Night Dive and Day 3 on Catalina

OH my goodness, so much to talk about! (Sorry for the poor picture quality, btw)

To begin, last night we had our first-ever night dive. Whoa, what a scary concept. After a carb-filled pasta dinner, we waddled down the hill to the lecture hall to talk some notes on diving with nitrox (air with a higher percentage of oxygen and thus a lower percentage of nitrogen, increasing dive time and lowering risks of decompression sickness, etc.). If you haven't read my fbook status already; our dive instructor Jerry was late for lecture. He was taking a ride in a submarine. Nothing out of the usual on Catalina Island. Turns out, there is a 50,000 lbs. mooring that has fallen over and been dragged several meters. How? Nobody knows... there is also some kind of net missing and the hook is not-so-kindly torn off. Hmm, the mysteries of the deep never cease to amaze me.

Soon it was time... we headed down the bottom of the hill wearily and cold, sweatpants and jackets on. We found our wetsuits still wet. Surprise. Fun. Once you get it on, though, the 7mm protect your skin from wind and that does actually make you considerably warmer. We chose buddies -- I was with Dan Killam, aka Scuba Steve -- and got our flashlights. I picked the big flashlight and got to tie a glow stick to my tank too. Cool! Once on the dock in the dark, we were lucky enough to have two big ships nearby with nasty fog lights to give us some light. The ships belong to the bajillionaire who owns the submarine. Thanks, rich guy! In the light, before we even got in the water, we watch flying fish play around, just under the hungry gaze of some birds.

I hopped in the water and gave the okay sign. With only my flashlight for visual aid, I looked around me in the water and saw some red worm-like things squiggling around in front of me. Ew. Soon our group was assembled and ready. We descended and each covered our lights at the same time, experiencing total darkness (except for the glow sticks). Swimming around, we found a studly lobster trying to hide behind some coral. Ha, nice try. We surrounded it and gave it a heart attack I'm sure, because it soon fled under the kelp and into the darkness. Our group was confused and without direction, so for most of the 28 minute dive, we bumped into each other and made figure eights around the sea floor, kicking up a bunch of sand too. Not too fun, especially when you are cold. Resurfacing, we looked like torso-less heads bobbing in the ocean under tons of tons of stars. I love seeing the night sky out here, because you can see three times as many stars as Chicagoland area, about 1000 times more stars than L.A.

I wasn't as cold as I expected while getting out of the wetsuit, though it was still cold.

Day 3 on Catalina

Today we filled up our bellies with the first bananas we've seen all trip and peanut butter and toast, before embarking on our fifth dive of the trip. Today we planned our first nitrox dive and had to test each individual tank for the oxygen content and our maximum operational depth (MOD). That took a lot of time. So much time, in fact, we were soon hearing emergency alarms and seeing spinning lights. A helicopter was coming in to transport someone to a hospital on the mainland. Eek! We hurried to get all of our light gear away from the helipad, because we would lose it for sure in the high velocity winds if it wasn't hidden. Our Scuba tanks we left just nearby. We took the opportunity to run up the hill, play some volleyball and relax. We watched a boat come in with the person in distress on board. The paramedics (Baywatch) were working on them, stabilizing them I hope. The chopper arrived and we watched six big guys wheel the person to the chopper and inside, then it took off and we were back on schedule. The person was alive upon leaving; how much alive, we don't know.

We were nearly all geared up. I partnered with Jennah, who is a student like me but acting as a Scuba instructor, T.A., because she is already more than Scuba certified. She has at least 170 dives logged and lives in Florida. Go figure. We didn't not have our tanks on our backs yet. This is a process that takes a partner to lift up the 30? 40? lbs. tank, BC, and regulator up so you can strap it on. It's a wonder no one has broken their back yet. Anyways, out of no where, the alarm goes off again. Another chopper is coming! Shoot! We hurried to get our gear on and tanks on back as the chopper was circling the cove. We hurried down the dock just to discover... the helicopter was transporting the rich submarine owner and his friends and family. Ugh.

We hopped in the water and descended quickly. Today was the day we were to do our deepest dive yet. I went down as deep as 64 ft.! To be honest, I don't prefer the deep dives. It gets so cold down there, and there isn't that much more interesting to see. We slowly decreased depth and headed towards the kelp along the wall of the cove, where there is a lot of action. Bridget McDonald (the other Bridget on the trip--I know, what are the chances?) spotted and charged a huge HUGE sea hare. It was the size of a teddy bear, or small refrigerator, whichever you can visualize better. She hugged it close and you could read the excitement in her eyes. It was so big! I touched it with my gloved hand and the plump animal had a fat, elastic bounciness to it. Kind of like a sea cucumber (see the picture on the right, taken from http://www.flickr.com/photos/montereybayaquarium/3554171101/). Apparently the instructor we were following saw a huge moray eel as well. I'm happy I didn't see that. I heard a deep rumbling and realized there must be a big boat nearby overhead, but where? Approaching 15 ft. down for our three minute safety stop, I decided to get a little adventurous. I did some back flips underwater, and Jennah took pictures and video of us fooling around a bit.

Resurfacing, we were greeted by a boat full of families, coming to Catalina to stay for the weekend. Lovely. They looked on at us like a zoo spectacle, as I'm sure we looked quite odd appearing out of nowhere. I'm not too happy about all the people being here. They're going to eat all our food. Although this does me that we will be served better-than-usual food... ok, I can deal.

We took our nitrox exam and I don't think I passed. Actually, I think I did, but my grader marked it wrong... 7 wrong out of 50 means 86%, right? Then I should be fine.

I also recorded by dive information in my dive log. To date, I have been underwater diving for over seven hours. Woot!

Casey -- aka Pearl -- is back on the mainland and my textbook has been shipped to her house. The textbook that took the full two weeks out of the anticipated 7-14 days to ship. And it arrived the day that I left home. The timing was impeccable. We're being tested on much of the information tomorrow. Oh well, that's what classmates are for, right?

Happy Friday everyone, B