I am Scuba Certified!

The Galápagos appears to be confused as we head into what is supposed to be the dry season and it has rained every day for over a week. It hasn’t been a constant rain so it’s actually quite nice. The temperature is cooler and if the rain is done by the evening then there are beautiful sunsets and the first full rainbows I’ve ever seen, from arc to arc. Yesterday evening when we were driving back from the ship wreck dive we could see all of Puerto Baquerizo Moreno from the descending sunlight and a rainbow arcing across the sky. Enjoy the random pictures throughout the entry of marine iguanas and rainbows. The rainbows are not from the dive boat but from Punta Carola when I was doing some sea lion counting as explained further below.

 

I am open water scuba certified! After about 4 days of watching a video, pool exercises, shallow water exercises, and finally “deep” water exercises, I can dive safely to 18m (60 feet) I believe. In the beginning I was very hesitant to go through with diving because it is a lot of money and I was nervous about the whole thing. However, diving certification does last for life and as I’ve become more and more interested in marine biology I figured it could be a useful skill. Now my dilemma is if I want to get advanced open water certified when my instructor comes back at the end of April. It would be my last week in the Galápagos (scary) and it is more money, but he’s offering to give us the courses at a discounted price because we did our first certification with him.

I can imagine that using scuba equipment for the first time without having first snorkeled would be a bit nerve wracking. I enjoy snorkeling when the conditions are good. Even sometimes the conditions are not that great and you are still able to see a lot of larger creatures such as sea turtles. The best snorkeling on Cristóbal that I have experienced so far has been la Loberia. This is the beach where the politics students had a lot of trouble with the tide and were almost pulled out to sea because of the rip current that is always present. Because of these conditions, it is really only safe to be swimming there in the low tide and even then you can feel a strong current. The first time we went here we saw a lot of sea turtles. The most common sea turtle in the Galápagos is the green sea turtle. Sea turtles in general are very calm creatures that don’t mind when you swim around them and sit at the bottom eating sea vegetation. Of course, the second time we went to Loberia to actually study the sea turtles there was only one large female to be found. That day I did sea an eagle ray, some pipe fish, a tiger eel, and other standard tropical fish.

Snorkeling is great because it allows you to see underwater and breathe without constantly having to stick your head above the surface. On Rabida I did swim around with only my goggles and fins because Danielle had forgot her snorkel on the boat. This made it easier to dive and most of the time I snorkel without fins. For some reason fins are a difficult piece of equipment for me to use properly. When descending for scuba diving, my fins tend to come up in front of me. But swimming around without the snorkel is tough because I did need to keep coming up for breath and wasn’t able to follow some of the animals entirely such as the sharks that were swimming around below us. Snorkeling is also wonderful in that it takes very little time to prepare for and it’s not expensive or bulky.  

 

Scuba diving, on the other hand, is a completely different experience. First off, it’s very unnatural to be breathing underwater. Trusting your life on your regulator or your secondary regulator working properly is scary. There are other sources of air such as your buddy’s alternate air source. I also have yet to dive to a depth that is unsafe to ascend within a minute. (It is safe to ascend 18m/60ft within a minute.) Being able to stay underwater and see is amazing and well worth any of the fear that I’ve felt while diving. Of course, like any dangerous activity, our course started out with watching 2 and half hours worth of videos on what exercises we would be doing during our dives, information about the equipment we would be using, and information about diving in general. One of the most important pieces of information has to do with equalizing at different pressures. Every 10m deeper in water is another atmosphere/bar of pressure. That means at 18m, we were dealing with close to 3 atmospheres/bars of pressure.

Our first time using the equipment was in a pool. Yes, we went to a pool at a hotel to do the first part of our training. The pool was small and shallow enough for everyone to stand in. Being able to stand is good considering while diving you wear weight belts to allow you to sink, which also makes it impossible for you to just float. After jumping in quickly, we geared up with masks, tanks and all, flipped back into the pool, and took our first breaths underwater. In the pool we performed exercises such as flooding our masks, taking our masks off, helping each other if we were to run out of air, dragging each other around the pool as if one of us were tired or unconscious, and trying to remain neutrally buoyant. Neutrally buoyant basically means staying at the same depth underwater, another feat that I still need to work on as during one of our dives on Sunday I started ascending without meaning to. 

