zosianicola's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- back from Bonaire Where have I been? Bonaire! We didn't take many pix, resigned to the fact that small non-specific digital cameras are not really suitable for underwater photography. The coolest thing I saw was a 'feeding ball" of silversides, hundreds and maybe thousands of small 4" silver fish schooling in tight formation so that they looked like a ball (upon which predatory fish like barracuda or shark might feed) which moves and morphs in the sea. it was a sunny day so they shimmered like a very large diamond. we saw them at the Bonaire salt pier. I did 12 dives--P-dog did 15 (he always does more, is more gung-ho). We had our first little underwater crisis, in which his air gauge sprang a gasket and began to lose air freely and quickly, but we were already at 15 feet, done with our decompression stop, so it was a simple matter to hand him my accessory mouthpiece ("octopus"), allowing him to breathe off my tank, which still had plenty of air. We always have plenty of air left at the end of 60 min dives, especially in Bonaire where many dives are rather shallow. I had a disturbing dive as well, a night dive at the Kralendijk "Town Pier". I was wearing my new thicker wet suit. The problem with the dive was that I was not weighted heavily enough and could not stay down, even though I had added weight to make up for the thicker suit. At the end of the week we noticed that 2 of our 4 weight pockets, which we assumed contained 7 pounds of weight each, contained 6 and 8 pounds. And we were indiscriminately using each other's weight pockets, so sometimes one got 13 or 15 pounds when they thought they were getting 14. If I had gotten the 13 pound combination that night, even though I had tucked 2 pounds extra into my BC vest, it would not have been enough. I spent most of the dive struggling to stay down, extra worried because I did not know what was above us in the vicinity; this was a pier after all, and tugboats----so I thought I might be surfacing against hard objects. When the dive was over and we emerged on shore I was practically blithering. So, i learned the lesson: always check what size weights the dive master hands you. YET EVEN SO, we saw magnificent things, things not usually seen like crustaceans and tunicates and SEAHORSES! We saw one red seahorse and 2 brown ones! Fantastic food. Good friends. Beautiful weather. No e-mail. The dogs were at the vet's kennel facility, but were waiting for us at home because a friend/neighbor picked them up for us today and brought them home; our flight into houston did not get us here before the vet's earlier closing on Saturdays. They are gorgeous and they still love us! 4:51 p.m. - 2007-01-13 ---------------------------------------------------------
a substitute activity - 2007-07-17 |
||||||
|
||||||