"Let's make some bubbles"
Friday, January 13, 2006
December 27, 2005
I have always been fascinated by scuba diving. Since I was a little kid I loved to sit underneath the water, wearing goggles, and look up at the water surface. I remember the first time I looked at the aquatic life in Lake Michigan and freaked out when I was staring several fish straight in the eye. Unfortunately, having spent the last 13 years living on the northeast coast of the United States, there has been little opportunity for scuba. I’ve also never been interested in swimming through school buses at the bottom of quarries, so I haven’t even bothered with getting certified.
When I was in Cozumel in 2002, I did a half-day resort dive literally off of the beach. It wasn’t that great an experience as walking into the waves wearing 50+ pounds of scuba gear (that wasn’t functioning properly), and seeing the minimal remains of the coral reefs less than 10 feet from shore wasn’t very inspiring. However, when I decided to plan a vacation to the Thai beaches for Christmas, I thought it was time I give scuba another shot.
Kat was fairly wary at first of signing up for an entire day’s dive experience, and I wasn’t sure I could physically handle it with my remedial ability to equalize (I just have very small ear canals and it takes a long time). But, as I mentioned before, the free swimming pool trial on Christmas day really helped to cement both of our decisions to go for it.
We began the morning at Ao Nang Divers, where we picked up our gear, met with about 20 other divers, and headed down to the beach to catch longtail boats to the larger dive boat. I have to say that I really enjoyed diving from a large boat, as we were easily able to relax during the 2-hour ride out to Ko Phi Phi, snack on cookies and juice, lie in the sun, even watch a dvd if we wanted to.
Kat and spent a good part of the ride out sitting on the front sundeck, reading magazines and taking in the beautiful islands we passed along the way. First we passed Ko Poda (which I visited the next day), then Chicken Island. When we reached the area of the two Ko Phi Phi’s (Phi Phi Leh and Phi Phi Don), we encountered many gorgeous limestone formations jutting out of the water and tiny white sand beaches speckled with early morning sunbathers.
The sun was shining, the weather couldn’t have been more perfect, and when Kat and I put on our wet-suits with another first-time diver, Melissa, we were a bit nervous, but more than anything excited to be exploring REAL reefs.
Loading our backs up with equipment, and waddling/thumping to the dive platform, we checked our gauges, spit into our masks (to keep them from fogging up), and carefully padded down the ladder. Then we put our mouthpiece between our lips, held fast to our facemask, and jumped!
It felt *so* much better to be in the water, where we could barely feel the weight of our equipment. Even though I think we all just wanted to look “down there”, we swam over to a buoy where our instructor Ollie was waiting. There we took turns holding onto the buoy rope, following Ollie, and slowly letting air out of our Personal Flotation Device (PFD) vest until we sunk about 6 meters under the water. There we practiced some diving skills that Ollie had gone over during our pool session. These included filling our mask with water and clearing it, removing our mouthpiece and retrieving it, and rescue breathing from another person’s tank.
Once we had proved proficiency in these things, all of us descended about 12 meters under water and got our first taste of life under the sea. I was amazed by how much we could see: hundreds of sea anemones (which usually give me the hebegeebees in aquariums, but couldn’t have been more beautiful underwater), tropical fish swimming everywhere (including in between the sea anemones), bright colored coral reefs, and sea urchins with skinny black spikes and fluorescent-looking spots (eyes?) in their centers. Ollie held Kat and my tanks from behind and slowly steered us around underwater, for nearly an hour. It was really incredible and just the ability to breathe underwater could have kept me occupied for hours – but I can’t complain about the fantastic scenic view either.
After the hour was up, we slowly ascended to the surface, made sure everyone was ok, and were fished in by the dive boat where we could take off our wetsuits, grab some food, and prepare for the next dive. I was kinda glad to come up out of the water, because despite the incredible warmth of the Andaman, being submerged for an hour left me a bit chilly. I think this is mostly because the wetsuit didn’t fit me perfectly and I’m sure a lot of my body heat was able to escape.
After a few minutes relaxing, Kat and I shared our impressions of our first dive. She had just as an amazing time as I did and kept saying, “I know why people get addicted to this”. We talked with Melissa (who also had a fantastic time) over some plates of rice and veggie stir fry, and then returned to the upper deck to take in the views near Ko Phi Phi Leh. We were hoping to actually pull into Maya bay, where The Beach had been filmed, but Ollie convinced us that it was much more commercialized now and that the bay of Ao Nui that we were going to dive in next had much more beautiful beaches. I can’t say that he’s right based on a comparison I was never able to complete, but Ao Nui was indeed gorgeous.
We dropped anchor right in front of a tiny white sand beach, with just a few beachgoers and some large yachts/sailboats anchored to the outer edges. The water around the shore and on the fringe of the many limestone “islands” that peaked around every corner, was a pale turquoise that just seemed heavenly. I was surprised when Ollie warned us that the visibility in this bay would be a lot worse than what we had seen on the previous dive. I still can’t quite figure out what causes some places to have great visibility (like Ko Poda) and others very poor visibility (Ao Nang beach). We posted ourselves around the perimeter of the boat, hoping to take some photos from every angle before we jumped in the water again.
The second dive went much as the one before, without the skill drills. This reef was definitely murkier than the other, but more brilliantly colored. I ran out of film in my disposable underwater camera very quickly, but I hoped that I was able to capture some of the beauty that we were able to see. At one point Ollie steered us very close to the side of a limestone mass where we could see a very camouflaged fish wedged up into a hole. It was very cool. I never knew how many brightly-colored BIG fish there were underwater – the ones I’ve seen in aquariums have always been much smaller, or less bright. This dive we were only able to last about 45 minutes as the current was much stronger and we had to alternate our route back to the boat.
When we re-emerged from the sea, we floated on the ocean’s surface for about 20 minutes until the boat could come get us. It gave me time to ask Ollie about other great diving places around Thailand (he says the Similans are the best) and how the area was after the Tsunami. He told me that they couldn’t feel the wave (they were on a boat at sea) because the water was so deep where they were, and that it took about 1 week for Ao Nang to be rebuilt. For days after the Tsunami, no one was diving anywhere other than instructors offering to search for bodies. Luckily Ollie and his crew never found any. The reefs near Ko Phi Phi were somewhat damaged after the wave, but the Thai government has done a lot of work in trying to protect their integrity and rebuild the sea life. I think they have the first clownfish re-growth program in the world (think Nemo) – I’m not sure how successful it is so far, but these little fishies live inside the sea anemones and were severely depleted after the Tsunami. It’s nice to see that everyone was working together to protect the beauty of such a special place.
On the boat ride back to Ao Nang, I laid out on one of the upper deck benches, and fell asleep in the sun. The breeze felt fantastic and the sun quickly warmed me up. Apparently I missed a great rainbow during my nap, but I couldn’t complain after all the amazing sea-life I had seen. Once back on land, Kat and I picked out the all-important “Ao Nang Divers” t-shirts that we had gotten free for paying with cash, and decided to spend the remaining afternoon lounging by the dive shop pool.
Posted by kalabird at January 13, 2006 2:48 AM