Diving - The adventure continues!
Further Adventures under the sea (and smaller bodies of water!)
I hit my 99th logged dive as 2013 finished, so I was keen to do something 'interesting' for my 100th, but first I took my first steps into Diving Instructing.
BSAC Instructor Foundation Course, Newbury, February 2014
When I did my try-dive a few years ago, I thought the AOW trainees assembling their own kit were diving gurus!
Being a Dive Instructor seemed like something only deities from Mount Olympus could do, but in early 2014, I took my first steps towards being a diving instructor.
I've helped out with try dives and done some assessments of inexperienced prospective members for our club, but I always felt a bit of a fraud, even though I'd enjoyed doing so.
When I got my Sports Diver qualification, I became eligible to take the Instructor Foundation Course, which grants you the status of "Assistant Instructor" and allows you to teach in confined water as long as a fully qualified instructor is present.
My course took place in Newbury, Berkshire and Paul, a fellow club member, and I drove up the two days as we live within an hour of it.
The first day started off with lots of lectures about how people learn, how to plan a theory lesson, how to conduct one and how to plan a practical lesson.
After a busy morning and a rushed lunch, we were into the pool to go through the majority of practical lessons that an Ocean Diver would undertake.
This took a good 2 hours or more and was very thorough. The average instructor is good but the senior instructors tasked with training new instructors were precise and thorough to a degree far beyond any training I'd be on the receiving end of.
The rest of the afternoon was spent in more lectures and going through how to plan the lessons.
On day two, we started in the pool. Each of us had been given a practical and theory lesson to plan the night before (and it took a good 2-3 hours to do so) and we had to present the lessons to our group (there were 3 of us in my group) as if they were OD trainees.
I got Controlled Buoyant Lift, which I thought I had planned out, until I was faced with trying to get two divers to follow my instructions underwater. I got it done reasonably well, but I could see where it could have been a lot better and learnt a lot by my mistakes. The others did the same, getting the instruction across, but both feeling they could have done some things better. Our instructor (A Dutchman from a NATO BSAC club!) went through what we'd done well and how (if) we'd achieved our objectives.
There was no actual measurement of success, it's a course, not an exam, but we all felt we'd learnt a huge amount by doing.
The same was true of the theory lesson. I did a lesson on Cylinders and felt reasonably comfortable as I often present new information to people and thought I'd done a fairly good job, but even so there were a few things I could have done better. One of the other IFC trainees wasn't used to presenting and found it harder, but he did a good job and got over all the information (on Small Boat Diving).
They sprang another exercise on us, where we (as a group) presented to all the other groups on a subject, which again was more of a challenge for some of us than others, but was a very worthwhile exercise, both in terms of learning and confidence building.
At the end of the second day, I certainly felt a lot more prepared to train OD Trainees and have undertaken a number of lesson and try-dives since. Everyone was granted "Assistant Instructor" status and many were excitedly discussing how to progress.
Even if you're not interested in being an instructor, it certainly makes you think a lot harder about what you're actually doing when you're diving.
Catalina, California, March 2014
My firm announced a "Global Services Summit" in California in March.
As I'd been there (and dived in Catalina) the year before on training, I decided to book myself a couple of extra days stay and do a few dives in Catalina again.
Once again I booked a day on Sundiver with Captain Ray and my fellow Brit, Jules.
The weather all week was glorious and it continued into the weekend, so it was a lovely smooth ride out to Catalina. Most of my fellow divers (just 10 of us, which probably wasn't great for Sundiver, but was for us) slept while I read.
We had 3 dives at Catalina Island and dive 1 was my 100th logged dive.
The dive was at a spot called "Yellowtail", which, like most of Catalina was a rocky reef densely covered in a kelp forest.
The diving's not deep, but kelp poses its own challenges (mainly separation risk and entanglement) and the shallow depths (there a few spots with deep dropoffs) means great vis overall.
