Deep dive and drift dive

After the diving incident on Thursday night I really needed to get back on the water and keep diving. I didn't want to quit and I didn't want that issue to be how I went to Yonaguni.

So, we scheduled a couple of boat dives for Saturday morning. We met Eric and two other dive masters at the Marina to do our deep dive (depth of 100') and a drift dive. I really wanted to get a drift dive in because we will be drift diving in Yonaguni. The drift dive is a really cool diving speciality, but it is a more technical dive. The boat drops the divers in the water in a current and then the divers just drift with the current. It doesn't really require much skill, just the ability to "go with the flow" and a little trust in your boat driver!

It was freezing cold Saturday morning. Water temperature was 70 degrees and air temperature was 60 degrees. We were wearing 5 mm wetsuits which were just fine underwater but once I was out of the water and back on the boat the wind was really cold. Anyway, we got the dives in, which was great. In preparation for the deep dive we reviewed technical skills and then prepared to go deep. We did a backward roll off the boat (my favorite part!) and started to descend. On our way to depth Kyle and I saw a really cool lion fish and a large sea anemone with a couple of big clown fish (nemos) in it. Once we got to depth we all compared gauges. The boys and I were at 100' but Eric's digital read on the his dive computer said 98'. We had to evaluate colors at depth in order to understand how colors are distorted under that much water. Eric started with me and showed me a dive card with pictures of a bunch of fish. I looked at the card straight on and then I looked at the card under a flashlight. Red was the most distorted color. Kyle and B went though the assessment and then it was time to swim around and explore. Because we were at 100' we could only have 22 minutes of bottom time, but Kyle and I had a great sighting!

We spotted a huge eel hiding in a hole in the reef. I've seen an eel before, but the other eel I saw was a brownish/grey color. This eel was greenish/yellow and it was HUGE! Eels usually hang back in the coral, so all we saw was it's head. But, it's head was huge! We just kept watching it until we got scolded by the dive master. Kyle and I were so fascinated with the eel that we weren't following the instructor on to the next stop. Whoops! But, this eel was cool!

We continued to swim along, constantly monitoring our depth and air pressure gauges. At that point I wasn't 100% sure we had just spotted an eel. I was pretty sure, but not 100%. I was excited to surface so I could ask Kyle and the dive master. Anyway, as we swam along I just kept thinking how cool diving is. I have seen coral and sea life in it's natural environment. It really is amazing! The ability to descend under the ocean's surface for 30-60 minutes and just observe is phenomenal. We continued back to the boat and hung out on the deck for our surface intervals. As I mentioned before, it was cold. We were much warmer in the water so we wanted a short surface interval. B grabbed the dive table and through the chattering of his teeth we calculated the amount of time we needed to spend on the surface. We had a 15 minute surface interval and then suited up for our drift dive.

The drift dive was uneventful. My confidence was pretty high at this point and I was stoked from seeing the eel. I just wanted to get back in the water and see what we could see. We did a negative entry, which means we rolled off the boat without inflated our BCDs. With no air in the vest you will automatically descend about 15'. We grouped up under the surface and everybody signalled "OK." The purpose of the negative entry to protect the diver when the surface current is going one way and the bottom current is going another way. Nothing too exciting happened on the drift dive. We just "went with the flow" and looked at the coral. Kyle got followed by a sea snake which was a little freaky, but other than than we just worked on our safety stop at 15'.

We are about to head out and finish our final dive . . . after that we'll meet with the instructor to go over the knowledge reviews. Then we'll be advanced divers - certified to dive wrecks, drifts, and as deep as 130'. Wowie.