Subaqua Sternal Rubs

Unless an amazing dive opportunity comes up (read: 1) I get bored, or 2) someone asks me to go diving with them), today I did probably the last two dives this term. Which is fine, as the weather hasn't been great (it rained/was grey for most of the morning while we were diving), and the visibility has dropped into the pretty poor range.

The dive boat was pretty empty, with only myself, my buddy, and two other SGU students aboard. Our first dive was to the Shakem, a former inter-island cargo vessel carrying concrete in about 100 ft of water. Since the other two SGU students were only basic Open Water certified, they were not allowed to dive the Shakem, so the instructor took them on a shallower reef dive. This left me and my buddy to explore the wreck by ourselves. I wasn't concerned, as we had both done this site a couple of times before. Unfortunately, on our first attempt the visibility was so poor (only about 15-20 feet) that somehow we were unable to find a 100 foot long mass of metal on the ocean floor. After searching for a few minutes, we ascended to the surface to be picked up by the dive boat for another attempt. The second time we did manage to find the wreck, and we ended up with a nice dive with a some fish, including barracuda. Unfortunately, the resident reef shark was not in, who I hoped to catch a glimpse of, as we were only 2 divers, rather than the usual larger group. The first attempt took out a larger portion of my air than I had hoped, so I ended up sucking the tank rather dry (my pressure gauge gave up at 175 psi, and just starting reading 0…) I know better than that, and I am slightly angry at myself for doing something so stupid, but I did manage to make it back to the surface without any sequelae.

The second dive for all was to Purple Rain, part of the long reef system off of Grand Anse. The visibility was slightly better, though still not as good as the dry season. 3 moray eels, lobster, puffer fish, and a good variety of other tropical fish. Dives are usually capped at 50 minutes, regardless of air status. The DM must have been feeling especially generous today, as when the basic divers ran out of air, he signalled for us to continue our dive until we ran out of air. That gave us an extra 15 minutes, so we ended up with a bottom time of 68 minutes. Very cool of the DM, which reminds me, I still owe him a case of beer.

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