Tukad Batang

Today I got under the water again. It is what I have been waiting for since work got tough, because it is as far away as I can imagine from the stress and emotions of ICU. And it has definitely fulfilled that desire already, and this is just my warm up for the Phillipines!

I am doing a course to become an advanced open water diver, this is to increase my confidence so that I can enjoy the beautiful waters and focus less on staying alive and not bumping into coral and fish. Although obviously the main aim of diving is always to stay alive!

The course involves 5 skilled dives, lead by a qualified instructor who tests me. Two mandatory dives are a deep dive-to 30 metres and navigation dive, then I have chosen three other specialities which are wreck dive, night dive and peak performance buoyancy dive. Today I started with navigation dive, which was what I expected to enjoy the least. It involves using a compass underwater and counting your fin strokes to follow a route and find your way back to where you started. The route is either a square or triangle, so in theory not that hard. But I am not well practiced with a compass and also it turns out my maths skills are pretty poor when put to test. I practiced on land first and managed to master the maths of it there and then we did it underwater. I took two attempts to pass the square, but passed triangle first time. The other route is direct return, but I knew that from my initial dive qualification. Nice to know I hadn't forgotten how to do it though. Once the skills were complete we continued with a recreational dive along the beach, going down to 17.1metres. The visibility wasn't great and we were in a fairly strong current, but we still saw loads of fish and coral. And sadly a lot of rubbish. I started to pick it up, but soon realised it would need a team of people to clean.

After lunch I did the peak performance buoyancy dive. Being underwater is a bit like being in space- you become weightless and float around aimlessly, until you master management of buoyancy. When diving you wear a jacket that can be filled with air and by altering the amount of air and the placement of the air you can adjust your buoyancy. But there are also other factors that change it, such as your body position, how deep you are and how much air is left in your tank. So buoyancy can be a challenge to manage and sometimes as a beginner you find yourself scraping the floor or suddenly rising to the surface. At my level of diving it can be a distraction for me to be figuring out buoyancy when there could be awesome stuff to be looking at, so this is the dive I really wanted to do. I had to show my instructor that I could swim sideways and on my back without rising, that I could sit and lie down without sinking and that I could be upside down. I found a couple of them a bit tricky, but I feel throughout the day I have improved already and my instructor seemed to think I was good at it. Then once the skills were complete we went for a recreational dive, along the same route as before. But now the tide had turned and so the current was gone and the visibility was a lot better. We saw loads of fish and coral and a huge octopus and tiny seahorse. It is the first time I have seen a seahorse so I was very happy.

This evening I have just got back from a night dive, which we did on a shipwreck that is 30metres from shore. I was most nervous about this one as I thought it would be hard to see anything, but actually as we had torches it was easier to see my instructor than usual and was losing him that scared me. Also we started as dusk, so going into darkness was gradual. It was an incredible dive as the fish were really active-it being their feeding time. We saw some huge parrot fish, big schools of fish, lots of crustaceans, corals that react to our lights, plankton that react to our movement and of course the shipwreck. I felt much more confident with my movement and buoyancy and managed to swim through it without bumping anything. I learnt to dive on shipwrecks in the Solomon Islands and I remember getting cuts and burns from how hopeless my movement was, so it was nice to recognise my improvement. At the same time the instructor had told me I was to navigate the way back as I was the one wearing the compass. And I managed that no problem. The only negative thing was that I was getting cold-waters were 27 degrees, but I can't tolerate that for a long time, even with a full wet suit on. I stuck the dive out until the end, but had numb feet by the end of it.

All in all it was a super brilliant day and it has just got me wanting more. Which is good, because I have 4 more dives over the next two days and a week, or more of it in the Philippines!Read more