 

For our first open water dive, we stepped off of a pier that is a short ways from the school. There I had some trouble because I couldn’t easily equalize my ears and they started to hurt a lot. I’ve since discovered that as I am descending I need to equalize every half a minute or so and I also need to equalize every so often when we level off on the bottom. We traveled from the concrete pier back over to Playa Mann, most of the way on the floor of the ocean until we surfaced due to the possibility of boats being around. We came out of the water on the beach across from my school, which means our friends got to see us walking out of the water with all of our equipment on, looking ridiculous.

Our next dives weren’t for a few a days later after taking our exam and once the instructor Victor arrived from the mainland. Victor happens to know someone in Wakefield, RI that owns a dive shop. I asked him how the diving is in the north and he said it’s much colder. Even when we have been diving in the ocean here we have used full wet suits complete with booties. When diving at deeper levels such as at Leon Dormido (Kicker Rock) some people use gloves and hoods. We went diving on Sunday at Tijeretas (18m deep) and Karahua (13m deep). Tijeretas is about a 20-minute walk from the school and offers some good snorkeling. Of course, with all of our equipment we went by boat and further out than where we snorkel. After once again completing a couple of exercises and making myself calm down and enjoy being somewhere that few people visit. We saw a ray, the standard sea urchins, damselfish, and other fish.

After diving at Tijeretas, we went back to the dock in order to drop off our used tanks and pick up some full tanks. Our boat was not big enough to easily hold all of that weight at once. Then we made our way to Karahua. Victor explained that the wreck we were diving at was a steamboat that had run into a reef about 90 years ago and came into the bay where it sank after 3 days. The boat was 200m long and all of the walls have since fallen. There are larger fish around the wreck, including a school of gray/blue fish that had yellow tails, giant starfish, a seahorse, some coral and barnacles, and a sea lion that swam by a couple of times. Diving in such an area was really interesting and we were subject to the currents at both dive sites. Having as many currents around the Galápagos as there is means you are often dealing with warm and cold waters in close proximity. It is possible to see the difference in the currents as more or less foggy water.

So now that I have gone over my exam with my instructor and I have my dive log book, I am officially open water dive certified. We were hoping to be able to go diving this Wednesday at Leon Dormido for class, but apparently diving is not in this course’s budget. Due to that we are trying to figure out when we would like to go diving and Sara and I are seriously considering going through with the advanced certification. Advanced certification would train us to safely dive deeper than the open water certification. The course itself includes 5 dives and having the same instructor again would be great. We shall see what happens in the weeks to come. 

 

Because I only have pictures from my dive instructor and none of my own, I’m also adding some pictures that I have taken since we’ve been back in Cristóbal. I guess it’s been 2 weeks since our spring break already and we have less than 4 weeks until most of us return to the states. Speaking of spring break, I had a gecko in my room before we went away and I rescued him from my shower. When I returned he was still there and about twice as big! The picture is of him before break. If I had unlimited access to money then I would transport my friends and family here and stay here for a little while longer. Of course, you can only stay on the Galápagos for 3 months at a time. Also, I don’t know how much I would like the dry season, when the weather cools down and the water also cools down. I would certainly have to buy a wetsuit because I would be sad living on a beach without being able to go swimming all of the time.

 

Anyways, the pictures were taken at Punta Carola after a day of raining. Danielle and I have been counting sea lions for our project for marine ecosystems. We’re taking sea lion censuses of a couple of beaches and looking for diseased or injured sea lions. During our research we have found what may have been the cutest sea lion pup playing with a stick, beautiful rainbows and sunsets, we’ve done research through the pouring rain, and I’ve been barked at and chased by a few of the sea lions. In Spanish, sea lion is los lobos marinos, which literally translates as the wolves of the sea. I’m sorry if I’ve mentioned this before. However, sea lions are really more like wolves in that they bark and play around and especially the pup playing with the stick. Cats are more nonchalant. Of course, it helps when you name an animal that you spend your life being around. Despite the fact that they smell horrible and are loud, I will miss the critters when I return to the sea lion-less east coast.

Oh, returning to the east coast of the states will be weird after having been here for so long. I’m looking forward to seeing all of my friends and family, but I’m going to miss this beautiful country and its crazy ways. Best wishes to all at home!