On the fifth of November I went scuba diving. This was altogether the best diving experience I’ve ever had. Mostly I’ve been unimpressed with Jamaica diving; the seas aren’t vibrantly blue and there aren’t that many fish. I always compare it to my dives in the crystal waters of the Turks and Caicos which were teeming with interesting fish.
But this part of Jamaica has its own charms.
The weather wasn’t that great to start. I did meet a cute girl from our group who claimed she also had trouble equalizing. I thought she would be a good dive buddy since we could both go down slowly. On the first dive though, she had nothing but trouble; her two regulators both broke down on her while on the surface. She decided she didn’t want to go diving after that. Surprisingly, I had no trouble going down. Apparently it just takes one day of deep diving to get my ears trained to handle equalization. (Although, when I equalize on land, I find the sound of air hissing out my ear somewhat disconcerting.)
Anyway, I went down to a sunken ship. It was made of metal, and could have been there for ten years or fifty. I didn’t know. It wasn’t that interesting though; I had seen it before. We continued along, going to 72 ft deep. Then, out of the mists (or the aquatic equivalent), there was an entire plane. I had heard about this wreck, but I didn’t expect to see it. Off to the right there was another one, missing its back half. I swam up to the cockpit of the second one and looked in through the window. The controls had been taken over my coral.
Then I did something extremely stupid/dangerous/exciting. I swam around to the door and then into the plane. I promptly swam out the back, so I was only inside for about ten feet. So cool!
That was why this was the best dive I’ve ever had.
The second dive that morning was shallower, going to only 35 feet. This time a new tank and regulator were found for my dive buddy and she was able to go down as well. She had an underwater camera that took pictures. Hopefully I’ll be able to get copies from her. This dive wasn’t that exciting as we just looked at coral. The highlight was when the dive master found a slow, almost round, fish tooling around the bottom. He picked it up and showed it off.
As it sat in his hands, fins flapping, you could almost hear it saying, “Guys! This isn’t funny anymore.”
Ah, anthropomorphized fish.