Good bye to Harmony, More Diving!

Tuesday,  November 25, 2014

HaHa, after an “early night” I woke up at 3:45 (!!!) to finish my studies.  Crazy.

We had to say good  bye to Harmony this am.  She has a long flight to get back home to Hong Kong.  It will take her about two days to get home.  She is currently on “summer” break at vet school and gets to spend some time at home before continuing her studies in New Zealand.  She is a great young lady and will do well in her career.

Our first dive this morning was the wreck dive!!!  That is one I was really looking forward to!  We went down to 100 feet at “El Aguila” (The Eagle) and saw a cargo ship that has been down for about 20 years.  It is so cool how it slowly appears, like it is coming out of the mist.  There was a green eel that swam around with us!!  We also saw a giant crab and lots of garden eels.  The fish were beautiful.

 Remember: All these underwater pics are from the internet, not our photos.  But they do show what we saw!

These are what the little "garden eels" look like.  When you get close, they duck into the sand.  The photos below must be with nice underwater telephoto lenses... I never saw the little guys up close enough to see their cute faces!

Lobster!!

Yes, the green eel really did come out to swim with us! 

 As a kid we would see them at the Script's Aquarium, peaking out of rocks like the one in the picture below. 

We saw a lot of groupers.  They get really big.

We had to take the boat back to the dock to pick up some folks from the cruise ships for more diving.  We were scheduled to do our final adventure dive: navigation.  We had several tasks to complete: compass navigation in a straight line out and back, as well as navigating a square 100 feet on each leg on an initial heading that Tom gave each of us prior to our test.  It was a bit challenging and stressful but we all did well. 

We saw "porcupine fish" and "puffers".  I don't know how to tell the difference.

 More fun diving after that at the site “The Wife” where we were down to 49 feet for 63 minutes.  Sandy and I have really improved the control of our breathing under water and are able to stay down for pretty long periods!  And we saw a nurse shark!!

We are now “Advanced Open Water Divers”!

Spotted Drum Fish.  These are very small fish but beautiful to see.  They often are hiding in between rocks.

After lunch we went back to our bungalow and took a much deserved nap.  We checked with Seagrape dive shop and they were planning to go out on a night dive because the weather was holding.  So we signed up for that!

We went out with Cleve to “Dixie’s Place” for a wonderful night dive.  It was great weather.  Linda went along.  Also George, and gentleman on holiday from his tech job in Alberta, Canada.  We saw another octopus and other great sealife.  Also, more bio-luminescence.  Wow!  

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Basket Star

Bio-luminescence  

We will go for another dive in the am if weather permits.  It will be Sandy’s last chance to dive, she leaves on Thursday.  Darn.

Shower and bedtime.

Whew, what a day!

First 3 Adventure Dives

We did our Advance certification with this dive shop.  It is one of the most popular, and busiest, shops in town.

Monday November 24, 2014

I didn’t last long studying last night, so I woke up early and was able to finish my first three courses:  Deep dive, buoyancy control and night dive.  To obtain the “Advanced Open Water Diver” level, five adventure dives need to be completed, including Navigation and Deep, then three others from a choice of many options.  Our additional three were buoyancy, wreck and night dives.

Off we went to the Coconut Tree Dive Shop to start our advanced course dives.  Tom was our instructor.  He is from London and has been here in Roatan for a number of years.  He reviewed our required skills with us then took us diving.  

Mama Kitty and three of her kittens hang out at the shop.  We spayed her at our clinic.  Hopefully all the new kitten families will get them done at the March clinic!

Our boat to go to the dive sites.

All prepped and ready to go!

The first dive of a multi-dive day has to be the deepest dive, so that was our first class dive.  We did the dive at “West End Wall”.  Normal recreational diving allows you to go to a depth of 60”.  Deep diving is 60-130’.  Deep diving allows you to observe different aquatic life, visit wrecks and do more photography.  We went down to about 100 feet and had to do tasks to test for signs of nitrogen narcosis, which is the intoxicating effect nitrogen produces when you breathe it under pressure.   Many of the symptoms are similar to being drunk.  

There are hundreds of dive sites around Roatan!

Nitrogen narcosis itself won’t hurt you, the hazard come from the way a diver may behave under its effects that is the problem.  We carried little plastic slates on the dive and one task was to look at the colors on the slate and write down the colors as we perceived them.  Pencils write on the plastic slate under water just fine!  

The Lion Fish is a beautiful fish, but it has invaded the Caribbean, has no enemies and is killing all the native animals.  There is open season at all times to kill these fish.  The meat is served in restaurants and is very tasty.

All of the underwater photos are taken from the internet.  We did not have underwater cameras on our dives.

We practiced simple tasks on the surface, then we did the tasks at depth to compare the results.  Sandy and I did fine, no signs of being “narked”! 

After we completed all of our tasks, we just continued to have a nice dive.   We were down for 56 minutes.

After our proper interval at the surface, it was time for our second dive:  Peak Performance Buoyancy which we did at “Moonlight” site.  Buoyancy is very important, it is surprising that it is not required.  It allows the diver to move through the water gracefully, they seem to ascend, stop, hover and descend at will with hardly a fin flick or hand wave, as if they think it and it happens.  Good buoyance control saves the diver energy and air and makes diving more fun.

Trumpet fish

 This was really fun.  We had to do more tasks including swimming through hoops and knocking over little weights with our regulators.    It is a lot harder than it looks!  All the control is through breathing: inhale to rise, exhale to descend.  Super finely tuned.  We were only down at 26’ for 53 minutes.  One of the highlights was seeing a nurse shark!!

Tom Crow was our divemaster and teacher.  He was a very good instructor and a lot of fun!

When we returned to the shop, we got the message that Al and Sandra were planning to have lunch in town and hoped we could join them!!  We had a nice lunch of Thai food at Café Escondido.  It was a wonderful visit and we were quite honored that they thought of us and wanted to spend more time together!

After lunch we wandered through town and saw Kecia and her kids!

Sites around town.

We had the afternoon off, but by the time we had lunch and did a couple of little things, we did not have time to go back to our bungalow.  Glad I finished my homework this am!  Tom went over our knowledge reviews and then it was time to gather on the boat for our night dive!!

Normally night dives are done Tuesdays and Thursdays.  But bad weather is forecasted to come in on Wednesday, so the night dive was moved up to Monday.  That works well for us!

The only street in "downtown" West End.  Sometimes it gets really packed with taxis and other vehicles.

We went to “Lighthouse” for this dive.  It is very cool to dive at night!  It is very exciting and relaxing.  You get to see different animals at night: lobsters and octopus are out at night.  Also some of the plants look different at night.  Many of the colors are brighter at night.  There are also bioluminescent creatures at night.  It was really neat.  The coolest was the octopus.  Talk about a “shape changer”!  Quite amazing to watch!

"String of Pearls" which are glowing little creatures

Luminescence!

Basket Star: looks like a plant but is really an animal!

After being down for 62 minutes, we finally boarded the boat back to the dock.  What a day!!

We went dinner with Harmony for our last night together.  We went to the Coconut Tree restaurant.  She had lobster and Sandy and I had shrimp meals.  They were pretty good.

Harmony's last dinner in Roatan.

I needed to do my other two lessons, but apparently I sprawled out on the bed and passed out.  Sandy ended up turning out the lights and I woke up to go to bed later!!! 

More diving tomorrow!!