This morning Andy did a shark dive. It was an extra excursion outside of the resort. We first took a boat off of Coco View island, then a car trip. We were down at 70 feet. The mooring line comes down to a sandy area with the reef surrounding it on a couple sides. The divers sat on their knees with the reef behind them so a shark couldn’t sneak up behind us. We had a dive master and videographer down there with us. The dive master had a bucket with a small amount of food in it to draw the sharks’ attention. Most of the dive, the bucket was kept shut. The sharks circled around us waiting for the bucket to open. At one point a shark swam right over my head.
The dive master opened the bucket. The sharks bumped the bucket, and then one picked it up and got the bucket stuck on his nose for a bit. He broke free of it. The sharks ate all of the bait. Then they swam away. At that point, we searched for shark teeth. One guy found two of them and another found one.
I got a bit concerned and confused because my dive computer told me I was into decompression. It took me a minute to realize I had to be higher up to do the deco. Once I understood that, everything worked out fine.
Linda decided she was up for a boat dive in the afternoon. She did well this time. She found the trick is to take a Dramamine both at night and in the morning daily on trips like this. The boat dive took us to Chimneys. There were a couple coral structures that came high up from below. The dive gets it’s name because the structures look like chimneys. One of them is large enough to swim into. Our dive master David cautioned against ascending. We were only to swim in, look up, turn around and come out the same way. I have an appreciation for both the coral structures and the marine life when diving. Andy saw a ray on the dive.
On our way back we did a drop dive at Coco View Wall. Linda and I opted to drop at the normal length. All the other divers asked for a shorter trip down Coco View. We planned on going this route after dinner for a night dive.
Linda and I had much better success on our night dive today. We realized earlier in the day that the chains start at the platform. So you can follow them straight from the platform and pick up the buoys. We clipped the strobe and our tags onto the safety stop chain and did a celebratory fist bump. We followed our way across Coco View Wall and turned back. We saw two shrimp, a crab, and a ray. The current wasn’t as bad as the prior night. We did come back low on air.
Night dive, two shrimp, crab, ray, current wasn’t too bad, came back low on air