A few Scuba Tales

I’ve been scuba diving a lot the past few weeks, first on the Great barrier reef in Australia, and now in Thailand on Koh Tao.  I think one of my only regrets so far on my travels is not spending more time on the Great barrier reef because the diving there totally exceeded my expectations. I did a live aboard dive boat for 2 days, but I could have stayed there for a month! But in those 2 days I got to do 7 dives which was pretty good.



We saw this Maori wrasse hanging around the dive boat every day! He was like a big puppy and liked to have his chin scratched and loved attention from people. He would come right up to you when you held your hand out for him!

When I first got in that water, I couldn’t stop smiling and thinking to myself, I am actually diving the great barrier reef, how cool is this?!?! But unfortunately, when you smile while scuba-ing, you kinda lose the seal along the edge of your mask and it starts to leak. So I had to try my best to keep smiling to a minimum. That was a hard task, because we I saw SO many cool things and was pretty much in a constant state of excitement! Over the course of the 7 dives, I saw lots of sharks. Mostly White-tip and grey reef sharks. Some were just sleeping on the bottom, others were just cruising by. One swam near me and looked at me with his big eye! But those species are typically only a few feet long, so not too scary thankfully. Plus I really love sharks and would hug them if I could. We saw 3 or 4 sea turtles, and got to follow a few as they foraged for food amongst the corals or just swam along lazily. They really are so chill and don’t seem to care about humans at all! On one dive I spotted a gigantic Moray eel with his gaping mouth open exposing his sharp scary teeth which were being cleaned by some very brave cleaner wrasse. Then I got attacked by a territorial breeding titan triggerfish who wouldn’t stop biting my fins! On one small clump of coral, we saw 4 different species of Nemo anemone fish.  I haven’t even mentioned how many cool fish there were, but there were a lot! Heaps as the Australians would say! And the corals were just beautiful. My favourite was the fluorescent pink one.  Unfortunately I don't have many pics, just ones I've stolen from other people.

 

one of my diving buddies

 


some fishies



more fishies

I did a night dive there, and it was one of the coolest experiences of my life.  There were about 15 4 foot long Giant Trevally fish following us around the whole dive. They have learned how to use the dive lights to hunt in the night time, so anywhere a light would shine, the giant fish would swoop in and snap up any unlucky fish that was illuminated at the time. It was totally wild having these giant hunters swimming at top speed and having a feeding frenzy all around me and my dive partners. It was a bit scary and so cool at the same time! Then when we came back to the dive boat, there were about 8 sharks hanging around and feeding on the smaller fish attracted to the dive boat lights. We just hovered a few meters below the surface and watched the sharks circle above as they hunted the smaller fish. It was totally amazing. The best dive of my life for sure.

 

Stoked for the night dive in the rain!

 
 


This is the dive platform at the back of the boat. There are at least 4 smallish sharks in this pic!!

 

 

This was how happy I was when we came back alive! haha :)

I’m in Thailand now and I just finished doing my Advanced Adventurer dive course. The diving here has been ok. I guess it’s the time of year or because the weather has been really windy, but the visibility is really shit! I haven’t felt like I’ve had a really good dive since I’ve been here. But we did get to do some cool stuff on the course. We did a wreck dive of an old war ship with giant guns, and did some buoyancy obstacle courses that were really fun! We got to practice our safety skills on our night dive when we actually lost a member of our group. Seriously, we were going through the water with little torches in really low visibility, when suddenly we realized that one guy was gone. OH SHIT! So we went to the surface as per usual safety procedures, but he was no where to be seen. We were just floating on the surface for about 15 minutes, in the dark, trying to spot his light since he should have surfaced too (assuming nothing seriously bad had gone wrong). But because of the wind, the waves were huge and there was a strong surface current, so we were all getting pounded with salt water and had to keep kicking to maintain our position. It was pretty intense! Finally a few minutes later our guide spotted the light in the distance, and we got our man back. He had accidentally gone off with another group underwater without realizing. Scary stuff for a little while, but so glad he’s ok.  

 

There is nothing like the feeling of being weightless, floating gently through the water feeling like you belong underwater with the fishies.  I love it.