I was teamed up with Kelly, an AOW diver, who proved to be a great buddy, despite a relatively small number of dives. She was calm, steady and had great trim (not a euphemism, honest!) and I enjoyed diving with her on all 3 dives - I hope she felt the same!
My buddy, Kelly, on a safety stop
We giant-strided in and swam over to the kelp, worming our way in and out, spotting lots of the Goldfish-like Garribaldis, squat lobsters and the big crabs. There were also lots of other fish, which I never got around to identifying, although I'd say, overall, there was less life on this trip than I'd seen on my previous (summer) trip.
The towering kelp forests are a defining feature of Catalina's diving
We were working through the kelp, when I spotted movement and thought "blimey, that's a big fish", but I hadn't clearly seen it and a second later, the rest of the 'fish' appeared in front of me, with big, doe eyes and whiskers. It was a young Sealion!
I fumbled for my camera, but couldn't get it (Stupidly, I'd put it in my BCD pocket!), but the Sealion was only a couple of arms lengths (maybe less) away for some minutes, seemingly intrigued by these weird creatures he'd encountered.
As we moved on, we lost him, but we continued along the reef for some way, finally surfacing a few hundred metres from the boat and surface swimming back.
I'd wanted something 'special' for my 100th dive and going to Catalina had, to my mind, counted, but the Sealion encounter really made it a dive never to be forgotten.
Typical scene underwater at Catalina
We grabbed some snacks and drink, and enjoyed the near 30C sunshine, as the boat moved onto our next location.
This was Red Bluffs, another rocky reef with dense kelp.
There were plenty of fish here, Garibaldis and Blacksmiths particularly, along with lots of Lobsters hiding in amongst the rocks.
Colourful Garibaldis abound
We spotted one of the sci-fi creature like Sheep Crab on the sandy bottom just off the reef and followed it for a moment or two, but whilst it was a picturesque dive, after 40 minutes I was beginning to get a bit chilly in my wetsuit and Kelly exhibited no lack of enthusiasm when I suggested we surface and return to Sundiver.
After our second dive, a buffet lunch arrived (Sundiver certainly look after you on a day out!) and we relaxed for longer before our 3rd and final dive, at Goat Harbour.
We were told there was a Moray Eel living behind a large rocky outcrop, but we (and everyone else, I believe) failed to find it.
Fish and Kelp in abundance here
We did spot a decaying, but clearly identifiable, Dolphin carcass, which was rather sad, I thought, but I guess that's the way of nature.
After that we swam along the reef, amongst shoals of blue/black fish (Blacksmiths, I think) and all silver ones, which I can't identify from the card I have.
There was plenty to see, and being fairly shallow the light streaming in through the towering kelp was an impressive sight.
All day I'd been spotting some tiny Neon fish on the kelp, I wondered if maybe they were young Garibaldis, but no-one seemed to know what I was talking about on the boat! My "fish of Catalina" card tells me they were blue-banded Gobys and there were some plainer (probably Black-Eyed) Gobies too.
The rocks attract lots of fish, little seems to live away from the reef
Much to Kelly's relief, we managed to return directly to the boat on this dive, taking a 3 minute safety stop on the anchor chain and then swimming back up to the steps at the aft of Sundiver.
After dekitting, we moved off, and as we did, spotted a pod of 5 Dolphins, which took away the sadness of the dead one a little, clearly this is a spot that Dolphins frequent.
Dekitting after a dive
Our journey back was not quite the mill-pond experience of the outbound trip, but it certainly wasn't rough and we were back nice and early (so few divers meant we got us all in and out of the water quickly).
I said my goodbyes and walked the couple of miles from the harbour back to my motel (the rather grand sounding, but comfortable enough on a budget, Oceanview Motel), grabbing a quick Taco Bell for dinner on the way. Back at the motel I had a shower and watched a film before falling asleep and waking refreshed the next morning.
After checking out and taking a couple of buses, I got back to Long Beach, where I spent a couple of hours visiting the Aquarium, before catching a (2 hour!!!!) bus ride to LAX and flying home.
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