Dive Sites: Shark Point, Anemone Reef and Koh Dok Mai.
The day started out great, with a nice dive on Shark Point highlighted by a Snowflake Moray Eel out of its den. Very cool site! Unfortunately, though, I didn't see any sharks at Shark Point. Oh well.
Anemone Reef didn't disappoint either. A very cool Fimbriated Moray Eel, along with the other typical reef animals. And when I got back to the boat after this dive, I told Marcia this was my best "technical" dive, in terms of my ability and competence. I could really feel myself getting better after four days of diving. I felt great!
The third dive on Koh Dok Mai started great. It's a beautiful wall dive. (My favorite kind of dive.) Lots of nudibranchs. And on two previous dives, some Ghost Pipe Fish and a Seahorse were spotted. So my hopes were high. Within a few minutes, I spotted a new nudibranch, Phyllidiella rudmani. Makes me wonder if it's named after Bill Rudman, of SeaSlugForum fame? After about 18 minutes my dive master and dive trip planner, Marcia, signaled she was low on air and ready to surface. I stared at her. Um. I'm the hoover. What happened? She asked me to check her tank/first stage. I couldn't see anything. She could tell I was in shock here, so she showed me her gauge. 46 bar! Heck, I still had about 135 bar. What happened!?!? I checked her tank again and found some tell-tale bubbles. But they weren't coming from the o-ring of her first-stage. Instead, the bubbles were leaking from where the valve screws into the cylinder. Very weird. Regardless, I got ready to share air if needed, and we started surfacing. Not a great ending to the dive trip, but I find it hard to complain. I got 13 dives in over four days and saw lots of great things. Marcia planned a great trip.
On this third day, I also dove Nitrox instead of air. I figured it'd give me more of a safety margin for flying home. In the full dive report found here, I created a table comparing desat and no-fly times at the end of each day. It's insightful to me to see the difference Nitrox makes. (In this case, I wasn't using Nitrox to push the NDL times greater, but to decrease my nitrogen absorption. I didn't spend any more time at depth than on my previous dives with air.)
For those of you that don't want to click to see the full dive report, here are a few pictures to highlight the day:
Nemo! An "adult" and a juvenile False Clown Anemonefish, Amphiprion ocellsaris.
The Snowflake Moray Eel, Echidna nebulosa.
An upside-down lionfish.
A huge Tiger Cowrie, Cypraea tigris.
One of my favorite pictures from the trip: A Fimbriated Moray Eel, Gymnothorax fimbriatus.
Green Cup Coral. Unsure of the species, but I happen to think it's rather cool looking.
Phyllidiella rudmani.
And some orange cup coral. Again, not sure of the species. And again, I happen to think this is some cool looking stuff.
Thanks. Happy diving.
And less than a week until I get to dive the beautiful emerald green waters of Puget Sound with my dive buddy Tim!