Scuba: First ocean dive
November 21st, 2004After 8 weeks of classes, close to $1000 in equipment (latest addition: diving hood), and countless pool “dives”, we did our first ocean dive today. Bright and early at 8am this morning, instead of sleeping calmly in bed, Ricky and I were squeezing into a stiff wetsuit and jumping into the 40 degree water of the Pacific Ocean, off of Catalina Island.
Cold as it was, the weather and other conditions were remarkably pleasant. Despite the recent cloudy and cold weather (true cold, not fake LA cold), today was both sunny and mildly warm. So once the sun rose, life aboard the Psalty V was very enjoyable…a nice sun deck, helpful crew, and great home-made (boat-made?) meals, all of which was interrupted 3 times when it came time to jump 30 feet below the surface.
And it was nothing like the pool! Visibility was limited to about 10 feet in all directions, the cold water resulted in non-stop shivering (especially when sitting still on the ocean floor doing countless mask clearing exercises), and oh yeah…something about all of this which made me freak out and panic on my way down for the first time. Luckily, after some relaxing I was able to descend, slowly, and join the rest of the group for all the skills testing.
The few minutes we had at the end of the dive to explore were pretty exciting. Even though our location was hardly tropical, we still saw lots of interesting fish (most interesting was the bright orange garibaldi) and amazing kelp forests, only found in California waters.
All in all it was a cool experience, and I suppose I’m looking forward to the next boat trip. The sights were great, but I’m still no fan of waking up at 5am to jump into an ice-cold ocean.