive Master Training program is cheaper because you also "work" for the dive shop doing whatever is necessary to help the tourist dive business, all the while learning how to be a DM.  This mostly involves hauling tanks up and down the pier.

I was asked to join the dives for the day as a check-out of my abilities and the dives were free.  The first was to follow the trainees as they completed their dive site mapping requirement.  This pretty much meant "hiking" back and forth over a dive site and drawing on an underwater tablet.  I just hung back and observed, as I will be required to do this skill later in my training.  I did see 3 turtles and a lot of assorted sea life.  The conditions here are ideal; water temperature is in the 80s and visibility is 100 feet. This first dive we went down to around 60 feet and stayed down for just under and hour.

The second dive was lead by one of the trainees as her final requirement.  It was just the 2 trainees, their instructor, another DM and me. we first went into a swim-through that started at about 18 feet and ended around 40 feet.  A swim-through is a tunnel in the reef that you can just barely fit in, gear and all.  This particular tunnel was filled with a million 1 inch long Silver Sides.  They are fish much like a minnow.  As the sun poked through tiny crevices it would shimmer off of their skin and light up the inside of the tunnel.  The effect was stunning.  At one point the fish were so thick that I lost sight of the diver's fins swimming in front of me.  The fish would move just enough to let you pass.  Because of the tunnel, they really had no where to go.  A very spectacular first few minutes of the dive.  We followed that up with a plunge down the reef wall to 130 feet just for fun.  A few cool creatures down here but the most spectacular was a lionfish that was slightly bigger than a softball.

My training starts tomorrow so I had better get some rest and start my reading.  I received my first books and got my name up on the board at the dive shop.  The shop is also connected to a small bar and grill.  How fitting.

Here are some shots to end this post: