Day 23 - July 19th

Finally back in the ocean today. Richard and I went out with Jim on Ron's boat for a two tank dive. These dives were my Nitrox certification dives. It was cool to think about, today I was breathing air that had 12% more oxygen in it than normal air. In all reality there is nothing much different than diving regular air, except that it increases your no decompression time which means that you can stay down longer (air permitting of course). That and if you exceed your maximum depth you can get oxygen toxcitiy which causes convulsions and you basically end up drowning. But no worries, I was nowhere near that deep today.

Today was also the first day that the air has been mostly cloud free, but enough so that I could finally see all of the mountain! Its pretty cool to look back and see what has always been shrouded by clouds.


We went to two new spots that I hadn't been to before, but sorry I have no pictures for people because I got to take the video camera today! (so now you all will have to watch my dvd project when I get home...) It was pretty awesome having the video camera down there, but for the day dives I think I almost like the still photography better. I saw several fish I hadn't seen before so I wished I had my camera, and with the larger video camera housing its harder to sneak up on the fish. (I also didn't have zoom control so I had to get really close in order to get the fish close up, and that is extremely difficult.

Between the two dives we had a really neat and very rare occurance. We saw a Pacific Bottlenose Dolphin playing nearby and got to stop and watch him (or her) for a little bit. He was all alone (bottlenose tend to stay alone or in really small pods, unlike the Spinner dolphins who travel in huge pods) but was having a good time playing with a fish or something in the water (by playing i mean eating).

We also finished the navigation section of my advanced open water (so I think technically I am done with that certification, woohoo).

At night I went down with Martina and helped her get set up for Sea Paradise, then I walked over to the Sheraton and gave the Manta talk. It was my first time doing this alone and it went pretty well. My audience actually listened fairly intently and I didn't get nervous and mess up, so all in all it was a good night.

Now we are getting ready to head to the airport for our psuedo-weekend adventure #2! (psuedo, cause its thurs-fri, not really the weekend). Ciao!