A Squid's Ink: June 2010

Hello there!

I'm not sure if the title of this post is the correct plural form of octopus, but if it's not I think it should be. Much more fun to say octopi than octopuses. The reason for that title is because I saw my very first wild octopus on Friday night! I did a night dive with a dive center called TL Sea diving, based in Des Moines, which is about half an hour south of where I am in West Seattle. I registered for my Advanced Open Water certification, which consists of five dives over two days, two of which have to be a navigation dive and a deep dive. So, I did the first two dives of the five on Friday evening at a place called Redondo Beach down in Des Moines. I was in a class with three other people and several different instructors, so it was pretty one-on-one, which was great. And necessary, since the visibility was pretty bad during our first dive and it was tough to even really see a buddy next to you once we were 50 feet or so down. Anyway, we did the Nav dive first, which consisted of descending with a buddy, swimming along a 100 foot lead and counting your "kick cycles" to measure how far you go in a certain amount of time, followed by using your compass to complete a 100 ft x 100 ft square without having a rope or a lead on the bottom to follow. It sounds easy, but trust me.. it's tough!! When you're trying to master your buoyancy in the drysuit, keep track of your kick cycles, hold your compass in front of you (let alone READ it), and make sure your still on course and alongside your buddy, it gets a little complicated. BUT my buddy and I did the square just fine, and then had a few more compass tasks to complete, including doing an "out-and-back" line with our compass (pretty self-explanatory) and setting a recipricol heading. I'm not going to be taking the master navigation course anytime soon, but it was good to at least learn the basics and accomplish those tasks.

The night dive was by far the cooler of the two dives. By the time we got around to the night dive it was already around 9:30 or 10 pm, so it was pretty dark out. We geared back up, switched on our lights and headed out, and it was pretty much the coolest thing ever. There is already bioluminescence in the water, so if we waved our arms away from our light source you could see blue shimmery, glittery stuff all around you. Apparently by August it's going to be really, really bright and much stronger than it is now, but seeing that for the first time even this early in the summer was amazing to me. I also saw my very first octopus, hiding way under a boat.. he was HUGE and red and staring right at me. So awesome. I saw two more, about the same size, also hiding under boats. We saw a halibut-type flatfish, a lot of long, skinny yellow fish that would dart into the sand as we shone our lights on them, TONS of Decorator Crabs (even one holding a much smaller one in it's claws!), beautifully colored anemones that only come out at night and lots of other nighttime wildlife. My air usage turned out to be pretty good, so I was able to stay out with an instructor longer than the rest of the class and got to see even more than I had hoped for. I feel so lucky to be able to do this! Definitely hope to do some more night dives before I head out of Seattle in September.

Pacific Octopus

We were supposed to do three more dives on Saturday morning early, but since we finished so late on Friday night (around midnight, and still had to rinse gear and undress and load everything up and drive home), we were given the option to reschedule the three boat dives for another weekend. SO, I am hoping these can be completed on a Sunday in July, and we will most likely be doing a drift dive, a deep dive and a fish I.D. dive.

The only thing that I don't love about diving here is the drysuit, only because it takes soooo long to gear up, and it makes everything so much more bulky and heavy. BUT I was grateful for the warmth, because there's no way I could have done either of those dives in a wetsuit. I am hoping I can do a fair amount of diving in S.A. in a wetsuit, although I'm sure some of the time a drysuit will be required. We will have to wait and see.

Nothing else too new and exciting to report.. just trying my best to keep the little guy out of trouble (McKinley), since he is now crawling (eek!). I'm also continually impressed by Will's weekly developments (especially in the cuteness department). Still making new friends and hanging out with great people on the weekends, and trying to get grad school options figured out and in order. That's about it!

I will keep you updated! Love to all :)

I am so bad at this! My apologies once again... it's been a few weeks since I posted anything, but that's mostly because I haven't had anything terribly exciting to write about lately! I have been doing a lot of the same.. nannying, hanging out with new friends, spending time with the cutest little man around, and finally now some diving!

I'll get to the diving in a minute.. but first, I should share with you all the story of the mouse in our house.

