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 :)
No comments:
Post a Comment