Friday, October 9, 2009

Whytecliff Park Night Dive 08/10/2009

This was part of my Advanced Open Water course. My first night dive! I had been looking forward to this for a while. I wasn't sure if I'd like diving in the dark, so I was excited to see how different it was and if I'd be interested in doing more of it. To ruin the ending, I sure will be :-)

It was a miracle that this dive happened in the first place. First off, there were transportation problems. I had wanted to go out in the IDC van, but a special Open Water course went on that day, so Shawn had it out at Whytecliff already. So Kyle out of the goodness of his heart offered to give me a lift instead. I really like how I'm making some good friends at the shop. It's very nice. Anyway, that ended up being changed too. Libby was the instructor that evening and was getting a ride with Emily who was doing some Dive Master skills. So Kyle got me a lift with them. Complicated already!

The plan was to leave at 5:15pm, and that went fine. But, on the way we noticed that the back tire was flat! We put some air in it, but things were looking bad with traffic. It was already 6 and we hadn't even gotten to Stanley Park yet. A cyclist told us that there was a jumper on the bridge! The traffic report also said the same and that traffic was closed totally. The other bridge was backed up too. Libby noticed that her cylinder was set up for yoke and not DIN, and we didn't have an allen key! It just kept getting better. Four other students were stuck in traffic, too. Libby was on the phone with the shop, with the students, and was just getting more and more frazzled. We also couldn't get a hold of Shawn out at the dive site to see who might already be there. Finally we got Shawn, and he said he had two students out there. But the other four stuck in traffic bailed out, so Libby was considering cancelling the dive. Landon still wanted it to go ahead, and it came down to a decision between me and Emily. In the end, the jumper got cleared, we decided to go, and we took the alternate route around. A big factor was getting Emily's skills done, because apparently it was harder than it seemed to lead a dive with a certified diver and an instructor involved.

Instead of getting to Whytecliff at 6, we ended up getting there at 8:30. It had turned into a REAL night dive. It was super dark! During the car trip, we had a pretty good time though. Libby talked a bit about her trip to Port Hardy and we just generally goofed around to keep our spirits up.

We got geared up pretty quickly since we were motivated to get home :-) The air temperature was dropping, and there was a lot of moisture even though it was a clear night. I used one of my glow sticks and attached it to my cylinder in what I thought to be a secure manner. Too bad it floated off as soon as we descended, hah. I guess I need to work on my knots.

Shawn was gearing down after his dives, so he gave us a hand too which was nice. I must remember to do up my crotch strap for my drysuit. I keep forgetting. The hike down to the water went without incident, and it looked quite clear in the shallows. Too bad after we got out a bit the visibility turned pretty crappy. There was quite a current after we swam out to the right hand rock wall. When we stopped to prep for descent, we suddenly realized we had been carried many feet beyond! To get out of it, we descended pretty quickly into the blackness.

It really wasn't as scary as you might think, at least not for me. So I was happy. It felt a bit weird not being able to see my gauges, but other than that it was like normal. I quickly found out that compass dials and pressure gauges are luminescent so you can charge them with your light and they'll glow for a bit. It was still super hard to see them properly though. My dive computer was harder still as the light button was hard to press and it only stayed on for a short time. When I get my canister light and can move it in from hand to hand, it will be easier to light my computer.

So we did a simple compass navigation exercise that wasn't so simple now that it was dark, hah. It could have gone straighter that's for sure. Anyway, Emily led the rest of the dive and we saw a lot of cool stuff.

The big highlight was a seal that came to swim with us. I saw something dark and moving outside our light beams and was like “hmm what's that?”. It swam near and under us and it was a seal! I'm glad it didn't freak me out too much. It was just super cool. The seal probably was using our lights to help look for food, and just to satisfy curiosity. It looked to be a young one. He or she swam over, around and through us quite often over the course of the dive. Libby said that it bumped her several times. Being playful I think. It was super cute.

Other highlights were the bio luminescent plankton that shone when you moved your hand in the water. It totally was like mini stars in the water (you had to hide your light to see them). I did that for a few minutes, it was so cool. There was also an incredible nudibranch. It was white with orange, and it looked like a little flower. It was one of the prettiest things I've seen underwater so far. I'm pretty sure it was a White-line Dirona.

I did have one uncomfortable incident where I looked behind me for Libby and when I flipped over, my tank rank into the bottom. I got a bit anxious as it was difficult to right myself, but it went ok. Libby did say that my eyes were wide as saucers, but I just say that's because my pupils were dilated due to lack of light :-)

There were at least 3 other sets of divers out that night. One group was putting out some kind of fish in a can. They must have been feeding something I guess. Our dive took us along the right hand wall out to the steel crates and then back over the bottom contour to shore. The end of the dive was in very shallow water, and the seal was flying all over the place. I almost was able to touch it one time when it swam under me. There were some really big dungeness crabs, along with some small ling cod sleeping, some sleeping copper rockfish, and shiner perch. All in all, quite a bit of wildlife!

We didn't waste much time gearing down, and had a good excited conversation all the way back about our friend the seal. We all agreed that we were glad that we persevered and did the dive! It was a long one too, about 42 minutes. Granted we were at 5 meters or so for a lot of it, but that was cool.

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