Urchin-killings and a new Dive Site ~ El Delphin

Week 3 of my internship has just passed, which means I only have 5 more days to go till it´s back to freezing Dutchieland. (Actually thinking about it, I don’t think it will make such a big difference whether your soaking wet because of the rain or soaking wet because your sweating like a pig all day!)

On Sunday we went to Las Eras for my and Geoffrey’s PADI Deep Speciality dive and my SMB Speciality dive. 

Las Eras is a really nice dive site, with a great underwater world. On our way out everything went really smooth, just bobbing around in the water, letting ourselves be carried away by a current, checking out the Needle fish, Octopus, Barracudas and all the little critters along the rocks. 

At around 30m. Gareth made us play a little game to check if we were effected by gas narcosis, writing our names backwards. No trouble for me there, Geoffrey on the other hand seemed pretty narced, having trouble remembering and writing the correct letters (although he did had some trouble spelling his name backwards at the surface as well, but we’ll blame the early morning for that!).
After our little play-time, it was time to return to shore. By then we realized that the current was quiet strong and we struggled to swim back.
To be honest we did really well, considering we did a 30m. dive for 43 minutes in a current that strong! Really cool detail is the Octopus we saw eating a big Trumpet fish (with the Trumpet fish still sticking half out of the Octopus….I’m realizing now without a picture this description is missing a bit of X-factor, not sounding half as exciting as it actually was, you should have been there…). 

A little less cool was the dead baby Turtle we saw, lying on the bottom, all white and with his head ripped off, starting to deteriorate (again, you should have been there for the visual effect with this description…or maybe not).

We also had some time this week to go exploring! Pete decided it was time to check if he still had it, so along with Gareth, Geoffrey and me, we went to a new dive site called El Delphin (named after a Dolphin statue we passed while descending) for another deep dive. 

Star of the day was the huge Atlantic Ray that swam towards us as soon as we arrived on the bottom. A beautiful start of the dive! 

Gareth also decided to take some breakfast food from his fridge to play yet another game. Playtime was over pretty fast (which is actually a good thing at that depth)…The boys were not able to crack the egg under water so I had to show them how (pretty pathetic guys that even under water the woman has to handle the food like in the kitchen) and Gareth didn’t really knew why he brought the tomatoes (other than they were mouldy anyway and taking up beer-space in the fridge) so we squeezed them all up and prepared a nice little breakfast for the Bream and Trumpet fish.

The second dive of that day was a project Aware dive. We went to Starfish bay to do some urchin-killing. Somehow everyone was really exciting about this dive, it didn’t bring up the best in all of us. 
In the beginning I felt a bit sorry for the urchins, especially the little one's, so I have to admit that in the beginning I did let the little once get off the hook.

When I looked to my left and right side, I saw my team-members who turned into psychopaths; tossing the urchins up in the water slicing them like Japenese sushi-chefs or Samurai soldiers. 
Some of them would put them on a rock, watch them walk away, toss them over, making them think they could escape the massacre and then give them the death sentence anyway. 
I just thought they were weird and British….UNTILL….I got stabbed by one of those sneaky bastards (talking about the urchins again not my team-members)! 
Then my finger hurt, a little drop of green blood dropped out of it, my mind went blank…. From that moment on it was Die Urchin Die!!

(Again for the people not familiar with the urchins, they are a pest in this area, not native to the area and are sucking the life out of this part of the ocean, they don’t have natural enemies so we need to kill them to protect the underwater life).

Also the past week, the All-stars turned into the All-blacks after they all became PADI Divemasters by completing the exams and kit-exchange, which makes me the odd one out in my red T-shirt. 

I did the kit-exchange together with Geoffrey. 

Before the exercise we had 5 minutes to practice in which we agreed / learned that:

1. We were just going to see what was going to happen

2. You should not clear your mask when you don’t have your reg. in your mouth because yes, you will run out of air and yes, you will try to breathe water.
3. We’re awesome anyway so this is going to be easy as!

The kit-exchange went really well, Geoffrey was in a bit of a rush which made it a challenge to keep up with him. Trying to take my fins off and put his "fins-fit-for-a-giant" on wasn’t that easy, made me tip over and sit on my backside at the bottom of the pool…..BUT….goal of the exercise was to make it look smooth and easy so I took my time (trying to fool the big boss that this was all part of mine and Geoffrey’s brilliant plan of preparation), and had a little moment for myself before Geoffrey helped me back up, proceeding the exercise in lightning-speed. In the end, like we expected, everything went awesome and we could be proud of ourselves.

I also had a go at doing a pre-dive safety check and the kit-set-up. Toughest part was to pronounce the word ‘Knurled Nut’ without laughing. I also need to remember to actually put on a weight belt when showing the student how to check for a weight belt and to actually turn the air on when I want to check my air!

At the end of the week, we went to a very informative presentation of Pro-sub, The Dive Centre's supplier of dive equipment otherwise known as Toy’s R Us for divers! 

Here we gained some useful information about the latest equipment and some sales- and business techniques.

Like I said in my intro, only 5 more days to go with hopefully a lot of beautiful diving!

Susanne