Camp Cove 10th October 2009

3 dives today at Camp Cove as most other dive sites were closed due to bad weather. The beauty of Camp Cove is no matter how rough the conditions get it is always calm and sheltered.
There is a pile of submerged rocks, to the north of the beach, that we swam out to and descended there. We swam north and found a lot of marine life in the rocks.
The purpose of the 3 dives was to complete part of the Advanced Diver course.

Dive 1 - Peak Buoyancy:
We descended and had to swim through hoops at various angles to each other without using our hands. We practices hovering about 1-2 m from the sea bed and then we were given another 3 lb weight. We had to hover at the same height without using our BCD. It involves taking a big breath and inflating your lungs more. We then had the hoops placed at various depths and had to swim through them  and finally we were given another weight and had to swim the hoops again at varying depths  without adjusting our BCD.  The course gave me a lot more confidence and really demonstrates the effect of using your lungs as a buoyancy compensator.

Dive 2 - Underwater Navigation
We swam out to a large sand area where there was very few visible reference points. Our DM extended a 30M line along the floor and we swam the length of it counting our fin strokes. My fin stokes was 34 half strokes or 17 complete strokes. We then had to swim a 30 m square course from the direction given to us by our DM. We achieved this fairly successfully. Our second challenge was a 30mx20m rectangle course but we headed South and hit the rocks before we could complete our 30M so this threw us out a bit. Lastly we swam a 30m triangular course (adding 120 degrees at each turning point). This was the most successful of all but I think it was because we were starting to follow and trust the compass rather than our own sense of direction.

Dive 3 - Underwater Naturalist
The dive brief was to keep this to a 30 minute dive and we had to spot and classify 5 marine species each. I took my new camera and decided to photograph my results. There is abundant marine life in this area and we saw cuttlefish, blue gropers, black cod, leatherjackets, trumpet fish, squid, octopus, sting ray, and a few others that I will have to look up (black and white striped fish with yellow tails?)
We were out of the water with the dive computer showing 29 minutes so a well planned and executed dive. After 3 dives I was quite tired and looking forward to the double wreck dive tomorrow.