Part II

So... now onto the scuba part of my busy weekend. It all started Friday afternoon when I went in to pick up gear and buy some new gear for my next adventure. I arrive at Alki a little early (but that is always what I do), so I sat down in the grass and took some photos of the Seattle skyline; the night was very nice. We then proceeded on to the dive. I didn't feel to nervous, but that would soon change once we got in the water and started to descend. I had some issues, disoriented by the darkness and couldn't seem to figure out how to get buoyant enough to stay off the bottom without going straight up. I did settle down for awhile and got to see some cool things, a huge jelly, a bunch of shrimp that just stop in their tracks when you put lights on them. We did some searching in jars for octopi, but had no luck. Again, the experience was strange, but definitely didn't scare me away from trying it again. Saturday's dives went very well, I feel. I gained more control over my buoyancy control. Dive one was a deep dive and played with blocks to see if there was any notable sighs of being "narked". We all made it though the exercise quite well. The second dive of the day was a navigation dive, we used our compasses and plotted out a triangle and a square. I am sure I could have done better but I did come fairly close to where we started. Again seeing loads of cool things. Sunday, was the best day by far, We loaded up on a boat just before noon and headed out along the shores of Tacoma. Dive one, was on a natural reef and we saw many pycnapodia (sunstars), leather stars, a wolf eel (so ugly they are cute), a urchin bed followed by a encrusted sponge scallop bed. We then reboarded the boat and chilled for a while, we went to the Tacoma Narrows for the last dive. We did a drift dive at around 2 knots current strength. This dive was the one that I thought I would have the most problems with, but it actually seen the easiest (I am sure that each dive after this will seem the easiest as I get more and more accustom to buoyancy and what not). It was very fun just to let the current move you and to just look under the ledges and up on the shelves as well as seeing huge Nereocystis lukeana stipes and blades. The seaweed was just awe inspiring huge. Just reconfirms why I chose the career path I did.

Once again I want to give a shout out to my instructors for the advance class Jeremy and Heidi. Thank you guys, you two rock. It has been great workin' with y'all.