Underwater aviation

I woke up around 4 AM to the sound of the alarm clock. I still did not feel quite myself and was happy I could quickly go back to sleep since I was no longer on an AM shark dive. Jeff rolled out of bed and headed off to the dive shop as he was on the shark dive along with his previous students Sam and Katy. They had finished their advanced course and were doing a fun dive so they could see the sharks once again before leaving the island. Jeff was sent along to assist on the dive. Mack thought it might ease Katy's nerves as she still was not overly comfortable in the water. When they arrived at the dive site Katy was already very nervous because they had gone to new Monad where there was not a mooring line to descend down. Jeff had one of the boat boys put together some rope and a spare weight belt figuring she would feel better if he gave her a rope to descend along. She continued to look very nervous as they kitted up. When it was time to put her fins on she started coughing uncontrollably and almost threw up. Sam and Jeff tried to calm her down but after a second coughing fit she decided she was just too worked up about it and would sit this dive out. The rest of the group jumped in the water and continued the dive. During the dive they saw at least four thresher sharks and a couple of large trigger fish. At one point they were up on a ledge and had two threshers swimming below them. When they got on the boat Katy was rather sad that she had missed the dive.

When Jeff got back from his shark dive, I got up and felt much better. A good night's sleep paid off and hopefully this would give me the rest I needed to complete the remainder of the internship on time. Jeff and I have been very lucky that we have not had any serious infections or injuries requiring a doctor's visit. Being that there are no doctors on the island of Malapascua, it becomes a higher time commitment to travel to another island by boat and arrange for transportation a couple hours to the nearest doctor. A couple of the interns had to make that trek while we were here. Adam for his foot infection and Garret for his ear infection. It sounds like once they got to the the doctor it was good medical treatment. The antibiotics and doctor charge were also in Filipino pesos which made at least this portion of the trip a bargain. The doctor was concerned Garret would not be happy with the 300-400 peso medication bill and 90 peso doctor charge. Garret felt this price was rather reasonable and paid the equivalent to about $12 USD and was happy to be one step closer to healing his ear infection. It seems like the trips to the doctor for Adam and Garret were well worth it but I am still glad Jeff and I have not had to make a doctor's call yet.

When we got to the dive shop, we found out we would start the day with knowledge reviews with Mack to prep for the final exam and later in the mornng we would go on a "fun" dive with Mike (an instructor that just returned to the island). Mack was very thorough going over the knowledge review including a lot of explanation which would be helpful as these were the most challenging chapters of the dive master manual. During this time our dive site for the morning changed three times until it was finally settled that we were going to Lap Light. Jeff and I were happy with this final decision as we have not dove this site yet unlike the earlier sites that were written on the board. Mike seemed to have a scatter brained idea for this dive and it felt a little akward as he had no idea of our dive progression and was talking about working on some bouyancy skills. This seemed rather odd to be working on when we are only a few days from finishing our DM program. We agreed to play along, Jeff, Adam and I got our gear together and got in one of the small boats to head around the island to the dive site. At the beginning of the dive Mike set up his SMB on the bottom and we played a game of airplane. He started with the SMB unrolled and anchored to the bottom so that it stuck up about 4 feet off the bottom. We then had to circle around like an airplane with our arms stretched out to the sides. When it was our turn to be the airplane, we were to have a controlled landing by touching our regulator to the top of the SMB then pull up gracefully by using our breathing to control our "take off". It was very much like a touch and go in the aviation world yet our playground was underwater. I felt I was a very good airplane VROOOOOOOM!! Mike would then lower the SMB and we would repeat our airplane moves. This continued until the SMB was only about 6 inches off of the bottom. After this we swam around the dive sight where Jeff spotted a small harlequin sweetlips, and I spotted a gigantic puffer fish. The puffer reminded me of a big fat cat as it sat there on a coral and looked like it needed to be petted. Fortunately for the puffer I am a trained professional and know better than to touch, poke, prod, pet, or ride the wildlife. We ended the dive by practicing our SMB deployment procedures. This was probably a good dive for Adam to get his feet wet again since he had been out of the water for the last 2 weeks due to his foot infection.


After lunch we were off for another attempt to get our skills signed off. This time we would be going to the dive site lighthouse which would hopefully have calmer waters. We ran through our skills again and they were even better than ever, until I got to the dreaded BCD removal and replacement. I fumbled through the skill and then asked the instructor for a do over. He nicely decided to demonstarte the skill for me with some tips prior to me trying over. My next attempt was far better and I had picked up some tips from the instructor that made it easier for me to control the kit. I made sure that whenever possible I had two points of contact with the kit. We then repeated this again, with him demonstrating and then I followed after. Being able to practice this a couple times in a row and seeing it completed with tips, was very helpful. I am now confident that I could complete this skill on my own with a score of 4-5. The instructor went over our scores after the dive and as we thought all the scores were spot on, except my BCD skill which was still a lousey three (maybe a 3.5?). Jeff's skills were signed off and the instructor gave me the option to sign off my skills now (with the stinky 3) or I would have a chance tomorrow to prove that my BCD could be tamed. I opted for showing my BCD who was boss so another skill set for me tomorrow.

We grabbed a quick bite to eat and went to bed early again to ensure we would be bright eyed and bushy tailed for another day of DM training.