Diving

I was looking forward to some holiday in combination with a work related trip to Australia. Wondering where to go I bought a travel guide which opened by chance on a chapter on the Great Barrier Reef. It didn't take a lot of reading until I got the idea to learn how to dive there. On the www I quickly selected and registered with the ProDive shop in Cairns, where I passed the theory tests and the pool practise. We were about to hit the sea for three days and two nights with 11 dives including night dives, but the cyclone Rona swept over the area and prevented any sea-related activity (and many more). Since I had to fly down south again, I couldn't do any open water diving in Cairns nor finish my diving education.

After work was done (at Siding Springs Observatory), I stayed with friends in Coogee (Sydney). A ProDive shop was around the corner, and I was happy to finish the PADI Open Water Diver certificate with four open water dives in Gordon's Bay in Sydney. After some diving in Tenerife and Fiji the years after, I decided on another stay in Tenerife to do the next step and get a certificate for Advanced Open Water Diver with Tauchschule Atlantik in Puerto de la Cruz, a German run place where everything is organized in an almost military fashion. But that is not at all a bad thing for an activity like diving, and the education and the whole experience was superb. I dived caves, tried some underwater navigation and worked on buoyancy control. What struck me was that after a dive the first thing some professional divers felt compulsed to do was smoking - that didn't fit together for me.

My so far last dives were done in Hawaii (Big Island) with Jack's Diving Locker and two magnificent manta rays, accompanied by the singing of whales about 3 miles away from our dive site. Then our first son was born and I was more busy changing nappies... ;-)

One day - hopefully soon - I will go on diving.

