Swimming with the Fishes

It's been awhile since I've gone scuba diving, but I didn't realize how long it had been (or how long I've been in Thailand) until I checked my Dive Log. April 19 had been my last dive which makes it nearly four months! Seeing how I had been a rookie diver back then, I probably should have been slightly more concerned about remembering everything as I dropped below the surface and started going deeper. Our first dive was to see a ship wreck called Hardeep. About halfway down I had trouble equalizing (like what happens to your ears on an airplane coming down, only a lot worse), then I got to the bottom and felt a bit dizzy (N2 narcossis), at which time I started using my arms way too much and sucking down the O2 while I tried to remember how to maintain my buoyancy. Probably should have started with a shallower dive. But I got things under control and swam around checking out the remains of the ship along with the coral and fish that now engulf it. Currently my dives are limited by my air supply and this one lasted about 30 mins. On the later two dives, I was able to stay down for closer to 45 mins after I stopped wiggling around so much and got better at staying level in the water. I'm now up to 10 dives and slightly over 6 hours underwater.

I saw some pretty cool stuff on the dives, including the wreck, some huge white jellyfish and a medium sized crab hiding in a little nook. One of the divers had a humongous underwater camera and posted some of her shots here. Unfortunately underwater, without the use of a flash, the colors aren't nearly as distinct as you see here. The colors all shift towards a blue-ish gray the deeper you go.

Here I am on the way back to the pier:


Pictures from my trip to Bangkok last weekend have been posted on my Picasa site. More to come later.