LONG day yesterday. Got up at 4:30 am and took the opportunity to call Mum back home before heading down the Anacapa Dive Center for 5:30 to meet up with the other guys. We headed down the freeway a few exits to Ventura to the boat that would host our day’s diving. As I surfed the radio dial on the way down, I stumbled upon a discussion on anti-semitism on K-DAR: Christian Radio for the Gold Coast. As the item ended and the guest caller’s comments summed up, they faded in one of these horrible American sentimental / holy backing tunes full of wistful little-house-on-the-praire strings and walking-in-memphis piano… only the tune was God Save the Queen… That was bemusing to say the least…

The coastguard checked us all out for signs of terrorism, then we pootled off to an oil platform. We rookies hung out on board while the more experienced divers went and checked stuff out. I got signs of seasickness for the first time ever. Not pleasant. No actual puking, but lots of willpower required to keep tricking myself into seeing the boat moving and the ocean moving and it all being OK.

After the oil rig we bimbled over to Anacapa Island and Goldfish Bowl Point. We made our way down the anchor line and found a sandy patch to kneel in to’do some skills’. Visibility was a little under 20 feet and as I settled to the bottom with the group I was startled by a Sea Lion, which biffed in and out of the scene in about 1/4 of a second. I think this was the dive where I had to fill my mask completely with water and clear it again. I had very little trouble with this in the pool but in the colder ocean water I had a lot of difficulty forcing myself to breathe out of my nose into the cold salty mask interior. I just stopped, gave the instructor the OK sign, and collected myself then went for it. Not perfect, but I think I scored points for taking my time instead of continuing to panic. After that, we set buoyancy and went for a short tour: I got to cuddle a sea cucumber and a Sea Hare. Lowel spotted a shark under a rock but as I went over the rock I had to fight with my buoyancy so I ended up missing it. (as you go shallower, you expand and so you become more buoyant - you’re supposed to mostly use your breathing to compensate, and have an inflatable jacket for larger adjustments. I noticed a bit late that I was floating upward, and had to fumble for the control on my jacket.)

Dive three of the day, my second, was at Cat Rock on the same island. Vis was better again, and this time we had to settle carefully in a field of spiny sea urchins to perform some more skills. This time the tour took in a lobster, which eagle-eyed instructor Lowel spotted and extracted from its lair. When he released it in mid-water, it shot backwards using its tail as a paddle. I’m still pondering the evolutionary benefit of that. It seems in the underwater world it’s better for a crustacean to be able to see what it’s running away from rather than where it’s going. This trip was where I saw my first Senorita too.

My final dive, I was all qualified, so could just float about and check stuff out. My initial attempt to hang out with a shoal of fish was halted by on of the other guys smacking into the seabed and kicking up a cloud of sand and assorted debris! Miles, who’d also qualified on the previous dive, had hired a camera and was snapping away… that was cool, but in all the excitement, the buddy system started to go a bit wobbly: the idea is that you pair off for safety and generally stay within a couple of metres of one another, but we were an odd number, plus all the posing for photos…