Brodie.davis
Registered
Well I just had my first proper dives in the weekend. And by that I mean dives without a certified DM/Instructor as a buddy. These were dives 7 & 8 in my logbook.
And it was great, I went down with the intention of practicing some breathing techniques and trying out the frog kick. But I think I managed to task load myself a bit much and didn't do much practice.
The dives were at the Poor Knights (in NZ). On each of the dives I was with a buddy trio, (ie My friend, some random and myself). They both decided that they would follow me and that the navigation duties were up to me, This was cool as it was my first time leading people.
The first dive was at Nursery Cove, but we snuck around the headland a bit to a place called The Labyrinth, which is some nice rock cuts extending down from the surface to 30m, with lots of swim throughs and heaps of schools of fish, a couple of rays and quite a few snapper. The highlight of the dive was on the return we encountered a small school of about 20-25 squid (babies or small ones not sure). Theres no words that can descibe how cool it was to have the little guys holding position around you as you try to swim closer and then to have them visably check you out. After hanging out with the squid for about 5 minutes they decided we were too boring and went away. So we then swam around for a bit and did our saftey stop in 6m water just checking stuff out and taking it easy. And found on surfacing that I had put us with 10m of the boat
(there was only about 5-6m of vis underwater around the boat). Maxium depth was 24m, I started with 250bar and ended with 30bar. Dive time was 30 minutes.
The 2nd dive was in a cove just around the corner from Nursery Cove on a set of rock reefs called Trevors Rock. Here there were more schools of fish, quite alot of sand wraiths, goat fish, scorpian fish, rays, pink mau mau's, blue mau mau's etc. Swimming over the seaweed and finding a huge rock coming out of the seabed in front of you is quite cool. We swam around for a while around trevors rock, didn't find the frog "trevor" that someone put on top of it a while ago. At this stage I was getting on the low stage of air so we headed back and I managed to put us with 10m of the boat again. I surfaced after my saftey stop on the ladder. I started this dive on 250 bar and ended with 50, dive time was 40 minutes. The maxium depth for this dive was 25m, in that I only hit it for a short period of time to tell my dive budies off who had decided to wander into the deeper water for a bit and go below our maxiumum planned depth. Whats the hand signal for too deep? I ended up using the ascend and hover signs to get my point accross.
So the lessons learn't on these dives.
1: my air consumption is getting better
2: my weight was down from 14kgs to 13.5kgs and it was still slightly overweight at depth. (using steel 12L tanks)
3: Need to be more strict with buddies in regards to max depths, while the conditions of this dive lowered the risk of anything bad happening, its still a risk that I wasn't quite comfortable with.
4: I still need alot of work on my boyancy, I was using my fins to keep boyancy quite a bit, (ie negatively boyant swim up a bit to neutral).
And most importantly 5: Squid are the coolest creatures on the planet.
Did i mention that squid are cool?
And it was great, I went down with the intention of practicing some breathing techniques and trying out the frog kick. But I think I managed to task load myself a bit much and didn't do much practice.
The dives were at the Poor Knights (in NZ). On each of the dives I was with a buddy trio, (ie My friend, some random and myself). They both decided that they would follow me and that the navigation duties were up to me, This was cool as it was my first time leading people.
The first dive was at Nursery Cove, but we snuck around the headland a bit to a place called The Labyrinth, which is some nice rock cuts extending down from the surface to 30m, with lots of swim throughs and heaps of schools of fish, a couple of rays and quite a few snapper. The highlight of the dive was on the return we encountered a small school of about 20-25 squid (babies or small ones not sure). Theres no words that can descibe how cool it was to have the little guys holding position around you as you try to swim closer and then to have them visably check you out. After hanging out with the squid for about 5 minutes they decided we were too boring and went away. So we then swam around for a bit and did our saftey stop in 6m water just checking stuff out and taking it easy. And found on surfacing that I had put us with 10m of the boat
(there was only about 5-6m of vis underwater around the boat). Maxium depth was 24m, I started with 250bar and ended with 30bar. Dive time was 30 minutes. The 2nd dive was in a cove just around the corner from Nursery Cove on a set of rock reefs called Trevors Rock. Here there were more schools of fish, quite alot of sand wraiths, goat fish, scorpian fish, rays, pink mau mau's, blue mau mau's etc. Swimming over the seaweed and finding a huge rock coming out of the seabed in front of you is quite cool. We swam around for a while around trevors rock, didn't find the frog "trevor" that someone put on top of it a while ago. At this stage I was getting on the low stage of air so we headed back and I managed to put us with 10m of the boat again. I surfaced after my saftey stop on the ladder. I started this dive on 250 bar and ended with 50, dive time was 40 minutes. The maxium depth for this dive was 25m, in that I only hit it for a short period of time to tell my dive budies off who had decided to wander into the deeper water for a bit and go below our maxiumum planned depth. Whats the hand signal for too deep? I ended up using the ascend and hover signs to get my point accross.
So the lessons learn't on these dives.
1: my air consumption is getting better
2: my weight was down from 14kgs to 13.5kgs and it was still slightly overweight at depth. (using steel 12L tanks)
3: Need to be more strict with buddies in regards to max depths, while the conditions of this dive lowered the risk of anything bad happening, its still a risk that I wasn't quite comfortable with.
4: I still need alot of work on my boyancy, I was using my fins to keep boyancy quite a bit, (ie negatively boyant swim up a bit to neutral).
And most importantly 5: Squid are the coolest creatures on the planet.
Did i mention that squid are cool?
