S.C.U.B.A.



Gather up the gear, make sure I have everything:  mask, BCD (Buoyancy Control Device, basically a vest that you put air in or take it out so you can simply hover in the water), regulator so I can breathe, wet suit, booties, fins, dive computer, and anti-fog for the mask.  Schlep it all down to the boat where a tank and weights will be waiting.  Load gear, attach BCD to tank, put the proper amount of weight into my BCD (12 – 14 pounds), and store the rest of the gear under the seat.  The sun is hot, the air is humid and I am sweating from carrying all that gear.  The other divers also get organized while the dive crew gets the boat underway.  We motor out 5 to 30 minutes depending upon what site the crew has decided to dive.  The breeze caused by the movement of the boat feels nice as it cools me.  A few minutes before we get to the site all divers start to gear up.  The crew ties the boat off to the correct buoy as the divers put on wet suits (if needed), spray the mask with anti-fog and rinse it off, put dive computer on my wrist, sit on the bench and put arms into the BCD, clip on and tighten up the BCD, grab fins and mask. Stand up. Easier said than done, that tank is heavy. The boat is swaying and the tank pulls you backward, hold on.  Shuffle toward the stern of the boat, put on mask, then put fins on one at a time while the free

Yellowhead Jawfish

hand holds on to the boat so I don’t fall in with only one fin on.  Check air, is it on?  Breathe into the reg while looking at air gage to make sure.  Press the inflator button to put air into the BCD.  Hold mask with one hand and place the other hand on the front of the BCD, stand right on the edge of the boat and take one big step into the ocean.  SPLASH!  Oh, that cool water feels so good.  The air in the BCD makes me pop right up and float on the surface.  I put one hand on my head to motion to the crew I am fine.  One of them hands me my camera and I kick away from the boat.Waiting on the surface is no fun if there is any chop or wave action on the water so I prefer to descend and wait for the group on the bottom.  Hold up the inflation tube on the BCD and press the deflator button to let all the air out of the BCD, exhale, relax, I start to slowly descend.  As I descend I look around because often the first one to descend will see sharks or turtles that will flee as more divers get into the water.  Hold my nose and blow gently to clear my ears as I descend.  I have to do this about 5 or 6 times as I go down 25 or 30 feet.  As I get deeper, I begin to fall faster and faster so before I reach the bottom I add a little air to the BCD so I can become neutrally buoyant and hover with the greatest of ease.  While I wait for everyone else I look around.  I watch the sandy bottom for Yellowhead Jawfish poking their thumb sized pale yellow heads and milky white bodies out of their hole in the sand.  Their hole is surrounded by small dead chunks of coral and I don't know if that is for stability or decoration or both.  They bob in and out of the hole as if to check out the huge creatures descending into their small territory.   I look around the small coral heads for juvenile fish swimming in and out of the tiny coral fingers or small creatures hiding in holes beneath and in between the coral.

Spotted Moray Eel

Giant Anemone

Once we are all gathered on the bottom we follow the dive master on his “tour” of the dive site.  Just a small movement of my fin propels me slowly forward; it is like flying in slow motion while feeling weightless and relaxed.  It is so quiet; all I hear is my breath inhaling through the regulator, the glub, glub of bubbles as I exhale, and the constant yet quietly subtle clicking sounds of the coral.  I try to breathe small shallow breaths so as not to change my delicate buoyancy.  A deep breath will make me rise and a deep exhale will make me fall.  I use these breaths to maneuver over, around and down through the coral reefs.  There are large clusters of all different types of coral living together in what looks like a large impenetrable clump but upon closer look the coral group is like Swiss cheese with holes that fish, eels, crab, and lobster occupy.  It is like a high-rise condo complex where the Moray Eel and Octopus live on the ground floor next door to the Giant Anemone whose colorful arms are home to the ¼ inch long, appropriately named, Squat Anemone Shrimp.  Higher in the community you will find a small arrow crab hiding in a crevice or a

Juvenile Yellowtail Damslefish

large Caribbean Lobster with his long antennae extending out from his lair.  Towards the top you will see timidly darting in and out of the young coral stems a juvenile Yellowtail Damselfish;    Parrotfish will patrol the coral head looking for a good spot of coral to bite off and chew up.  I hear the crunch as they scrape the coral with their hard, beak-like mouth.  I swim slowly and watch for movement or something that has an odd shape or slightly different color to it, this is often a

give-away for some creature who is trying to camouflage himself within the reef.  I take my small flashlight out of its pocket and shine it into the deeper holes; you just never know when you will be face to gills with a big lipped Grouper or a reddish Squirrelfish with huge eyes hiding in the dark.  Often these peeks into the dark under belly of the

Juvenile Drum Fish

coral reef are rewarded with a close up of a juvenile or adult drum fish.  The juvenile drum fish is one of the most unusually shaped fish out there with a long flamboyant dorsal and tail fin that looks like one fin going two directions.  They seem hyperactive as they constantly and erratically swim in a loose figure eight pattern.  This constant movement makes them hard to photograph but predictable since you know they will be back around soon.   When swimming over and around coral it is very important not to kick the coral so I try to stay high enough that my fins don't contact the coral at any time.

Pederson Cleaner Shrimp

Being this high all the time is no good because you miss a lot of wonderful small creatures, like the corkscrew anemone with Shirley Temple-like curls or the purple spotted, transparent Pederson Cleaner Shrimp.   I am now in the habit of swimming with my head much lower than my feet and if I see something interesting I go in head first with my feet in the air.  If other divers look around and see bright yellow fins sticking out of a coral head, that would be me looking at something interesting.

All during the dive we find interesting fish and creatures and we have fun showing each other what we found.  Many of the more popular animals have hand signals so we can tell another diver there is a shark over there (hand at forehead standing up like a fin) or a sting ray on the other side of the boat (flying motion with the arms).  During the whole dive I must keep an eye on my air consumption gage and the bottom time reading on my computer.  When the dive master tells us it is time to surface or I am low on bottom time or air, I must begin to surface.  I start to take deeper breaths, I hold up my BCD inflator hose and I release all the air from it.  This begins the slow assent.  I keep an eye on the depth reading on my computer as I make my way up the water column.  I must go slowly, too fast and my computer starts to beep and flash an arrow with the word “slow” in it.  If I start to ascend too quickly I simply exhale very deeply to slow my assent.   At 15 feet I must do a safety stop for 3 minutes.  This gives my body extra time to release any nitrogen that has built up from breathing compressed gas.   As I breathe in and out I rise and fall, up and down, up and down.  The trick is to breathe very shallow so I just hang in one spot.  Some divers are really good at this, it looks like they are just “standing” in the water, hands clasped together barely looking at their depth gage.  Me, on the other hand, I tend to float as if I am lying on my stomach with my feet a bit higher than my head and my eyes constantly on my gauge; not too elegant but it works.  When I surface, I swim to the back of the boat.  The captain or dive master is there waiting.  I hand up my camera, I take off each fin and hand it up one at a time then crawl up the ladder.  That feeling of weightlessness goes away the second that tank is out of the water.   It is hard to climb the ladder with all that extra weight on.  I shuffle back to the bench and sit down with the tank back in its holder, take off the BCD that is still attached to the tank, take off my mask, wipe off the snot that tends to drain out of your
nose during the dive and then…”What was that green fish you pointed at?” or “Did you see the huge turtle toward the end of the dive?”  We then spend the next 35 minutes talking about that dive and what we saw before we suit up and do it all over again.