My First Scuba Dive -- By Tica

Yesterday I went on my first SCUBA dive to a dive site called Coral Gardens. After waiting five days due to weather, we finally climbed aboard the Bligh Explorer, Koro Sun Dive’s biggest boat. Mom and Dad went diving first to a site called Dreamhouse, where you can sometimes see schooling hammerhead sharks. They saw one hammerhead but it wasn’t in a school.

Boat captain Michael drove us back to Coral Gardens and my dive began. I put on a wet suit, weight belt, BCD (buoyancy control device), mask, fins, reef shoes, tank, and regulator and slipped into the water. Colin, the instructor and owner of Koro Sun Dive, deflated my BCD and I sunk into the water. I had a little trouble with my mask at first. It started to leak a little bit. Colin kept pointing to his regulator. I thought there was something wrong with it but what he was trying to tell me was that I needed to breathe only through my regulator and not my nose. I got better about this as the dive went on.

We swam around the reef and went under a bunch of overhangs. We saw a giant clam, magic coral, which turns different colors when you touch it, a dot and dash butterflyfish and lots of other critters. Most people wouldn’t get the chance to stick their hand in a giant clam on their first dive. I think that it is really cool that I got to do that. (I didn’t get stuck.)

Not in a jam, with a giant clam

After about 20 or so minutes underwater, Colin and I started to slowly ascend back up to the surface. It did not seem like twenty minutes though. It felt like five!

I really liked diving but some things about it surprised me. I found that I couldn’t easily move my head because of my bulky tank. That got easier over time as I got used to the extra equipment. I didn’t get to control my buoyancy this time because Colin took care of it. He wanted to make sure that I didn’t go up or down too fast. We did get neutrally buoyant eventually. It felt a lot like floating.

Diving is also a lot easier than the PADI book makes it sound. The book contains so much information that it is easy to get overwhelmed in the details. While it is good to know that stuff, it is also good to put the information into practice. Diving was a lot more fun than just reading about it.

I found that diving is a lot better and more fun than snorkeling because you get to see things up close for pretty much as long as you want. You get to see things that are really hard to see when you don’t have a large air supply, like the critters that hang out down deep and those that hang out under overhangs.

Colin and I spent a total of 26 minutes underwater, going down to 35 feet at the deepest. Back on the boat, I got out of my gear and jumped right back in again to go snorkeling with Dad. We saw a spotted eagle ray and some more magic coral. For a little while I snorkeled over Ian while he was doing his dive until Dad told me not to, saying it was Ian’s dive to enjoy.

On the way back the divemasters went fishing and caught a skipjack tuna. They cleaned it on the dock. That is something that I would not want to do!

All in all we all had a really fun day and enjoyed our dives. Colin even said that Ian and I are ready to be certified! I can’t wait.