My first Discover Scuba Dives, lots of nudibranchs, and more conservation news
Well, the weather decided to pick up this weekend after a pretty gloomy week, which has cheered everyrone up. Just as we thought winter was coming, it looks like summer and the sun is making a comeback. It’s 9:30am here in Okinawa, and the sun is beating down already. So what better way to spend the weekend than in the water?
On Saturday I had 4 Discover Scuba Dives: one teacher who’s been in Okinawa since August, and 3 of her friends from Osaka who were visiting. I decided to take them down in 2 buddy pairs as 4 people on DSDs could get pretty ugly if one of them has a problem and I’ve got no DM helping me out. So we geared up at Sunabe and went into shallow water to do the basic skills before heading out. One student had quite a few problems initially, but she’d been feeling pretty nervous about the whole experience. We took things really slowly though and eventually she managed to get through the regulator clearing and mask. We then headed over to a little deeper water and descended. I used a float and line, with both students keeping hold of the line throughout the dive. They were a little nervous to start with, but the fish soon started coming closer and getting curious, and it became enjoyable after that. It was really rewarding to see the girl who had been having problems initially really enjoying it - even with the reg in I could tell she was smiling underwater. The 2nd group had no issues at all and I had a longer dive with them. They all seemed to love it, and one guy has said he wants to come back in Feb and do an Open Water Course. That’s great, as it means that they liked the experience I showed them. But man, those things are stressful! I can’t remember off the top of my head what the maximum instructor-to-student ratios are, but you’ve got to be very good to handle more than 2 on your own. All you need is one student to start going up and the other to start going down and you’ve got serious problems. So I’m going to stick to buddy pairs for now if I’m doing that alone.
So that passed my Saturday, but Sunday was a day fo fun diving. It’s been ages since I’ve dived purely for fun, so I met Brian at 7am and we headed to Kadena North. The sun was out and the water was pretty much like a lake out there. We did 2 dives over 60 minutes and went at a really relaxing pace. There were a whole host of nudibranchs out there - plenty of different types and different sizes. The white one below must have been about 15cm long. We also saw a very shy eel near the reef edge, and a couple of crazy sea snakes! They were darting about all over the shop!
I was pretty pleased with the photos I’ve taken. If you have any comments on them then I’d love to hear what you think. Well, it’s now only 7 weeks until I head off to Yonaguni to dive the underwater ruins, and only just over 3 weeks until I head up to Tokyo for my long weekend. I’m looking forward to those breaks, and the courses that I’m running are helping to fund my trips too, which is always nice.
I’ll leave you with another piece of underwater conservation news, and this time it’s not a good one. According to studies, there are “only 50 years left” for sea fish, as the rate of decline is accelerating at an alarming pace. Of course, these theories are put forward every few days, but it always raises questions about the harm we are doing to our environment and oceans. I’ll leave the link to this story below, so have a read of it. Take care and dive safely. I’ll be in touch soon with more diving news.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6108414.stm
or Discuss this Article
