Open Water Scuba Instrucor

Another weekend of Open Water Scuba Instruction this weekend:

Heather, Dan, me and Chris

I was lucky enough to have 3 really great students that had no problems getting through all the skills required for PADI Open Water certification . I did have some problems finding the pool as we have changed venues over the last few weeks but nobody told me, so I sat in Cars Park for 15 minutes wondering where everyone else was!

I will start to keep a record of students that I certify as I think it is a really great step and may be the start of a great diving career. I still remember the guy that I completed Open Water certification with in 1986, he was Terry Morrison of Tweed Dive Shop in Tweed Heads. I assume he has retired by now as he was no spring chicken in October 1986. I was certified by the National Association of Underwater Instructors (NAUI) and it was quite a different process to what we teach today.
As I recall it was 2 full weeks of training 1 week in the marina in about 2M of water and 10 open water dives in various locations (Cook Island was the main location for most of the ocean dives). I remember the theory exam was quite in depth and we needed to know stuff that I never touched on again until Dive-Master. After certification with NAUI we were certified to go to 40M, which in hindsight is not really the safest approach, although the training was more rigorous than open water today. I think the current PADI approach encompasses  a better staged approach to get people more easily into diving. You really had to love it in those days to get through the courses.

Here  is my original diving certification. The photo had to be in Black and White in those days (yes we did have colour!) and I had hair!

Certified by me this weekend were:
HEATHER  MACGILLIVRAY
DANIEL  RICHARDS
LUKE  VOLKER

Thanks to Emma and the staff at Abyss for their usual support and encouragement.

Lessons learned this week:
Make sure the teaching locations haven't changed since last time:
Have a full set of slates for any eventuality
Remember to pack your regs for the second days diving
Don't wash gear in the rain

The Steps

A double dive at the Steps today where Della and I were the DM.  Sydney put on a magnificent day and the water temperatures are really climbing with my computer reading 18 degrees on the first dive.

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High Tide was before 8am with Low tide about 2:30pm so we had an outward current for the first dive and headed West.

The visibility was about 5M and we saw a few rays and we were accompanied by a blue groper for a big part of the dive.

There were heaps of Nudibranchs and with the low visibility they were the best photograph opportunities of the day.

View The Leap/Steps Dive Site in a larger map
Map courtesy of Mihn Tran Visit www.minhtran.info for more information or follow link in the side bar

Above is one of those blue hairy Nudii's in a nice sponge garden

Today's interesting event occurred when we found that we had brought 2 unfilled tanks for one of the divers on the  club shore dive. We decided to give the diver one of our tanks each and sit out one dive each. As Della wanted to take the second dive towards the East she stayed on the shore to DM for the first dive.

We found some large starfish.

I took 6 divers with me towards the West and we had a relatively short dive (38 mins max depth 11.8M). One diver was down to 50 bar by the time we hit the surface while another diver, who had his own 125 cf tanks, still had 150 bar. I decided to use the 125 cf tank with 150 bar in and join the second dive. The second dive was longer and a bit deeper (49 mins 12.6M) but I still hit the surface with just over 50 bar

Nudi's galore!

This is a sea slug egg

Yet another Nudibranch

School of Eastern Pomfreds