SO.. we've been having some furry friend issues over the past few months.. i.e. every few days we'll hear the little pitter-patter of tiny feet running through the walls, or along the ceiling. Sometimes we'll hear little chatter and squeaks, and let me tell you, it is not delightful. Dave decided to go get some traps and poison about two months ago, thinking this would take care of the problem (we agreed that something had to be done). What we DIDN'T think about was the fact that poison will kill a mouse, but it's probably not a very pleasant process, and if they die in the walls then there's no hope of removing them from the house. Of course at the time we were just looking for a quick fix and figured poison was the best option.

Anyway, so Alyssa, Dave and Will were out of town on a Midwest tour most of the month of May, and Worden and I were left here to hold down the fort. Everything was fine up until one day last week, when Worden and I came into the house after a nice long walk to find a half-dead mouse dragging its poisoned self across the kitchen floor toward us. I wish I could say I immediately took action, but instead I stood there with my mouth open and in complete shock for about three minutes while the poor little animal continued to crawl toward me. The thing was moving so slow Worden didn't even notice it, so I was all on my own to decide what to do. After pondering my options for what seemed to be forever, I decided to put a large yogurt container down in front of it to see if it would run away or crawl in. Sure enough, this thing was asking for me to put it out of its misery. It crawled into the container as though it were a coffin and curled up into a little creepy mousey ball. I thought it was dead, and then it started breathing really fast and convulsing. Of course I freaked out at this point, finally brought it outside and then sat there teary-eyed, still unsure of what to do. I ended up calling our neighbors to see if someone could come put this little guy out of his misery (because we all know I can hardly kill a spider without feeling guilty), but no one was home to do it. I did get the suggestion of giving him some cheese to ease the pain, so I tossed a little piece next to him with hopes he'd smell it and remember what a great life he had, but I'm pretty sure it just made the convulsions even worse. So I stood there and watched our poisoned mouse take his last breaths, and then of course I called my mom and cried.

That was way too long of a story about a mouse, but for those of you who know me well, none of that should come as a surprise. I am the girl who ran into the deer on my roller blades, the girl who always seems to have stray dogs follow me and come say hi out of nowhere, and now the girl who spent twenty minutes tending to a half-dead mouse and crying over it's last breaths.

Onto something more interesting and less weird...

I did my first cold-water dive today! Drysuit and all. Ben (the dad of the little boy I nanny for) took me to Seacrest Park, which is one of the most popular dive sites in all of Seattle, and it's extremely convenient for us, being right down at Alki Beach here in West Seattle. We did two dives, and although I was a bit nervous at first and it took a little bit of time to get buoyancy in my drysuit down, it turned out to be a great time. The drysuit kept me toasty warm, even in the cold cold Puget Sound waters, and we did two 30-minute dives with a max depth of about 60 feet. Beginner stuff, but perfect for getting me used to the drysuit and the new equipment. We didn't see any octopus, which apparently are really common in that area, but we were lucky enough to see some huge rockfish, lots of colorful nudibranchs, red rock crabs, plumose anemones, lots of sea stars, little shrimpy guys (I should probably look up real names), and various other critters. The anemones were amazing.. enormous white stalks growing in every direction from some big pillars that were down there. It was pretty unbelievable. I feel so grateful that Ben and Lesley are experienced divers and have gotten me back into the sport. I can't wait to do a few more dives around here and then really get into it in South Africa!

Speaking of South Africa, I have some recent developments in the internship department... I got an e-mail last week from the woman who is coordinating my internship placements, and I am definitely confirmed for the internship with Save Our Seas Shark Center (SOS), and they are still waiting on confirmation for the baboon rehab center. The Save Our Seas Shark Center especially needs people who can do some underwater videography work (with sharks), and she encouraged me to take a class in that area this summer if I can afford it. This would be an absolute dream to be able to do while I am there, so I am seriously considering trying to get that experience before I leave. She also said that the best time for me to start at SOS would be early October, but since I am available to leave in mid-September she has a good friend who runs a company called Animal Ocean, which is an adventure tourism company that does everything from diving with sharks to bringing people to big wave surf competitions, and he would love some extra help for a few weeks in September. So of course I said a big fat YES! to that and am soooo excited about it! I don't have many more details right now, but when I do I will surely update you all (Mom and Dad)!! Here is the URL for Animal Ocean (I still can't seem to get the links to work):

http://animalocean.co.za/

Here are a few pictures of what I saw today.. these aren't MY pictures but are just a few of the species that were down there:

Plumose anemones