Guam Day 56 - The Three Dive Day

4/9/2022 -  Today was a three dive day, now that we are certified, we can schedule boat dives through our dive shop MDA. The morning started early with ensuring all our gear was set out, sandwiches were made, and breakfast was eaten. The first stop was picking up Winnifred on our way to the dive shop to rent equipment. The boat dives are setup so you get the chance to dive at two different locations in the same day, this is a nice perk as you spend a lot of time prepping and getting the gear setup to go. With three of us, we had a total of 6 tanks and 3 sets of gear to fit into the car. Image 1 is Joan standing next to our Mazda 3 loaded up with all the gear, amazingly each tank fit in the back. 

Image 2 is the boat that would take us to our first two dive sites. Stop one was the big blue hole, a dive site that is famous on Guam.  I really wish we would have had an underwater pick, something for a future dive day. Riding out to Blue hole was around 45 mins, just to the outside of the harbor. The water was choppy, but still had a visible blue hue, as you can see in image 3. I was a bit nervous once again as we put our suit on, not nearly as bad as the class, just some jitters. This was the first time we had to jump off the back of the boat into the blue abyss below. There is some technique involved here, the mask goes on, the regulator goes in your mouth and using your right hand you hold both in place as you take one big step off the boat and into the water with the fins and all the gear on. A leap of faith, or a trust fall if you will. Once under the water and below the waves, the ocean was surprisingly still and visibility was close to 100ft, we are still learning that diving conditions are much different than weather conditions. We dove to 60ft and swam right over the blue hole, a class was occurring with many people around so we didn't stay long. Part of what makes this ocean marvel of such interest to divers is that the opening of the sinkhole enables deep dives down to 135ft or farther if you are trained. We are certified for only 60ft, so no diving deep into the hole. We continued the dive by slowly gaining height and looking at the coastal wall where there were many variety of fish to take in as well as boulders the size of a bus, maybe 60ft in diameter. We burned our air pretty quick, 25 mins in total under the water. Breathing techniques are critical to keeping those dive times longer, more practice needed. Once above the water, with our BCDs inflated we sat patiently for the boat to come and get us. Getting on the boat was the next challenge, the weightless gear and tank in the water quickly turns back to 60lbs as you go up the latter, also their is a precarious taking off of the flippers while not dropping them that has to be accomplished. Quite the first boat dive, with lots to think about as we prepared for the next one. 

Next up was Seabea Junkyard, about a 30 min ride to the site, image 4. We had to stay above the water for an hour between dives to ensure we stayed well below the nitrogen uptake limit. Joan and I had some of our PB+J sandwich and sat back talking with her friends about diving and what we wanted to see. I have spoken a little bit about nitrogen buildup in previous posts, one of the safety factors built into multiple day dives is this hour requirement. Nitrogen is absorbed by the bloodstream under high pressure scenarios, and the longer you stay below the waves the more it builds up. At sea level your body slowly pulls that nitrogen out, the key here is staying under the limit at which your body can release these molecules in solution, too much nitrogen out of solution causes the Benz or the decompression sickness. With the hour complete we got our stuff back on and once again went under the waves. Seabea Junkyard was a much shallower dive site, around 45ft, so our oxygen lasted much longer, close to 45 mins. The neat thing to see at this dive site was all the leftover machines, scaffolding and piping that was used to create the harbor jetty. There are multiple caterpillar bulldozers under the water that are covered in coral with fish abound. The pipes were my favorite though, as you brought them into a level sightline view you could look down the pipe and see the fish in their protective habitat. Lots of different sizes of fish too, medium large down to schools of little tiny quarter sized guys. This site was much calmer current wise, with the exception of higher waves. Our ascent was a bit trickier as we had to figure out how to navigate back to the boat and then deal with the waves. Successful dive two. 

Once the boat was all loaded back up with the divers we headed back into the harbor where we started the day. Rain was just starting to fall, gathering the gear and loading up was done really quick as we were ready to be dry and warm up in the car. A short drive back and we were back at MDA ready to refill a tank and head out for dive three. One of the perks that Joan found was on Saturdays the dive shop does a guided tour at Fish Eye, with the cost of only filling one more tank each we could dive for a third time. As we went to pay for our tanks we were told there was a bit of an issue with the instructors car and the instructional dive was canceled for the day. From what we gathered, the instructor had their car stolen. Wild!

At this point Winifred said she was going to bow out for the day, so we were down to 3. Joan, I and lets call her Sally. The three of us were willing to take on Fisheye just the three of us and for the $2 each for a tank refill we said even if we dive for 30 mins we have gotten our moneys worth. Fisheye is a shore dive, in this instance you put on all the gear but the flippers and walk out to the point were the water is 4ft put on the flippers and proceed with the dive. We later found out that Fisheye was feeding the fish today and as we went under the wonder we were immersed with the largest schools of fish I had ever seen. We dove around the outside of Fisheye and each direction you turned there was a different color, variety, or shape of fish. The cool part is they didnt mind the human divers, some would come right unto your google and give you that fish face like "I'm intesested and confused" kind of thing. As we hit the bottom of fisheye, around 35ft, we looked up close to the surface and saw 3 sharks about 4ft long each. They were incredible, going around in circles like we were only much higher, they were strong but elegant as they looked for fish to eat up. Once again, this was feeding day, so little fish brought medium sized fish which brought sharks. That full food chain was on display.  This dive was so tranquil, our air lasted close to 50 mins, almost like meditation. We were amazed at we were seeing. As we surfaced all we could talk about were the schools of fish and how amazing this place was. What a way to end the day. We walked back with our heavy gear, worn out but excited to share our learnings with the other divers that were just heading out. 

I must say for how much anxiety I initially had for diving, this sport has really changed my impression of what the sea is and the world it has to offer. Joan and I can't wait to try this again, we have more to learn, but our excitement is only growing.