SCUBA Act II

We went on our second SCUBA adventure today. Luckily the visibility was much higher today - 15 meters this time. (I keep wanting to write "metres" - aussie style) It was also much warmer/calmer conditions. We were in the water by 8am. Strapping the gear,tank and various gauges is always the hardest part of the experience. There must be close to 50 pounds worth of gear by the time we are ready. Each piece has a designated place: the regulator (what you breath through) comes over your right shoulder. The gauge that shows how much air you have left and at what depth you are at gets strapped at your waist. On our left wrists were compasses. Masks and snorkels on our faces, boots and fins on our feet. Underneath all this is a wet suit that honestly takes a good 15 minutes to fit into. The tighter the better when it comes to these things, apparently. The suit is always too short for me (surprise there) which means I am in a constantly bent state while wearing it. To top it all off, we wear hoods that come around our faces that make it look like we are more likely to be shooting into space than to be diving.

So, after suiting up and gearing up, you put your back to the water and flip over the side of the boat. Gravity does the rest. I was the first one out this morning, so I waited by the buoy (pronounced in aussie, "boy") for the rest of the crew. The decent is always a little scary. It gets gradually darker and colder as you pull yourself down on a rope, constantly plugging your nose and blowing to equalize the pressure on your ears.

We aren't actually scuba certified yet, so we still have to practice skills while we are underwater. We did a full mask fill first: You fill your mask with water and then blow air out your nose in order to clear it of the water. We do this so if for any reason our mask would get flooded with water, we wouldn't panic. Then, we worked on achieving neutral buoyancy - which as you can imagine, is difficult. You do this by inflating or deflating your BCD jacket. Anyway, enough of the boring stuff. The cool part comes when we are swimming around and the instructor, Jack, starts excitedly pointing to something in the distance and then telling us to get down low. I look over and see a nice little school of parrot fish... I smile and nod, and then Jack points again. I look over just in time to see a fin a good meter high swimming through the school of fish. It was another gray nurse shark. This puppy had to be 3-4 meters long. We watched it swim with this school of fish, not trying to eat them, but just swimming. We later learned that the fish actually hang out with the shark for protection from other predators. A shark that big would not normally try to prey upon a fish so small - it would be a waste of energy to chase it. It would more likely hunt larger prey (like American college students?)


So as we are watching this shark and swimming closer, I forget to look immediately where I am swimming and nearly put my hand directly on a wobbygong carpet shark. These guys hang out on the bottom and are generally harmless (the scar on Jack's leg begs to differ though). None the less, it gave me quite a start. We saw quite a few nurse sharks this morning as well as lots of colorful fish. We are diving again tomorrow, I can't wait!
This is the view of Julian Rocks, the area we normally dive. This is a small island about half a mile off the coast.