Viewing 1 - 9 out of 23 Blogs.

Page:  1 | 2 | 3 | Next >  Last >>

Here I am on Bonaire. I'm soooo glad I brought my 5mm wetsuit! The water is about 80 degrees F/27 degrees C which to me feels cool compared to the 86 degree F/30 degree C water in Thailand. But the dives are very nice. Fish that the verteran Bonaire divers find boringly common I find refreshingly different. So all the dives are fun for me.

Hmm. Tried to upload some images, but now I see I have to delete some first. I now have a maximum allowable image size of "0"! And I've got this shot of a lovely tiger-tail seahorse just waiting for admirers!

QQ

It's hard to believe that it's been MONTHS since I've logged on to DA!

December, January, February and March were all ultra busy months for me. High season here, then a trip to NYC in late March on business and also to attend the BTS show at Meadowlands. Met some old friends there and made some new ones! New York was cold, though, and I was glad to get back to the tropics.

As soon as I returned I headed down to Krabi provice to spend the long Songkran Festival "weekend". Songkran is Thai New Year, and the weekend is FIVE days! So guess what I did with my time????

Went diving, of course!

I spent most of my dives at a seamount called Hin Daeng. The name means "red rock" in Thai, and got the label because of the proliferation of red and pink soft coral that used to cover the granite seamount. Sadly the coral suffered a die off because of a cold water upwelling about 18 months ago, so it's not quite as pretty as it once was, but is still a great dive site.

I saw mantas!

The end of April has also been quite busy for me, surprisingly as it's already low season here. I've got one more diver arriving today for four days of diving with me, and then I'm off to North America, AGAIN!

This time I'm on my way to Bonaire for a week of teaching for a dive club taking a bunch of people down from the US and Canada. It's nice since I've never dived there before, so I get to mix business with pleasure!

Anyway, I just wanted to link in again and say hello to everybody!

QQ

Some of you know that Canukdownunder has been gracing the shores of
southern Thailand for the past month. C-downunder is settling in little
by little, but hasn't spent as much time in the water as she'd like.

So in the spirit of making merit (the Buddhist term for doing good deeds)
as well as doing a bit of nitrogen loading, the two of us decided to
participate in the scuba portion of the beach cleanup at Patong Beach
yesterday.

In the morning we met at our sponsoring dive shop and piled into a
pickup for the ride to the beach where we put our gear together,
received cutting tools, collection bags and gloves, and set off in
longtail boats in teams of four to pick up rubbish and debris from the
seabed.

We did a whole series of dives ranging in length from two (!) minutes
(we had a heavy anchor thing to bring up) to 65 minutes (our third of
four dives) at depths of two to twelve meters or so. Our aim was to
collect fishing nets, plastics, metal, and whatever else we found. In
all, volunteers collected over 2,000 kilos of debris throughout
the activity.

Our first two dives (20 minutes and 2 minutes) took place at a site
where the visibility was about 30 cm. We descended about 1 m apart but
immediately lost one another and had to surface. Then we each held one
end of the collector bag so that we wouldn't get separated.

Our next two dives (65 minutes and 20 minutes) were done at a fairly
clean site that was also quite beautiful. We managed to pick up a pretty
good number of nets, and we also had the delight of seeing some wonderful
marine life while we were at it: napoleon wrasse, reef octopus, cuttlefish,
oriental sweetlips, lobsters, many angelfish, butterflyfish and other
typical reef dwellers. What a great dive!

It was fun, and I just want to say "Thanks Canuk, for diving with me!"

I'm in the US ahead of a series of meetings I have in DC in a few
days, and my son suggested I come a little early to spend some time
with him in upstate NY and in particular to see him play soccer. He's
senior at RIT (Rochester Inst. of Tech.) and an NCAA athlete.

So I came. Halfway around the world. Twelve time zones.

Since I arrived on Thursday/Friday at midnight after a marathon 32 hour
trip from Bangkok (longer if I start counting from when I left Phuket
to overnight in Bangkok en route), I've been sleeping in rooms heated
artificially, getting my nasal passages all dried out and bloody, breaking
out in herpes on my upper lip.... In other words, subjecting myself to the
harsh climate I have run away from to live in paradise. All for the love
of a son who wants me to see him play in a collegiate soccer match on his
home field.

Then they cancelled the game.

For scheduling reasons, nothing more.

I finally make it to NY during soccer season in his senior year, and they cancel the game!

 

A Spanish tourist went missing off Koh Tao Thailand last Thursday (five
days ago) while diving. Weather conditions have made the search effort
difficult.

The word around the community is that Martythehammer is out of town
so we're fixing up a little surprise to welcome him back to Dive
Area....

