Five intrepid and idealistic people (immature interns) undertook their Divemaster Skills Assessment. After it being postponed due to the wrath of Darth Pete (entirely justified), they armed themselves with all the protection possible (a Scuba Review slate and a wetsuit) and waded into this monthly battle of wits.
Remembering the secret words of power (the values of surface skills) and the conventions of single combat (always deflate your BCD before an underwater skill), the first snorkel was drawn at 8.00am after an hour of preparation. The last fine-tuning was made as the Sun hit the chlorine soaked pool and Avicii’s “Wake Me Up” was whistled woefully across the orange wastes of Terraza de la Paz.
Wading into the arena came Darth Pete and Darth Melissa; chills went down the spine of all the interns waiting. This may have been because one of their number was wearing a 3mm Shorty (namely myself).
Up at the shop, hearing the water rippling, the other interns knew the fate of these latest challengers. It was now down to how exaggerated and slow their skills were, would hair be cleared from their mask, and could they exhale for the whole Controlled Emergency Surface Ascent?
As the battle cries began and the speeches ended, Darth Pete fixes his eyes on the first of the interns…
***Fade to black***
However it actually went OK! As a group we did really well and, despite portents of doom, did not have to do any skills again. That is not to say I could have done better but I was pretty happy with the overall result.
With most of the week revolving around this, I have also been fortunate to get some diving in.
I went to a site for the first time, Moon Pools, which was an interesting place. For the supreme positive of the dive, I saw my first Sea-Horse. This was absolutely awesome, as well as casually random. Almost as though our thought processes were:
“What is that?’
“Sea-Horse.”
“Cool.”
“Yep.”
“Wait, that’s A SEA-HORSE!”
Beyond that however we did see a lot of evidence of human interaction with the marine environment. There was a considerable amount of litter, large metal objects, and lost fishing gear around. Most sickening however was a fresh Stingray carcass, thrown back with its tail and wings cut off. A strange dive full of extremes.
I also led my first dive this week, luckily we saw something as I was paranoid that this would be the time where there was nothing to see. However a funky Octopus, Nudibranch, Red-Backed Cleaner Shrimp and little Stingray put me at ease. I was close to not finding the boat at one point but, with an intervention from the aforementioned Darth Pete, got there in the end. Our customer, Charles from Las Vegas, seemed to enjoy himself anyway!
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