Your Most Interesting Moment Underwater

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Diver Dan 28

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Scuba Instructor
Divemaster
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Location
Oklahoma
# of dives
I'm a Fish!
Hey everyone I'm healing from surgery and am going stir crazy. There is only so many paint by number, puzzles, books,and models I can work on during the day, and I HATE T.V.
So I was talking to my brother who also dives and I asked him what was the interesting thing he has seen underwater was. He said the first time he encountered an octopus. He said he loved the way it moved around the reef.
Mine was when it was raining and seeing the rain drops hit the water from below. I never thought it'd look like it does topside.
I have 47 dives (all local freshwater lakes) certified in june of this year, so I have alot to look forward to. What the most interesting thing you've encountered?
 
Wow, that question's a tough one ! Well, I've got tons of nice memories underwater, so it's hard to pick only one. Maybe this one is the more meaningful to me : about 2 years ago, while diving the Med in July (with a newbie buddy), in the National Parc of Port-Cros (France), we stayed about 20 minutes, among a circle of large groupers, on top of a rock, right in front of the current, while a large pack of barrracudas were circling it one way, and a pack of large common dentex were circling the other way around. We were almost breathless, it's was like being a fish my buddy quoted postdive. I must agree.
 
What's the most interesting thing you've encountered?

There's just something very surreal about a 40ft animal slowly appearing out of the murk in the distance... swimming along side you for a little while... and then disappearing back into the murk...

Whale_Shark211.jpg



Different, but no less surreal, is playing a game of "chicken" along the edge of the reef in Turks & Caicos...

TandCShark1.jpg
 
Id say if i had to pick one interesting moment underwater it was about 8 years ago in the keys. I was riding the anchor down to tie into a deep wreck, and on the way down I saw 2 Dolphins off to my left. At first I thought "cool", but immediately focused back on getting tied into the wreck. As I was tying in the anchor, they reappeared and started playing in my general vicinity. As I moved to the opposite side of the wreck they followed and when it was time to come up and start deco, they pretty much hung out with me during my entire deco hang.

That had never happened to me before and it has never happened again, but I assure you that I will never forget it.
 
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Interesting? That would be the "cutbox" that I had to deal with during some PSD training. It was a standard milk crate with pieces of electrical wire, string, zip ties, and monofilament attached to it. You had to deploy your shears and come back with one piece of everything. (your mask is taped over)

There is an easy way to accomplish this and a million other ways, including mine...
 
I have three. First, we entered the hull of the Carthaginian wreck off Maui, finding a white tip reef shark inside, Debbie. I and the white tip exited together right in the side view of an Atlantis tourist sub close enogh to see the faces of the occupants. A cool moment. Second, diving in a local reservoir years ago with buddy Peter. Five inches of hail fell in about 15 minutes while we were in the water. It made a hissing sound, and created a floating ice cover that made the dive like a night dive, and dropped the water temperature from an already brisk 55 degrees to something less than that. Third, 1998, back wall of Molikini Crater off Maui, saw a tiger shark with a white tip in its mouth. No camera. Damn.
DivemasterDennis
 
RJP's whaleshark picture is the "I Win" button of this thread, LOL!
 
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I have three: One was in Rangiroa, where we back rolled into a pod of dolphins, who stayed and played around us for more than five minutes, until deciding that we were really rather dull, and heading off to blow up the puffer fish along the reef.

Another was an encounter with a monk seal off Lahaina. There were two spearfishermen freediving on this little wall, and the seal was stealing the fish off their stringer. We watched him do it, and then went on to do our dive, but he followed us for a while. On our way back, we ran into him again, and he was clearly quite interested in us. I was stopped, hovering a couple of feet off the bottom, and he got right down on the sand and swam slowly toward me, with his mouth wide open. I wasn't quite sure what to make of this, but as he passed me, he rolled over on his back, and to my knowledge, no animal exposes its underbelly as an aggressive maneuver. For quite a long time, he was actually close enough for me to reach out and touch him. They are rare, and I have never seen another one, but that was a fascinating encounter.

The final one was off Lanai. We were diving the pinnacles, and the rest of the group had gone up to the boat already, leaving me and Peter in the water with two DMs. We were just burning off gas, cruising the top of the rock, when we saw one of the DMs point out into the blue. We swam over to look for the shark, or whatever it was. There was a dark blur which seemed to be coming closer -- whatever it was, it was big. It got close enough to resolve into a juvenile humpback whale, who did a flyby and then an Immelman and came back, closer this time, to check us out again. The DM was vertical in the water, arms and legs spread, and for all the world looked like he was jumping up and down with excitement. When we went to take our tanks back to the dive shop, the guy behind the counter told us that he had over 6000 dives off Maui, and had never seen a whale on scuba.

The video is at http://www.tsandm.com/maui_feb_2006.htm.
 
Here's one that will always stay in my memory. We were on a liveaboard in Truk at the 50th anniversary of the bombing. My buddy/husband and I decided to do a twilight dive, no lights. We were the only divers on the wreck. We dropped to the deck, then slowly circled the mast as we ascended, looking at all the critters living there. It grew darker and darker. When we reached the surface, the sun was just setting.
 
Getting to see the acutal steel edges of the stern section of the tanker CHESTER POLING off Gloucester, showing where the ship broke in two beginning at the bottom plating, then up the sides, and deck last, in a fierce winter storm almost 40 years ago. Five of six saved by the hardest by the Coast Guard, who took their own lives in their hands in awful January conditions, I was a desk-driver in the Coast Guard then, in Boston, and remember it and knew a couple of the rescuers.

So it was "real" history for me. I could see that the bottom broke cleanly, first to go, then the sides more jagged, and the deck and upper sideshell more twisted at the last spot where the two halves finally separated (with two men on the forward half, five on the aft half). Plus the deck area near the davits where they stood, and tried but failed to launch the lifeboat because it was just too rough. And the cradle where the liferaft was, but it failed to inflate, so they had to go into the 33-degree water to get rescued--everything went wrong except for the Coast Guard and the survivors' determination, they all were close to the end from hypothermia even though in the water no more than ten or fifteen minutes.

So to me this was a fascinating dive, though COLD at 45 deg even in July, at depth. From this casualty came the requirement for the survival suits you see now

If you're interested, all the info is here:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...TnsoJw&usg=AFQjCNGMcPxIevtVIaJO8x1XbLJMOGK-kA
 

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