Funny thing about Marty's nick--in my language (Portuguese) the word
for hammer is martelo. So I actually get quite a giggle out of the
idea of a Marty-martelo-head.

They say hammerheads are shy, and I believe it given the long journeys
I've taken to places where they are known to appear, and the distant
glimpses I've had of them. Is Marty shy, too? Do we have to go to great
expense and travel endless hours for him to show us just his shadow?

So anyway, in honor of Martythehammer's homecoming, here are my own
martelo experiences:

The first time I (supposedly) saw a hammerhead shark was at a tiny,

filled-in atoll-cum-island called Layang Layang in the middle of nowhere
but the South China Sea. The hammerhead dives, to be honest, were not
thrilling. We had to swim far away from the wall of the atoll, hang
around in blue water, and wait. If we were lucky (it happened once) we
would see a shadow off in the distance and the DM would excitedly point.
I had to take his word for it.

Then I traveled to the Galapagos with great expectations of seeing
hammerheads (among other things). I saw one cruising around inside the
submerged caldera of a sunken island, but it, too, was quite far away.
I could see it well enough to identify it by the shape, though. It
certainly whetted my appetite (so to speak, since I'm veggie).

After some days we hied off to Wolf Island and nearby Darwin Arch. YES!
The hammers were there, in masses! They were near enough for me to see
their eyes, but not near enough to get a decent photo since the water
was just full of plankton and all I knew how to do with a camera was
press the button. I do have a shot of the shadows of a school of them,
and I guess I could post it, if somebody begs....

So no "close encounters," no thrilling ballet, but it was still a great
rush to see them sweeping by like a huge squadron of raw,
predatory power. (Maybe that describes Marty better than shy does!)

Welcome back, Marty!

Now for the continuation and conclusion of this episode in The Adventures of Q….

Finding myself on a reef wall with a wicked downcurrent threatening to
take me into the abyss with it if I let go of the rock I was clinging
to, I look up and see my group of divers hanging placidly over the reef
flat and waiting out a safety stop. I had to make it to them!

I began to move up the wall, hand over hand, literally crawling. Fin
and pull; fin and pull. When you are pulling yourself along the reef
against a strong current you need to watch out for where you put your
hands. You don’t want to grab onto live coral; you don’t want to grab a
rock with an unnoticed urchin clinging to the other side of it; you
don’t want to grab hold of coral rubble that is loose enough to pick
up.

So for the next five minutes I hauled myself from a depth of around 25
m to about 12 meters. For those of you who don’t wish to do the math in
your head, this comes to a little over two and a half meters a minute
(less than two body lengths)—way less than the recommended maximum of 18 meters
per minute for an ascent. I was getting pretty tired and breathing
exceptionally hard, but I knew I had the strength to make it to the
surface. At the 12-meter mark I came upon a small overhang in the wall
and took shelter under it in order to catch my breath. I took the
opportunity to check my air gauge: 10 bar (150 psi) and dropping fast.
I was only halfway to the surface, and I was worried.

In all of the training sessions I've attended, as well as those I've
given, it is taught that when you're in dire straits your training
simply "kicks in." Although I never openly voiced skepticism, I had
always wondered about the actual truth of statements to that effect.
I’m here to tell you that it does happen that way. Here I was, huddled
under a little rock shelf with an increasingly strong downcurrent
sweeping past me and perhaps with too little air to make it to the
surface. And yet, I did follow the steps of self-rescue: stop, breathe,
think, act. While I didn’t want to stop too long or breathe too much
considering the reading on my SPG, I clearly recall thinking the
situation through and deciding on a course of action I believed would
get me out alive.

It was only a few meters more to the top of the wall, so I decided to
use my remaining gas to get as far as I could by crawling up the wall
and then to perform a CESA to the surface. This would mean letting go
of the wall, but if I could get to the top of the wall, I knew I could
swim for the surface. Even if the outgoing tidal current pushed me away
from the island I wouldn’t be so far away as to not be found easily
once I got my SMB inflated. Time for action: I emerged from my shelter
and started the slow climb over the last bit of wall. As I reached the
top, another diver appeared at my side. It was my DM! I showed him my
SPG, now hovering between zero and five bar, and he passed me his
octopus. That was one less worry! But now were there two of us trapped
in the downcurrent?

Suddenly I felt the current release me! The water was relatively calm
just a couple of meters above the reef: flowing offshore, yes, but no
longer pushing me downwards. I was able to complete a nice long safety
stop while my heart and breathing rates normalized and I surfaced with
nobody but the DM having realized the dangerous situation I had got
into. I asked the DM how he knew I needed help since he and the group
were calmly waiting out the safety stop while I was finning for my
life. He said he looked down and saw no fish; they had all taken cover
or been blown away, so he waited until I was in range and went to lend
his support. All’s well that ends well? Almost, but even better!

