Blue planet dive . People come to be volunteering research
Some divers have all their own gear. Our hire gear is a bit shabby. The tatty shorty wetsuit ..That’s expected Expected .but I’m surprised they are the cheaper fins you’d use for a casual snorkel
Big butterfly
On the boat setting up I’m checking my gear BCD I open the valve..bang the low pressure hose inflater blew off of the regulator. They have a spare set up and I’m glad the hose failed here. And I hadn’t noticed that there is only a pressure gauge. On the BCD, No depth gauge.
We saw Sharks, turtles lion fish and a wonderful stripey snake. The others were thrilled they saw a devil ray. Looks a bit like a small manta ray.
Oh so much damaged reef areas of where it is all broken. Sad picture. I didn’t understand ’til at lunch, when they talked about blast fishing. Dynamite will do that.
Likiung island lunch between dives. Classic Indo lunch rice and chicken or fish.
OO shivers I’m surprised Ive got down to 50bar so quickly.
I signal I’ve reached 50bar and almost immediately change that to 40. Martina ascends with me to do my safety stop. I can see the guage dropping.
we are still hovering at 5metres for our safety stop.
I signal that I’m at 30bar
I take a breath and try for a second breath, I look at my pressure gauge in astonishment, it says 20 but I have no air. I’m thinking I need to swim up to the top right now. In that breathless moment it didn’t occur to me to do the sign for out of air. The cut throat signal. Or the sign for; I need air from you. Maybe Martina recognised my look, she threw away the string that she held – her safety sausage (a hi-vis balloon that floats on the surface for boat pick up). grabbed her occie and I breathed from her spare mouthpiece as we ascended smoothly. I was very glad to get to the boat.
We were well ahead of everyone else in.
I’ve never run out of air before Steve.
I now love Martina!
She says she was impressed by how calm I was, I knew I could see the surface of the water and could swim to the top in just seconds ml. I’m impressed Martina recognised the situation. she says she saw me look at my guage a second time and I wonder if maybe she unconsciously noticed the lack of bubbles.
At home when we did our course we learnt you should have 50 bar of air pressure left at the surface. Here 50 bar is considered start to ascend for your safety stop. I now appreciate the extra caution at home.
The Indonesian dive master said the problem was because I breathed too much at the start of the dive. Hmm. We won’t discuss that. That response really pissed Steve off. The Belgian guys response was more useful we will check that guage…oh good we know which one it is, it’s got a red tag on it..
And here’s the thing, I didn’t see anyone put that tag on… I think maybe it was already there… I was diving with the spare reg set, they had changed it after that hose blew while I was doing the check on my first set up…
We were going to dive again there next day… but we’ll give it a miss.
Today was really great training, its one thing to learn something in your course, another to remember it on dry land and something quite different again to remember it in the real.
And there are more things I will look at before booking a dive.
I remember our instructor shutting our air off so we would know what it felt like. It’s pretty clear when it happens.