Today was an early start to the day beacause we had a 2 tank dive. We were awake and at breakfast by 6:45 which is very early from what I am used to but it was 100% worth it. At 7:30 we were given our first dive meeting to discuss precautions on the boat and how dives will go for the rest of the week. After the meeting we hopped onto the Twin Sister dive boat with our new friends and dive masters Lee and Lucy, both from England. Our very first dive was a shallow reef dive as a group about a mile or so from the resort. Here we were informed how to work our dive watches and one by one we jumped in using the big step technique. After waiting about 10 minutes in the water for everyone to get their gear on we descended and began our very first dive. We reached a max depth of around 35 feet for 47 minutes and although there was not much marine life we saw lots of corals. We were all scanning the sea floor looking for something amazing but weren’t finding anything other than the usual caribbean fish. Next thing we know Lee is excited and pointing out in the distance to a sandy floor where a stingray was waving along. We identified the stingray from a manta ray or eagle ray because of the navy coloring with no dots, it’s smaller body type, and the way it moves by waving the side of it’s body since it doesn’t have the wings other species do. This dive was a test dive for us and after proving we knew what we were doing they decided to let us do buddy dives instead of group dives. We took about a 30 minute break to hydrate, eat, and jump off the top of the boat for fun. Dan did a few cool tricks by front flipping which was very fun to watch. It was now time for our second dive and I chose my buddy Jack Blase. We were the second group into the water and immediately took off to the pvc pipe marking point which identified where the wall of the reefs were. Here I saw a small octopus hidding back in it’s cave. It was only identifiable because I saw about 4 tentacles with all of the suckers lining them. I had trouble telling Jack what I was seeing because I forgot the hand signal so I had to spell out the actual letters until he understood. I was already excited to have seen this but little did I know it would get better. We began swimming along the wall of the reefs which loomed a dark shadow over the ground and made it hard to see. Here we met up with everyone else by chance and began to swim near them the opposite way we were headed. I was trying to get Jack’s attention to check his psi since he burns through his air like nothing I have ever seen, just joking if you see this Jack. In a failed attempt to get his attention I turned to my right to see an object swimming. A hawksbill turtle, identifiable by it’s beak like mouth and jagged shell, was headed into deeper water. I quickly swam to him with Jack where Mr. Marr and us 3 began following the turtle and taking pictures with it like the one below. The second dive was my favorite because of all of the marine life we saw and how exciting it was to see the turtle. Jack and I had to head up after a short 33 minute dive since he had reached his 800 psi mark. We surfaced a little far from the boat because we lost bearing and had to make a swim but it wasn’t too bad. After diving we got to enjoy some free time and dinner followed by a meeting in preparation for the sea turtle center. I am looking forward to the 2 tank dives tomorrow but even more so the turtle center!