Whenever we are involved in an “incident” we should try to learn from
it so that we can either avoid another occurrence or plan better ways
of dealing with it. Even though I had planned the dive according to a
conservative RMV for a dive against a moderate current (and dived the
plan), and had figured an approximate turn pressure for the ascent with
what I thought was enough margin for an emergency, I still found myself
in a dangerous situation. This was a unique experience for me in that
it was the only time I have ever really needed to use another diver’s
air. How would this event help me to manage my dives more effectively?

After that dive I knew what to expect at Blue Corner and how the water
behaves there with a falling tide. In retrospect I decided that it's
wisest to conserve air and energy by moving along the wall from
overhang to overhang during the ascent rather than just trying to
climb. I had the opportunity to test this hypothesis out on subsequent
dives, and in just this way got a stressed-out buddy up the wall,
safely and with plenty of remaining air, during another occurrence of a
downcurrent.

Gaining experience and learning from it was the real “happy ending.”

This time of year, from August to October, the waters near Bali hold
a special treat. That is when the annual gathering of the Mola-mola
—also known as the Ocean Sunfish—takes place off the coast of a group of
islands around Nusa Penida. Exactly why the animals congregate there is
not fully understood, but because it is regular and predictable, divers
make the pilgrimage just to get a glimpse (or some photos) of these
unusual fish. Now, Penida is well known for its challenging dives, and
only the experienced (or the foolhardy) should attempt visiting certain
sites. Since I am a reasonably experienced diver (and have no death
wish), last September I considered myself capable of taking on Penida in
order to see the molas.

For those of you who are not familiar with this fish, it’s a huge
animal related to the pufferfish, measuring about 2 meters/6 feet from
end to end and the same from top fin tip to bottom fin tip. Its body is
reminiscent of a pancake. Like its puffer cousins, it has a relatively
small, beak-like mouth, and small, round pectoral fins. It has
virtually no tail; it’s body ends in a sort of scalloped stub. It also
has very stiff long, curved dorsal and anal fins that it uses to propel
itself through the water by moving them both first to one side and then
to the other. The hand signal for mola-mola is something like the shaka
(or ‘hang ten’) sign divers in Hawaii use to say OK, only instead of
holding the hand vertically, you hold it horizontally so that the thumb
pointing upwards and little finger pointing downwards symbolize the
dorsal and anal fins of the mola.

Once on Nusa Lembongan, were I stayed, each time the captain and DMs
asked me where I wanted to dive, I just flashed the ‘shaka-mola’ hand
signal, and off we would go to a site called Blue Corner right on
Lembongan itself. The problem with diving around Penida is its tricky
currents. I was ready for some drift diving, and the animals are so big
anyway that you can see them long before you arrive close enough to get
a shot. The molas tended to settle in at a depth of about 25 m, meaning
that in order to have a reasonably long dive, we needed to encounter
them fairly early in the dive. The first few dives went great; the
current was quite manageable and the molas were present.

Then came the second dive of the second day. We dropped in, drifted
along the reef wall for about 20 minutes at between 20 and 25 meters.
No molas. People were beginning to run low on air, so the DM signaled
for a safety stop. And then there they were: a whole series of molas
lined up at about 5 meter intervals and at a 90° angle to the reef
wall, but at a depth of about 30 meters. I take a quick glance to
confirm my remaining air (80 bar/1200 psi) and remaining bottom time
(not much) and decide to nip on down just to get a couple of shots off.
I signal to the DM, who gives me the OK sign and lets me know he’s
going up for the stop with the others. I drop down and have just enough
time to squeeze off a couple of shots (which didn’t turn out) before my
comp started flashing an approaching NDL. Time to go up—well, actually
past time since it’s not a good idea to push the limits. Oh, well. I
hoped the molas would still be there later in the day.

I head back to the wall and begin to ascend, but I can’t make any
headway. The tide has changed and is now flowing out, off the reef flat
above me and over the wall like a huge Niagara Falls. I’m hanging on to
rocks with one hand while trying to protect my camera and strobe and
finning like there’s no tomorrow just to stay in one place. The down
current is threatening to push my mask off my face, and it’s pulling my
reg out of my mouth—in fact, it seems to be pushing water into my mouth
through the exhalation vents. And my bubbles are flowing towards my
feet. I’m in a bit of a jam, to put it mildly.

(To be continued.)

Page:  1 | 2 | 3 | Next >  Last >>