Day 16: The Amazing Underwater World

Thursday, April 10, 2003

This was another day of four dives. Our morning fun dive was the best of the trip. Lots of schools of fish, no hurry, and we saw an amazing array of fish. Our dive books have great detail of each of the dives and what we saw. We also had "naturalist" and "navigation" skills dives for our course. The naturalist was great-we were just out looking for creatures. Jason and I ended up winning the contest by seeing an amazing anemone with pink anemone fish on it (clown fish) as well as a wrasse cleaning station where a bunch of yellow-tailed fusiliers were stopping in for dental hygiene and general cleaning.

On the navigation dive Jason and I had some communications problems and ended up surfacing to get back to the group. The night dive was great. Jason saw a five foot shark. If you looked closely at things, there were all these small crab/shrimp/crayfish type creatures hanging out on the coral, jumping around like bugs. Their eyes would shine back at you like red dots when you shone your light on them. A lot of the filter feeders were also out with all their body parts fully inflated. It was great to surface under a night sky, looking up at the moon and stars as you swam back to the ship for dinner.

Exhausted but happy at sundown.

Exhausted but happy at sundown.

Sunset after a perfect day.

Sunset after a perfect day.

Gearing up for a dive. (Photo by Linus Paulsson.)

Gearing up for a dive. (Photo by Linus Paulsson.)

Practicing compass navigation on the top deck.

Practicing compass navigation on the top deck.

Advanced Open Water class. (Photo by Linus Paulsson.)

Advanced Open Water class. (Photo by Linus Paulsson.)