Dive Log

No.	date	place	site	depth, bottom time	description
1	March 1999	Coogee, Sydney	Gordon's Bay	10m 40min	my first time.. scuba diving. Brilliant feeling. Loads of fish I can't identify and little stingrays. Entry and mostly exit difficult with all the gear from the rocky coastline into strong waves. We all needed assistance. I actually did the theory bits of my education in Cairs with Pro Dive, but a cyclone in Feb. 1999 prevented me to do a 4 day cruise on their boat through the Great Barrier Reef with 11 dives including night dives. Bad luck. Next time.
2	March 1999	Coogee, Sydney	Gordon's Bay	9m 50min
3	March 1999	Coogee, Sydney	Gordon's Bay	14m 45min
4	March 1999	Coogee, Sydney	Gordon's Bay	12m 40min	my last training dive for the PADI certificate with ProDive in Coogee, Sydney. My trainer was Marina Kouzmin. Seen some cute little stingrays, the cutest one tatooed on Marina's back ;-) Dive involved underwater navigation. Seen also some squid. First time I see squid alive...
5	Oct 1999	Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife	Muelle	19m 40min	entry from the harbour in Puerto de la Cruz
6	Oct 1999	Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife	Montana Negra	33m 30min	my deepest dive: 35 meters. Entry and exit from a little boat which needed assistance and meticulous planning. Felt like in the army - not only because the dive school was run by germans. Joked a bit about that with the only non-german diver, a mid-aged spanish gentlemen: 'Ordnung muss sein!'. But I very much prefer detailled planning than no planning at all.
7	Oct 1999	Las Americas, Tenerife	Puntera	19m 35min	played with a spider crab on my hands. Overall more relaxed than in Puerto de La Cruz. Naturally, because the diving instructor was french.
8	December 22 1999	Beqa Lagoon, Viti Levu, Fiji	Fantasea	20m 25min	loads of soft coral, barracuda, unicorn fish
9	December 22 1999	Beqa Lagoon, Viti Levu, Fiji	Golden Arch	18m 25min	swim throughs (little tunnels through the coral heads)
10	December 23 1999	Beqa Lagoon, Viti Levu, Fiji	Seven Sister	21m 45min	wreck dive.
11	December 23 1999	Beqa Lagoon, Viti Levu, Fiji	Side Street	18m 50min	more swim throughs
12	December 24 1999	Beqa Lagoon, Viti Levu, Fiji	Caesar's Rock	20m 40min	more swim throughs
13	December 24 1999	Beqa Lagoon, Viti Levu, Fiji	Three Nuns	15m 57min	first time I've seen a moray eel
14	December 26 1999	Beqa Lagoon, Viti Levu, Fiji	Barracuda Point	21m 30min	40 feet visibility. I was signalled a shark but haven't seen any. A convoy of barracudas.
15	December 26 1999	Beqa Lagoon, Viti Levu, Fiji	Side Street	18m 60min	some sort of shrimp our dive instructor played around with. He showed them his teeth and they sort of 'cleaned' them with their antennas.
16	December 27 1999	Beqa Lagoon, Viti Levu, Fiji	Seven Sister	26m 45min	revisited the wreck from dive No. 10. Had to stand in front and pose like Kate Winslet in 'Titanic'
17	December 27 1999	Beqa Lagoon, Viti Levu, Fiji	Fantasea	20m 45min	this one involved a swim through through some tunnel which gave me a bit of a cave dive feeling. The tunnel was quite narrow. I stayed as close to the bottom as possible but still banged two times with the air tank against the ceiling. Half way through the tunnel, there was a chimney going up and I wondered whether you can go through there, but Nassa, our dive master (brilliant guy) said they wouldn't do that. As he told me later, he took me through that cave because he thinks I have great control over my buoyancy. Hearing this from him made me a bit proud, I have to admit.
18	January 6 2000	Mana Island, Fiji	Supermarket	20m 45min	teamed up with other groups to watch the divemasters feed about 10 to 20 white tip, black tip and grey reef sharks: awesome! Of course loads of other fish including bat fish, too. Sharks on armstrech distance. Fed also a moray eel.
19	January 6 2000	Mana Island, Fiji	Barrel Head	22m 45min	dive along a vertical wall which went very very deep, but we didn't go deeper than 22m. Approached a clown trigger fish but the dive master signalled me back energetically. One diver went too deep and had to be brought back by the dive master.
20	May 21 2001	Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife	Muelle	12m 35min	my first dive for the PADI Advanced Open Water Diver, consisting of boyancy control training.
21	May 21 2001	Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife	Kamin (german for 'chimney')	35m 32min	training in the logistics (and of course correct execution) of entry from a boat. That is a smaller inflatable boat.
22	May 22 2001	Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife	Muelle	28m 35min	Navigation training: I had to dive an equally sided triangle using a compass. I wasn't really successful and missed the starting point by about 15 meters, apparently due to the fact that my right leg stroke is stronger than my left leg stroke. Still, I recognised the starting position next to me.
23	May 22 2001	Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife	Muelle	28m 37min	My first night dive, very nice, actually spectacular. Great experience. In all the exitement I didn't equalize the mask pressure correctly and came home with bursted cappilars in and around my eye, so I looked a bit like a monster the following day...
24	May 24 2001	Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife	Bollullo	20m 36min	Last dive for the PADI Advanced Open Water Diver, consisting in a cave dive and a repetition of the navigation exercise on my request. Due to the streaming and the fact that I merely used the compass instead of underwater landmarks I missed the triangle again, but was still regarded ok. The cave dive was awesame, including a big stingray in the cave defending his territory and chasing us out...
25	Oct 9 2001	Agia Pelagia, Crete	Mononaftis	22m 53min	First of two dives with StayWet. Included a dive through a several meters long cave. Had a little pain in my back during this dive
26	Oct 9 2001	Agia Pelagia, Crete	Mononaftis (right hand side)	18m 58min	Tried to change the position of the tank, but still had pain in my back. Tried to tease an octopus out under a rock, but it refused and sprayed a lot of ink.
27	January x 2002	Kona, Hawaii	Eels Cone	..m ..min	Evening dive with Jack's Diving Locker right off the airport of Kailua-Kona on Hawaii (Big Island). At the end a light was installed for the succeeding night dive to attract manta rays.
28	January x 2002	Kona, Hawaii	Eels Cone	..m ..min	Night dive. Awesome. Two Manta Rays cruising around us. They just swam towards us, attracted by our torches (or better by the plankton in the light beam) and floated above our heads - very close, actually two times they bumped into me. And for the entire dive we heard whale's singing around us. They must have been only about 2 miles away from us. After the manta ray experience we encountered also a moray eel hunting.