My first dive of the day was aborted at 9 minutes. During the setup for the dive my octopus broke, it was an old oceanic thingy, and it must’ve been dropped or banged during the loading of the boat. When I switched the air on it blew the rocker arm off the valve, snapping the joint. Since the octopus is an old model there is no way of repairing it, or rather, no point. But with my octo leaking air at an alarming rate, I had to take my gear off the cylinder. The initial aim was to simply remove the octo and dive without it. There were plenty of other people there so one person not having a backup air source wouldn’t have been a major problem. Unfortunately there wasn’t a port plug available. So I had to switch it for a backup regulator set from another dive boat, something I wasn’t very keen on doing as I’d no idea what it’s history is. Turns out my fears were well founded. The regs I got had a taste of ammonia, but I was under pressure to dive. So I begun the dive, but then I found the regulators breathed really weirdly, very resistive. That coupled with the constant taste of urine, I decided I didn’t want to continue the dive. So I ascended to 5m, did a 3m safety stop and left the water.
This dive was not logged as it was 9 minutes long….
So, the first dive of the day was 2 hours later:
First Dive:Location: Gordon Reef
32% O
2 Nitrox at 200 Bar
MOD: 33.75m
Max Depth 25.6m, Dive Time 43 minutes
EAD: 20.64 for 43 mins (PPO
2=1.1) O
2 Exposure 20%
This was a really rubbish dive, we headed out along the reef to an extent, but then we dropped down and levelled out for a bit. We were supposed to be going to find some sharks, but to do so we had to swim out from the reef, against a current for quite a distance. The depth was about 40m, and since my buddy had come off the deeper dive previously, we had to stay at a reasonable depth. Benson, one of the other people on the dive was left behind by his buddy and joined me and my buddy Frazer. Frazer and I use air at pretty much the same rate, but Benson used his up a lot faster trying to catch up with his buddy, so we had to cut the dive at 43 minutes.
We saw some Gorgonian Sea fans, though this is a terrible picture! Could’ve used some more lighting.
There was a wreck, or something similar, at the end of the dive. But since we were low on air, and beginning our safety stop we couldn’t go down and have a closer look at the girders and tyres.
And then we got picked up by the boat!
Second Dive:Location: Sharks’ Bay
32% O
2 Nitrox at 200 Bar
MOD: 33.75
Max Depth 16.5m , Dive Time 46 minutes
EAD: 12.81m for 46 Mins (PPO
2= 0.84) O
2 Exposure 35% Total
The last dive of the day was a night dive.
We did see some very cool things, such as this toxic leather sea urchin, and these highly annoying feather stars. Whenever I got close to them to take a picture, they curled up:
Subsequently all the pictures I have of them are like this…
This was really cool. A Banded Boxer Shrimp. Very cool little fella. I wish I could’ve stayed to take more pictures of him.
This is my 2nd night dive, and the first I did with my current torch. From both of these I learned something.
Firstly, my torch, a Princeton Tec Shockwave LED, is a very nice torch. I like a lot. Nice white light, very good on battery use, and a very bright light.
Secondly, with regards to experience. When diving with a camera on a night dive, you really need a buddy to work with you. When you go in with the camera to get a shot, unless you have a strobe, it goes dark because you cannot handle the camera and use the torch at the same time… simply not enough hands. So, something I need to do when diving with a buddy is to get them to light up the target when you go in with the camera, allowing you to focus and compose the shot, then using the built in flash to get a decent shot.
Have a sleepy pufferfish
