This is the big day, I do my first dive in the big ocean water, and we see the Great Barrier Reef. We pack up our stuff and walk the one minute distance to the office. We were early. The van eventually shows up and we hop in, it takes us to a boat.
Because I was the only one in my class to pass, I got added to the german course, where the instructor, Freddie, just taught it in English and repeated stuff in German if the other students didn’t get it.
Once on the boat, we get assigned our gear, fins, wet suits, tanks, BCD vests. Then after a few minutes of the boat, it’s time for our first dive. The water is pretty clear, and we see clownfish. An underwater photographer goes with everyone and takes pictures of everyone with the clownfish. He also has a waterbottle filled with some fish food, which he squeezes every so often, so the fish keep following him.
In the water, we do some exercises and swim around for a the rest of the time, checking out different types of fish and looking for other animals. This is one of two dives before we get to the live-aboard.
During the second dive, it’s the same drill, exercise and swim around, follow the instructor. The moment we get to the bottom of the ocean, I hit something on my knee, but there was only sand around us, so I don’t think much of it. As we start going along to start our exercises and swimming around, Freddie points out my knee, there are black spots on it. We just keep swimming and do the exercises, I pass everything easily. We get back onto the boat, and turns out the black spots were blood. So I find Jen and she points me inside where they disinfect it, and tell me to come back in 20 minutes if it still hurts.
We eat lunch and then eventually meetup with a much bigger boat. Most of us go over to that boat, one of the German girls didn’t go with us. Jen and Freddie did. We will be staying on this boat for two nights.
On the bigger boat, we are introduced to the supervisor, Phil. Phil tells us that there are 5 dives a day, three in the morning, starting at 6:30am, one in the afternoon at 3:30pm, and one last one in the evening at 6:30pm. Not everyone is allowed to go to the evening dive, so they have another thing called Night Time with Sharks, where participants lay down on the dive platform on the back of the boat and get lowered down into the water with snorkels on. They throw fish food into the water, attracting fish, which attract some reef sharks.
We assigned our bedrooms for the next few nights, each one with a shower and a desk space. It wasn’t bad.
After that brief, it’s time for my third dive of the day. We go into the water for our exercise, but the final German girl can’t seem to do it. She resurfaces twice, and on the second time, they call for help and she gets brought back to the boat. Freddie takes me to Lion Fish Rock, there are four lion fish. We also see a turtle hanging out. On our way back to the boat, right at the ladder to the boat, I feel a sharp pain on the back of my knee. I hobble out of the water and ask Antoine if there is anything there. He says no and just rubs whatever it was off. But it was still hurting. I find Jen and show her my leg, there are two red lines running down the back of my knee now, she shows Phil. Phil squirts some vinegar on it and tells me to run some fresh water over myself. I go inside to rinse off, and my thigh starts to hurt as well, I hobble back outside to find Jen or Phil, I see Jen right away and tell her, she brings me through the crew hallways and into the closed off dining room. On the way there, she lets every staff member she passes that “we have a stinger”. They thing it’s a jellyfish sting. After sitting me down and closely examining me, Phil lets me know that it was a Hydra sting, and it got me on two places behind my knee. I might have just bent my leg with it inbetween. Apparently, Hydra stings aren’t poisoness, they just hurt a lot, so they told me to take IBProfen and some allergy medication just in case. I was clearly not dying.
During this dive, Antoine starts his Advanced Paid License Lessons. He gets to do more fun things
Antoine first met with Remily his instructor for the next day. We talked about what the plan was and learnt that in our first dive we would be working on being perfectly buoyant and using your breath to change how high or low you go. We went over the plan for our first dive and went down to the dive deck to put on our equipment. Our instructor took a hoop and a bunch of weights with us and made us go in the water. Once we were all ready we headed down underwater to a depth of about 12 meters where we started our exercises. We first had to go upside down and control our breathing to go down 1 meter to the sea floor where we had to knock over a weight with our nose. Then we moved on to do a course where using our breathing we had to go up and down in order to go through a hoop. Once we all did this exercises we went around for a bit before heading back up.
They serve dinner at 6pm and then after everyone finishes dinner, it is time for the night dive or time to swim with sharks. Since I don’t have my liscense yet, I cannot go on a night dive, so I stay back to the sharks while Antoine goes out to night dive with a flashlight.
Antoine puts on his gear and heads out with some other people.
I put on a wet suit and my snorkel, I take the gopro, and I get on the dive platform. They lower us down into the water, and there are already sharks everywhere. There was also a massive grouper hanging out, but I don’t know if he knew what was happening. We were in the water, and sharks got so close that you could probably reach out with minimal effort and touch them. Some fish even got as close as slapping some people in the face with their fins.
After a quick briefing with Remily, Antoine and the Padi Advanced course went to the dive deck, got ready and went into the water, everything was dark and just as we were going down the stairs to the dive board, we were given flashlights to use. As soon as we go into the water we look down and see lots of big fish amongst which w can see shark swimming trying to get the fish. We dive down and go to the bottom where we swim amongst the reef only seeing the with our light.
Once Antoine finishes his debrief, we pass out after a long day.