Diving at Looe Key

After we arrived back in Fort Lauderdale, Darrell made another call to Underseas on Big Pine Key to see if there was a diving charter going out that we could participate in and there was, so I was finally able to try diving. We drove down as far as Florida City that night and found a hotel, then we were up bright and early for our trip back to the Keys.

Since I have never dove, I had to do what they call a resort dive, which means spending an hour in the swimming pool with an instructor to learn the basics, and if the instructor felt I had a good enough understanding and was comfortable enough I could dive with him at the reef.

We stopped at the Dive shop where I met the instructor, Phil, and got outfitted with gear, then we headed back to Parmers Resort, where we had stayed our first three nights in the Keys, to use their pool. It was nice to get an unexpected extra visit in with Brad and some of the other staff at Parmers.

I got in to the wet suit and hopped in the pool, then Phil showed me how to get into the weight belt, BCE, and mask & fins. Then he showed me how to inflate and deflate the BCE, and how to breathe through the regulator. Even though I have used a snorkel in the pool many times in the past, breathing underwater with a regulator feels very strange the first time. In fact it feels strange for the first little while. I learned how to clear the regulator, and cough into it etc. I learned hand signals, and how to recover the regulator if it were to come out of my mouth, as well as buddy breathing in case you run out of air, and how to clear water out of my mask. Since I was the only resort diver that day and we had time, Phil also showed me some basic bouyancy stuff. We were in the pool for about an hour and by the end of it, he was pretty confident I would do fine out at the reef...that made one of us at least. To say I was nervous would be an understatement.

We had some time to kill before we had to meet back at the dive shop, so we took another quick trip over to the blue hole to visit the aligator and iguanas. The female aligator even graced us with an appearance closer to the platform. She surfaced a few feet out and gave one of the little ducks a fright. He hopped right out of the water pretty quickly. Unfortunately a bunch of noisey people arrived and she disappeared. Some people have absolutley no clue. They show up making tonnes of noise and laughing and carrying on, then wonder why they never see any wild life. Duh!

We met back at the dive shop then, everyone headed over to the charter boat. Phil had three students who were doing their open water tests to get their licences, so I was going to be sticking with them. There were also some other divers there going out for the day as well as some snorkelers. Darrell was paired up with another tour diver and a couple other guys, and I was with Phil and his class. The boat ride out was about 20 minutes, and my butterflies were getting whipped up in my tummy the closer we got. When we got to the site I got into all my gear. Phil brought me two wet suits, one full sized and one shorty to wear over it, because the water was actually a little colder than usual. It couldn't have been too cold, since coral will only tollerate a fairly narrow tamperature band, but it still felt cold after being down for an hour. I got into the BCE and strapped it all up, then I couldn't get up off the seat. I was thinking, holy crap that tank is heavy, what if I can't even lift it and get off the bench. I was watching everyone else get up fine, and was feeling like a total wimp, then the dive boat operator reach over me and undid the bungy cord that was holding the tank down. The tank was still heavy back there, but not that heavy. I made my way to the edge of the boat, and put my left hand on my weight belt and my right hand on my mask and regulator, then stepped off and plunged into the water. I came bobbing back up, and put my fist on the top of my head to indicate that everything was fine and made my way over to Phil.

The group that was getting their licences had to do some stuff at the top with their BCEs and then we made our way over to the bouy where the rope was. I started going down the rope, but had to stop a few feet down, because I panicked, and came back up. It was kind of freaky trying to calm myself and go down to the bottom. There's a big difference between a six foot swimming pool and 30 feet of ocean water. Couple that with the fact that the visibility wasn't very good, only about 20 feet, so I couldn't see the other divers just below. I made a second attempt to descend the rope and chickened out again. I was starting to think I might not be able to do it and may have to return to the boat, and then I got ahold of myself and forced myself to go. Third time's a charm and I made it down to the sand below. Phil and his class had some stuff they had to do down there before we did anything else as well, so there wasn't much for me to do, but hang out on the bottom and try and calm my nerves. I was very aware of my breathing, and not much else. I was still waffling about going back to the boat as well, but as I sat there I started to relax a bit while I was watching them clear their masks and go through their manouvers. Then I noticed a little hog fish about six inches away watching me. He just hung there in the water looking at me, and for about ten minutes I sat there watching him watch me. Then I started noticing the other fish gathering around, and lost interest in the goings on of the diving class. Just when I was really starting to relax I had another little panick attack because I realized I had to cough. Phil showed me how to cough in the regulator, but knowing how and actually doing it were two different things. So I screwed up my courage and coughed into the regulator and didn't die, and felt relaxed again. When the class was finished doing their thing we all started moving and exploring the reef. There were some huge coral and sea fans, and lots and lots of little fishes all around. I was keeping one eye on Phil the entire time and trying to see the reef with the other, and then under a ledge I noticed a huge baricooda. He must've been about four feet long, and bright flashing silver. I stopped fora minute to check him out and that's when Darrell's group came around the corner and caught up with us. It was cool to see them emerge out of the cloudy water, and it was really neat to see Darrell in full gear swimming about. I have so many pictures, and we have a lot of footage that he has shot when he wasdoing underwater film, but to actually see him in action was pretty cool, after only hearing the stories for the past decade. I don't know if he had a great dive though. He was with a group of guys who seemed to do a lot of swimming and not alot of observing. If you really want to see things in nature you have to be still and let it come to you. A really good example is our aquarium, we have a few fish in there that are over six inches long and if you come up to the glass, every one of them will disappear. They just flash away and pop into the rocks, and unless you sit back and let them be, they don't come out. The reef is no different, except there are larger fish with larger places to hide. darrell likes to go down and park it in a one spot for a while and see the fish come out and swim around, but the guys he was with seemed to be on a marathon to cover as much ground as they could find. He did manage to sit tight a few times and see some cool stuff.

The first time down lasted about an hour, and I was nearing the red zone on my supply gauge by the end of it. Newbies tend to use a lot of oxygen their first few dives because they are so excited and breath a lot more than normal. I was no exception. When I got back on the boat, I was just shaking, partly from the cold and partly from the excited energy. Next they took the boat to the second diving location. It was little clearer in this spot and you could actually see the bottom this time. I also had no trouble at all going down the rope the second time around. I was much more calm and relaxed and saw a lot more stuff the second time around. The second dive also lasted about an hour, and after three hours of swimming that day, I was all kinds of sore the next morning. I will definitely be going out and getting my licence before our next vacation.