September 4th – September 11th 2010
It is hard to give do justice to the experiences Caitlin and I had in Koh Tao. Words can not quite describe the feelings, the awe. Entering the underwater world by SCUBA is quite different than experiencing it from the surface, or by snorkel. Suspended and weightless, gliding by means of your own breath, you coast bird-like over reefs, aquatic life, or endless open-ocean spaces. Apart from the slow Darth Vadar drawl of your own breath and the occasional over- head boat, all is quiet. The water engulfs you like a thick atmosphere, connecting you and all that is around you. You become a part of the ocean. After only a week of diving, I was hooked.
The diving experience Caitlin and I had did not begin in such a euphoric way. Learning to breathe underwater is a claustrophobic experience. Fortunately, we signed up with a reputable diving resort and were lucky to have an experienced instructor. Arriving at Koh Tao by an overnight boat, we walked off the pier and were greeted by a representative from "Crystal Dive Resort", which was the resort we had planned to dive with on the advice of our Irish friends Matthew and Dean. After walking to Crystal, we sat down with Luca who was to be our future instructor. We signed up for a PADI open-water certification and were told that our first in-class session was to begin in a few hours. In the mean time, Caitlin and I went to our room (the cost of which was included in our open-water course) and unpacked. Tired from a sleepless night on the slow-boat to Koh Tao, we decided to nap.
Come the afternoon, it was time for our in-class sessions. We walked to the classroom and met with our fellow course-mates. There was a couple from Northern England named Claire and Graeme, a Londoner named Mike, and a young Irish man named Sam. Luca launched into his lectures with a video aid. Long and boring, some of our group began to yawn and doze during the lessons. Being Italian, Luca is able to give drama, emotion and passion to everything he says, which helped to keep us relatively attentive despite the dry material. Occasionally slamming his hand on the desk, tapping someone of the forehead, or raising his voice dramatically, Luca got us through the 5-hour lesson without falling asleep.
The next day we learned how to set up our equipment on the large wooden patio of the resort. We put it together, took it apart and put it together again, and again. We also learned out to check our gauges, check our oxygen, name all of our equipment, and put it on properly. Finally, we were ready to dive in the water…of the resort’s swimming pool.
First, we needed to get comfortable with breathing underwater from our regulator (mouth-piece). Submerging ourselves completely, we began to breathe. Panic streamed through me. There is no way that I am getting enough oxygen, I thought to myself. Surface! Surface! Surface! My mind screamed for me to break out of the water. Fighting every urge of survival instinct within me, I told myself to stay calm and focus on breathing more slowly. Soon I felt fine and knew I was sufficiently oxygenated. Once we mastered slow, easy breathing we moved onto more difficult skills.
The afternoon was taken up with learning to clear our masks of water, what to do should we loose our regulator, how to make an emergency ascent, how to check our gauges underwater, how to hand signal to our "buddies", and how to equalize ("pop" our ears) at the bottom of the pool. Finally, we learned how to achieve buoyancy, which is a particularly challenging skill, but incredible necessary. You need to stay buoyant underwater so that you can control your upward and downward movements, or remain on the same course so as to not crash into something (like a reef). Buoyancy is controlled with your breathing, which is why it is difficult to learn and even more difficult to master.
The next morning we had our first dive, and it was exhilarating. We left early in the morning on Crystal’s boat and drove for about an hour to our dive site. We all suited up, jumped in and began descending the line to a depth of 13m (an open-water certification allows you to go down to a maximum depth of 18m). The dive went well and visibility was decent. Our remaining three dives over the next two days were equally fun and exciting. We finally reached our maximum depth of 18m during one of these dives. Looking up and not being able to see the surface above you is strange, but only strengthens the feeling of continuity you have with the ocean and all the life around you. You are a part of the sea and the rest of the world is far above, far away.
We also saw a lot of amazing ocean creatures during our dives. We saw a family of "Nemos" in their living and highly responsive anemone home, many species of angelfish, eels, groupers, and more types of coral than I can name. We also mastered all of the skills we had practised in the pool in the open-water setting. Our open-water diving experience was amazing, and I wanted to do more!
Finally open-water certified, we were filling out some final paperwork when Luca convinced our group to also get an advanced open-water certification, which would give us the opportunity to do 5 more dives, and allow us to dive down to a depth of 30m. After some debate, Caitlin and I decided the advanced certification was a good idea because there is nowhere in the world where it is cheaper to get PADI certifications than in Koh Tao, and this would be a once in a life-time opportunity.
Since we were now open-water certified, our group wanted to celebrate that night. We watched a movie that was filmed of us earlier that day while underwater, and then went out on the town. We went to a bar where there was live music, and walked home later while being escorted by a local stray dog. I dubbed the dog "Cupcake" to contrast his masculinity. He was definitely the alpha-dog of the island, barking at and intimidating any other dog that came near us on our walk home.
The next day we began our advanced certification course. The dives we did for our advanced certification were incredible! Now that we had mastered all of our skills we could do more fun diving. We did a night dive, which was surreal and full of mystery. What was around the next corner? Which why was the surface? Following our bubbles helped orient us, as did the flashlights we each had. We saw so many blue-spotted stingrays and barracudas (which are safer than their Caribbean counterparts) that it made this dive a very memorable one. I can not say for sure – seeing as I am not an astronaut – but I think diving at night would be quite similar to being in outer-space. At night you are weightlessly suspended and surrounded by a deep, penetrating blackness. The only thing missing was the stars.
We also did a navigation dive where we were given compasses and had to orient ourselves, making our way to a certain destination. Also, we dove at a wreck. It was full of fish and surrounded by a strong current, which really tested our buoyancy skills. Another test of buoyancy came in the form of dive inside a small cave. In the cave we saw a water-snake which is the second most poisonous snake in the world, but luckily does not bite divers! Another fun dive was our "naturalist dive", which involved taking a photo flipchart and underwater writing materials with us during our dive in order to identify fish and underwater plant species.
My favourite dive was our deep dive, which is a requirement for the advanced certification because we actually went down to a depth of 30m. This was my favourite dive because the dive site we went to was so good and full of a huge diversity of underwater life. The site was 7km off the shore of Koh Tao, making it less disturbed than the more local reefs and a common site for rare sightings of whale sharks. Down at a depth of 30m it was hard for me to equalize my ears, but after some effort they finally "popped". Colours at that depth become distorted. We brought colour charts down with us and sure enough the colours looked different at that depth than they did on the surface.
The best part of the deep dive was the sheer numbers and varieties of wildlife we saw. We saw huge starfish, meter long grouper fish, queen fish (which look discomfortingly like sharks), and schools of barracudas. My favourite part was being in the middle of a school of thousands and thousands of tiny fish. The fish formed an orb all around me that glimmered and moved. It was like being surrounded by a bright, otherworldly apparition. The school was responsive to my movement. When I stuck my arm out to the side, the sphere formed by the fish shifted to create a distance between us. It was magical.
With our advanced certifications, Caitlin and I finally left Koh Tao a week after we had arrived. I was sad to leave because I had loved the experience of diving so much and was so lucky to have had such a good group of people to learn with and such a good instructor to learn from. I knew that this would not be the end of my diving career, and perhaps not the last that I would see of Koh Tao. Maybe one day I will go back to Koh Tao and become a "dive master". Whether I return or not, I know diving will be a part of my life forever. I have felt the power of the underwater world and I am hungry to return for more, to leave the world above and become a part of the sea, if only fleetingly.
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