Dive Log 4 & 5
DESCRIPTION: Scuba Dive 4 & 5
LOCATION: Lauderdale-by-the-Sea shore dive/ 2nd reef offshore
DEPTH: 22 feet
ENCOUNTERED: BEAUTIFUL large pufferfish, sleek, yellow alive and brown; 2 nurse sharks, one maybe 6 feet long— muscular — one a pup of about 3 feet long; parrot fishes; large black angel; something like pompanos on the sand bottom – what are they? yellow stingray or skate
Monday, August 17, 2015
G and I again went to Lauderdale-by-the-Sea and walked out into the water like frogrmen. He scanned outward. Let’s go, he said. Moon jellyfishes in the surface waters. We’d go beneath them.
So we went under and kicked out past the first reef.
A small skate or stingray rippled off. He wasn’t just brown, but yellow. His wings were like short controlled waves in the pool of his back. I sure want and need to learn my fish identification better.
We swam out to the 2nd reef. To the left a nurse shark about 6 feet long lifted off the bottom and swam away like a small military cargo plane. Have you ever noticed how muscular and full fish look? Fish seem like perfection.
G, at the bottom, was hovering over some rocks. He motioned. Wondering what he was looking at I dove lower and there was a pufferfish’s face looking out at us as if hanging out in his garage. His head was so big it was the size of a basketball and he had these Daisy Cow cartoon eyes staring outward, and he wasn’t even inflated. Mottled brown up top, yellow blush along his sides, and a white belly like the underbelly of a whale.
Past the 2nd reef we settled on the sandy bottom to complete my tests. To pass your Open Water Certification, among other things, you must be able to accomplish or know these things:
- Pre-dive safety check
- Regulator clearing
- Regulator recovery
- Clear your partially flooded mask while underwater
- Underwater mask removal and replacement
- Breathe without a mask
- Alternate air source use
- Breathe from a regulator that won’t stop flowing
- Deal with an out-of-air situation
- Know standard hand signals
- Disconnect low pressure inflator
- Proper weighting
- Snorkel to regulator exchange
- BCD (buoyancy control device) oral inflation
- Cramp removal
- Tired diver tow
- Weight removal and replacement
- Scuba unit removal and replacement underwater
- 5 point descent
- Fin pivot
- Hover
- No-mask swim
- Controlled emergency ascent
- 5 point ascent
- Skin dive
- Navigation
At 22 feet down on the bottom, we went over these things. Then I had to try my controlled emergency ascent. This is simulating a situation where you can’t find your dive buddy and his alternate air source and you have no choice but to ascend on only one breath while out of air, which you must do at a safe rate while constantly exhaling. In a real life emergency, you’d have to forgo a safety stop.
On a normal ascent you go up slowly, no more than a foot per second, and pause at around 15 feet below the surface for a few minutes to allow nitrogen to naturally decompress its way out of your body tissues.
While on land we do normally breathe nitrogen into our lungs; as you descend underwater nitrogen is forced into your body tissues due to the increased surrounding pressure.
In an emergency situation where you’re out of air, or something else life-endangering has happened, and you must rise to the surface without a safety stop, by constantly exhaling and forcing air out even when you seem to have none it’s supposed to help expel some of the nitrogen and decrease your chances of getting decompression sickness, or “the bends”, which can come in various levels of severity and danger.
It took me 2 tries to get my controlled emergency ascent right. It’s harder than you think to constantly exhale forcefully when you’re out of breath.
We rested at the surface, our BCD vests inflated, our regulators out of our mouths. That was Dive 3 for me. In scuba diving each descent from the surface is logged as a dive. I again worked at gaining control of my inflated BCD vest, which still tried to pitch me forward like a horse.
G said: “Look, we’re past the pier. We’re about a half mile out.”
I looked north to the Lauderdale pier and yeah we were. For some reason that was so cool to me, and I felt full of this royal blue water all around us and the lighter blue sky with those puffy tropical white clouds above.
We went back down for Dive 4. I completed my remaining tasks, and G flashed me the “ok” sign and made as if to clap his hands and there at 22 feet down I was now a diver. I would get my “C’ card in the mail soon.
A whole new world is opening. I am pretty damn excited.
One of the best parts about being underwater is everything is so present. It’s true you really don’t think about things underwater. You be.
For somebody whose mind is constantly running, it’s such a relief to just be.
While I am officially a diver, I feel very, very “new”. I have so much to learn and perfect before I get anywhere near good.
Once again I used up all my air, smh. I’m not sure why. I’m probably hyperventilating.
It might be because as an athlete I’m used to taking very deep full-lung breaths?
But it’s probably more so all the newness and maybe a little nervousness and uncertainty that I’m doing everything right. Def going to have to figure this all out so I can get excellent.
Life can be rough but diving is very exciting. The ocean is a big clear soup with all these animals swimming around inside it and now I get to be one now too, my body right in there with them.
You know, with all the fear and worry and uncertainty about our future because of climate change and ocean acidification and the end of the world as we know it, I’m finding myself in this grip between love and fear.
The fish are so beautiful and so full of color and life I don’t ever even want to see a dead fish again.
Our entire planet could go haywire. There is a very real possibility of that, and largely become unlivable for everybody – and the rest of life – for a very long time.
I don’t want to fear. I’m not a person given to being scared. I want to love. I am so excited about the ocean.
On our way back toward shore we surprised a young nurse shark, just past pup-hood, maybe 3 feet long. He swam this way and that like he didn’t really know what he was doing yet.
Swimming along the bottom, we got past the reefs, G leading.
I need to get better fins; they’re not gripping the water enough.
Then for about a minute I lost sight of G. Not a good thing! But guiding myself westward and landward by the north-south ripples on the sand bottom I pushed in. And I saw his shape appear again in the sandy water, waiting for me.
Another warning sign. I need to be careful! Scuba diving is the real deal. I’m probably not taking its risks and dangers seriously enough.
But where I’ve been under this private depression and burnout, I feel like I’m rounding a corner – in all ways. Can’t wait to dive some more.
