Second dive day

Tashi Delek
Mike & Carol Kefford
Mon 14 Apr 2014 20:28

We enjoyed both our dives very much and were gaining in confidence so signed up for another day.  This time the site was at the northern tip of Santa Cruz on a small island called Seymour Norte.  Again our divemaster, this time Santiago, had a camera and he took some excellent pictures and video including our first decent shot of a sea horse…..

 

 

A starfish that looked as though it had been made by Wedgewood….. Difficult to get a sense of scale but this was about 20cm across.

 

 

Our second dive took us along a lava wall with numerous overhangs and nooks and crannies.  It was fabulous with a lot to look at but it was our first experience of a serious current so we quickly learnt how to hang on!

 

 

 

Not a particularly good picture unfortunately but these guys were beautiful and very funny to watch.  They pursed their lips as they were feeding so looked as though they were blowing kisses.

 

 

 

But then, during our 3 minute safety stop prior to surfacing we spotted a Manta Ray beneath us.  It was huge and gently flying through the water. We watched it swim up and back over our heads.  Wow.   Unfortunately we again only have video but hopefully these two pictures taken from that video will give you the idea.   Maybe Google it and have a look at some better pictures on the internet.

 

 

 

As new divers we are inclined to gobble up our air faster than a very experienced person would do.  This can be annoying for the others in your group because when one person is getting to about ¼ tank left then everyone surfaces, so the experienced ones are theoretically having their dive cut short.  One way round this is that the first person who gets low on air uses the second regulator on the divemasters tank and effectively piggy backs on their air.  Mike needed to do this on all four dives although it was taking longer each time.  Due to the current during this dive we had needed to breathe a bit harder than usual!

 

Just as this happened on the final dive one of the others, who had made it clear earlier how super experienced he was, appeared looking very stressed and frantically making the ‘out of air’ sign.  This is extremely bad form because you are supposed to be watching your air gauge very closely and of course, new bugs such as Mike and I are very, very interested in how much air we have at any given moment.  Said chap then vanished!  It turned out he had decided to surface but the divemaster had to spend time looking for him before the rest of us could go up and do the correct safety stop at 5m.  The diver concerned got a real telling off and I suspect was not able to dive with the company again – they had warned us at the beginning that any irresponsible behaviour and you would not be allowed back.