We arrived back in Cairns and proceeded to drink our lives away again for a few days. At this point I decided I should probably do something with my life so I booked a diving trip to get my Open Water diving licence. The first thing I had to do was 2 days of in class work, and learning to dive in a pool. My first time using the dive equipment I started to panic and found it very hard to breath, but I eventually got the hang of it and learned to relax and breath normally. It was a strange feeling staying underwater for 45 mins or more learning different techniques and safety measures, but very cool. We learned different hand signals for underwater animals (shark, turtle, clown fish, barracuda, barramundi, etc) and safety signals for emergencies. After the two days we took a test, just like any other certification like this our teacher basically gave us all the answers before and helped us throughout the test (my question sheet actually had all the answers circled on it already...bonus). We then hit the ocean to explore the Great Barrier Reef as newly certified divers. The first part of the reef we explored was Norman Reef.
It felt as though you were transported to another world. You float in the water waiting for the instructor to go down first, then put in your regulator (mouthpiece), deflate your BCD (life jacket kinda thing that fills with air and helps with buoyancy) and sink down into this unknown world below. Our first dive was only 25 minutes long, but still a magical experience. We saw a variety of different fish, including clown fish which seem to excite everyone, "OMG ITS NEMO AWWWW", and all kinds of cool looking coral. As it was our first dive we still had some signals and things to go over while under water. To do this our instructor found a flat-ish area and got us all to kneel down. She would point at us one by one and get us to do the skill or hand sign, one of the skills we had to learn was taking off our mask and then putting it back and getting all the water out (done but holding the top part of the mask and blowing through your nose while looking up).
After we finished our skills our instructor (Rocky, from Japan.. she was really awesome) took us around to see some of the different wild life down there. She had a whiteboard and a marker so she could write down what the things were that she was pointing at, very informative. The next few dives were very much the same, practising skills (cramp removal, regulator exchange, remove/replace weights, underwater navigation, and controlled emergency swimming ascent) and going around looking for cool things underwater. The next place we explored on the reef was Saxon Reef - Twin Peaks. Once we were finished all of our skills we got to buddy up and go on our first dives without a guide. This was an interesting experience, because we don't know the reef as well as the instructors. They know where all the good spots are and the best paths to take, so we were a bit lost. In fact, I lost my buddies twice and had to surface and wait for them.. I tend to drift into my own world and follow fish I find interesting or explore holes and things.
The first night I watched the instructors feeding the sharks off the back of the boat and stood there while all the advanced divers prepared themselves for the first night dive. I was intrigued by this and asked if I was able to do one of those, but I was told I'd have to take my advanced diving ticket to do that. At that moment I decided to do my advanced diving ticket, seeing all the sharks and giant traveli swimming around the back of the boat and the divers just jumping in on top of them, I knew I had to get myself into that situation. So I disregarded the money and just bit the bullet. Best idea I've had so far.
To get my advanced diving ticket I needed to complete a whole new set of skills, which was very exciting and fun. The first test we had to do was buoyancy, to pass this we had to swim through a hula hoop rightside up and upside down (and we did a spinning one for fun). When I did this I couldn't keep my buoyancy after going through the hoop and ended up doing a baseball slide on the bottom. One of the other guys in the course came in front of me and knelt down and gave me a safe sign like an umpire.. funny underwater joke. The next test was the night dive boat location test. This was what I was waiting for, and it did not disappoint. We jumped in the pitch black shark infested waters with our measly flash lights and were immediately engulfed in darkness. All you could see was the light of the boat and the little flash lights roaming around under the water. There were sharks everywhere, not paying any attention to us, just swimming around freely looking for things to eat. We saw three different types of sharks, White tip, Grey Reef, and Wobbegong. There were also giant traveli which were rather large black fish, they followed us around and when you point your flash light at a smaller fish they shoot out from over your shoulder and eat it (fun game to play was pointing at a fish near the reef, then when the traveli comes to eat it you move the light and listen for the thud of the fish hitting the reef). We also saw a giant mooring eel, and bioluminescent plankton in the water, so when you wave your hand around it lights up.
We had two more advanced dive tests, deep dive (diving down to 30 metres), where we saw a bottle being compressed by the pressure, the change in colour because of the darkness, and the instructor cracked an egg and we slapped it around for a while (it stayed together because of the pressure). As we went down an emperor fish followed us, because it knew we had eggs, so before we could play with the egg the instructor had to give it one so it would go away. We also saw a black tip reef shark, which they said was pretty rare to see. The next test, was a navigation test where we had to use a compass to find the boat and navigate through the water only using the compass. During that journey we saw, yellow fin barracuda, two types of puffer fish and another white tip.
The final test was a fun one, there was a choice between three different options (underwater photography, fish identification, or diving from a small boat). I chose to do the underwater photography, but my instructor said we can do the diving from the smaller boat and photography. So four of us jumped in a dingy and we zipped out past our normal area and we got to do a "marine style" entry to the water (hold on to your mask and regulator and roll backwards into the water off the side of the dingy). I felt quite awesome doing this, obviously in my head I was giving myself orders in a marine voice so that was exciting. On this dive I saw a few turtles, a white tip shark and heaps of fish and awesome coral.
After my first diving experience I was really starting to love diving. The feeling of staying under the water for so long and all the animals and coral you see was just breath taking. Imagine walking through a rainforest with twice as many animals running around, it might be similar to that. It also gives another element to travelling, now I can have a goal when arriving in a country, to do some cool diving spots! My next step is to do some wreck diving, that should be a thrilling experience.
Peace & Love
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