Small steps: A travel blog

The H writes...

Our second dive today was my 100th dive! Hurrah!

Of course, I thought it was my 99th, because I failed to log one of yesterday’s dives, so I wasn’t able to do any shenanigans (Traditionally, the 100th dive is done in the nude, or, failing that, at least do something silly).

But, even though I didn’t do anything downright daft, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a memorable dive…

I was trying to get a picture of this little guy when Ziah spotted the Eagle Rays.

Anyway, it seems as if FATE knew that it was my 100th dive, because about 10 minutes into the dive, we spotted a small school of 5 Eagle Rays! That is, I was in the middle of trying to get as close as I dared to a fish that’s extremely poisonous, to get a picture of it.

Suddenly, Ziah was making a sound, so I look behind me, see her pointing, follow her finger, and see five gorgeous eagle-rays glide past us. They were so breath-takingly awesome (and I really wasn’t expecting to see rays on this dive) that, despite the fact that I had a camera in my hands, I completely forgot to take a photo.

100 dives. Still pretty clueless (Photo by Ziah, who is used to this under-water signal by now: It means ‘haven’t got a clue’)

No matter, it was an awesome dive, well worthy of being my 100th. Here’s to the next two hundred underwater adventures!

During my first 100 dives…

• A total of 16 training dives
• An average of 46 minutes per dive
• 19 dives with a camera
• A total dive time of 76 h 10 min.
• The longest dive was 71 minutes (It was a training dive where we were just doing skills again, again, and again)
• The shortest dive was 25 minutes (Another training dive; I think it was the deep specialty dive)
• Average max depth was 16.15 meters
• Deepest dive was 36.3 meters
• Average air used per dive: 138 bar
• Avg air used  per minute: 3.06 bar
• Fish seen: One billion. At least.

Duration of dives