Friday, June 08, 2007 — Today we went SCUBA diving. Before we left San Diego, Eric decided we needed to become SCUBA divers as part of the boating lifestyle. Christi thought Eric had lost his mind. SCUBA diving didn’t seem like the right fit for us for a sport, for different reasons. Christi has weak lungs, has a hard time adjusting to the change in atmospheric pressure, and hates cold water. But she absolutely loves to swim in the ocean as long as the water is warm. Eric doesn’t like to swim in the ocean and tends to get panicky if the visibility isn’t phenomenal. He’s afraid something will sneak up and eat him. Eric faced his fears and bravely got certified in the murky waters in San Diego. Christi absolutely refused to get into the cold water.

So, now we are in the tropics, where the water is incredibly warm and the visibility is wonderful. Being that we were out of excuses to not dive, we finally took the plunge today. Knowing that we hopefully wouldn’t need our dive gear during the passage, Eric packed the dive gear pretty deep in the boat, in the lazarette (storage area under the back deck) behind tons and tons of stuff. It took a while to get it out and put all the stuff back. Oh well, it was a good excuse to reorganize the laz. Again. We’re going to try to find a more convenient location for the gear this time.

We headed to the dive shop. The dive shop took everyone out on the same boat to a spot in the ocean called “The Break.” It was close to shore, with waves crashing about 100 feet away. We were divided into two groups “certified” and “not-certified.” Each instructor briefed their group. Eric was told they were going to feed sharks and he just about began to hyperventilate. Being the incredibly brave soul he is, he got in anyway. It turns out they put a chopped up fish in a box to attract the sharks — they weren’t feeding them by hand as Eric first thought. The sharks are Mauri and Raria, which look almost the same. Fortunately for Eric, these are little sharks (3-4 feet or so) and they didn’t seem to be very interested in eating any of the divers.

When they first jumped off the boat, they were in a reef 15 feet deep. The coral here is more colorful than where we snorkeled the day before, with a lot of purples and shades of brown, and some reds and blues. The combination of good visibility and the good omen of not being eaten so far helped calm Eric’s fears, and he bravely followed the group with a coral cliff on one side and a dark abyss on the other. Eric’s group went down 20 meters (60 feet). They saw all kinds of interesting fish and sea life. There was much more here than we saw the day before inside the lagoon, and the fish here were more colorful. The dive was supposed to last an hour, but Eric sucked so much air so fast he had to come up after 45 minutes. He was bummed we never got a waterproof case for our video camera. It was Eric’s first non-training dive as an entry level certified diver, and despite some initial trepidation, he was really able to enjoy it.

Christi’s group jumped in 10 minutes after Eric’s group. We were all diving in the same area, but they only went down 6 meters (20 feet), so Christi’s group didn’t get as close of a look at many of the sea creatures as Eric’s group did, nor did they get close to the box the sharks were eating from. Christi had a hard time equalizing, which was no surprise. She had the same problem both times she had tried SCUBA diving before. Christi’s group dove for 40 minutes. As of this writing, Christi’s ears are still bothering her. But overall, it was a good experience.