I was always amazed and interested in the sea. I also like scuba diving with my dad and my older brother, Benjamin. The last time I went scuba diving was two years ago in French Polynesia. Now, I was going to dive in Hawaii! I saw things that I was totally not expecting to see. We had gone on a vacation to Hawaii for the summer. Four days before we left Hawaii, my dad told me. ” I’m going scuba diving with your brother in two days, you want to come? ” I was so excited to go scuba diving again, and this time it was going to be two dives, not only one!
I was happy to say,“Yes! ” My dad called the store and told them that I was going diving with too. Unfortunately, my dad said that since | didn’t have the Open Water (Level of category for scuba diving) I had to do a couple of tests in the pool. I was fine with that as long as I could go scuba diving. The next day I woke up at 6:30 a. m. I was so excited and stressed at the same time, but I knew that it was too late to go back. In the car, my dad reminded me everything. “Remember if your ears hurt, go back up slowly,” my dad said. ” Yeah, yeah,” I sighed.
As he reminded me about things, I was thinking about how cool it would be if I passed the test. I could already imagine myself in the sea watching the multicolor fishes. I was especially hoping to see a turtle. When we arrived, I had to get all my gear, it took a while because I had to get the right size… The test took about an hour and a half, the first couple of minutes we had to revise the safety drills.
Then we headed to the pool to do tests, I think I did pretty well, then I had to throw my regulator (gear that attaches to your oxygen tank to let you breathe air) out in the water and et it back. I wasn’t stressed because I had done this tons of times, this time I don’t know what happened but I couldn’t reach it. I remembered what you had to do in case this happens, but I was almost out of air, 1 had only a couple of seconds left of air when I got the regulator, I put it in my mouth at the last second. Thad no air left, but I couldn’t breathe because there would be water in the regulator, I had no chance but to go back up, but | forced myself to stay underwater. I quickly pushed the button to get the water out. And then I took a big breath.
My instructor said I had done a great job. I was happy that this had happened in the pool and not in the middle of the sea because now I knew what to do. When I finished the test I was pretty confident that I had passed it, and I did! The following day, we went to the store to get ourselves ready, then we went on a van with other divers to get to the dock. In the van, people were talking about the dives that they had done in Hawaii. One diver, scuba dived to see manta rays, I would have loved to do that, but it was too costly and it wasn’t guaranteed you would see the manta rays.
Another diver dived in lava tubes, I remembered my dad did a dive in lava tubes too, in Kauai, Hawaii. When we arrived at the dock we had to get all our gear, but hopefully, I didn’t need to spend too much time because I had already the gear from the test. When most of the divers were ready, we went on the boat. The boat was really big and it had three floors. First, the captain of the boat had to remind us of the rules and the safety of the boat. Then we headed out of the dock. I quickly started to get seasick, so I went in front of the boat.
Since I knew I was going to take all long time to put all my equipment on, I started to put my wetsuit on. As usual, I got frustrated with it, I couldn’t put it on, so I called my dad. When we finished putting it on, we had arrived. After putting all my stuff on like my oxygen bottle, my mask… , it was my turn to jump off the boat. When I got up it felt like I had an elephant on my back, I could barely stand up, I had to get the help of an instructor to walk to the edge of the boat. When I jumped off the boat one of my fins fell off. I waited for y dad and my brother in the water, when we were all in the water we started our dive. First, we had to empty our air of our BCD to get down. Once we were at the bottom of the water | was so happy to finally see all those fishes and corals again. I checked if I had put everything correctly, once I did, we started to explore. First, we went towards an “underwater arch”, we saw tons of eels, they were swimming in between corals. When we went under the arch, there were some huge sea urchins along with beautiful starfishes. It was very cool being under the arch, there was even a little cave inside it, but it was too small to get in.
When we got through the arch, I asked in “sign language” if we could go up on top of the arch. My instructor said ok. We found a little area with no coral that we could go on. Being on top was like being the king of the sea, you could see a lot from up there. I decided to “jump” off the arch. My dad was filming me with the GoPro, so I did it like if I was jumping off a diving board. As we continued our dive we saw a turtle swimming, the cool thing about it was that there were two yellow fishes cleaning the turtle’s shell. We followed the turtle for a couple of minutes, but then we found ourself in the middle of a “crater. It was incredible, it was flat and suddenly it just fell down. We couldn’t go down there because I could only down to 42 feet. Next, we turned around, I was wondering what kind of fish were there. Later our first dive was over, when we were going to the boat, I could feel my mouth was super dry. Once I got all of my supplies off, I swam around in the sea for a couple of minutes, until the other divers arrived. When all the divers were there, the boat started to go to the next dive spot. For a couple of minutes, divers were talking about what they had seen.
One group saw an octopus hidden in between the rocks, later on, it was lunch. They started passing out sandwiches. I chose the one with turkey and tomatoes, and surprisingly there were really good. I asked my dad,” Did you like the dive? ” “Yes,” he said, “I especially liked seeing the turtle. ” “Yeah,” my brother said, “it was the first time that I saw fishes cleaning the turtle’s shell. ” Then my instructor came. “Great job guys, ready for the next dive? ” she asked. “I heard that since there is a storm where we’re supposed to dive, were going to dive next to the dock.
Once we arrived, we did the same thing over again put our materials on, jumped off the boat, this time none of my fins fell off. I was less excited about diving next to a dock, but it was better than nothing. When we reached the bottom, we saw a group of sardines swimming around. We even saw a puffer fish (fish with spikes on his back). As we went deeper we found a little boat wreck! This was very exciting for me. There was a hole in the wreck so we could go in. Inside there was not really anything interesting, but it was really awesome being in an actual boat wreck.
The only artifact that we found was a bottle. When we got out of the boat we swam around it. I could tell it was a sailing boat with the high mast. When I turned around to look at my dad, I found a shark about 25 feet behind him. I told my instructor that there was a shark, I knew that they were all surprised and I was too, to see a shark. The shark wasn’t really big, but I was still really excited. The shark was black on his back and white in front. I would have liked to go closer, but we had to continue our dive. We had been in our dive for 45 minutes out of 55.
Unfortunately, the dive was cut off a little bit short because my brother was running low on air, I didn’t really care about cutting the dive short. While I was getting my gear off, I was thinking about how amazing both of the dives were. I couldn’t believe that we had seen a shark, that was the last thing I was expecting to see. I really liked both of the dives, but I think I liked a little bit the second one better. “Did you see that shark! ” my dad said. “Yeah, I also liked seeing the puffer fish,” I replied. “That boat wreck was awesome,” my brother said. I had never seen a boat wreck while scuba diving before,” said my instructor.
While the boat was entering the dock, we were talking about the dives and what we saw, what we liked… As the boat came to a stop, we saw a manta ray near the boat. Then we saw another turtle further away. We had seen the three things that I really wanted to see, a turtle, a manta ray and a shark. When we arrived at the store I asked my dad if I could buy a T-Shirt and he said yes. I chose a T-Shirt that has a diver and all kinds of fishes and turtles next to it… Since my dad and my brother liked it, they decided to buy one too.
On the way back to the hotel, we talked about the dives. I couldn’t wait to tell my mom and my younger brother what I had seen. When we got to the hotel my mom and my brother were in the pool, so quickly changed and went in, while explaining everything we had seen and done. I really liked scuba diving again, in fact, I loved it so much that I’m going to try to pass the Open Water test. I also think that scuba diving made me more independent and take matters into my own hands, because no one is going to see if you have enough air or know if you have a problem. I can’t wait for the next scuba dive!