Sea Turtles and Sharks and Whales...OH MY!

I am officially a certified PADI open-water scuba diver as of today! After a week's worth of classes and practice in the base pool, two days of boat dives, and some Mexican food and margaritas later, PADI recognizes ME as a diver who can go out and survive the waters on my own. The entire experience was so great, but I must dwell on yesterday's dive for this post, since it will undoubtedly be the most memorable dive of my life...

Yesterday's boat dives were my first open-water dives this week. I, along with Blaine (who has been certified for some time now), another classmate, our instructor, Amy, and a boat-load of other certified divers headed out to our first dive spot, Koko Craters. Here, we practiced some skills at about 40 feet down...and I saw my first sea turtle in the water! This turtle was a good size...about three to four feet wide. We saw some other fish, including halibut and angelfish. There's even a Buddha statue sitting at the bottom of the crater...we rubbed it's belly for good luck. And, boy, did it work!!

Our next dive spot was at Fantasy Reef and Shark's Cave...yeah, the sound of this one was not very appealing to me. I was really concerned with the possibility of seeing a shark. We dove down to about 40 feet again, this time seeing THREE large sea turtles right away. A couple were sleeping under coral overhangs, while one was swimming around freely. As we're swimming along, Amy looks at me and gives me the symbol for "shark"! While I was a little worried, I was more intrigued and wanted to see this thing! We found a four-foot long white-tip reef shark sleeping under a coral overhang. It was so neat...and I didn't feel threatened or afraid at all. We swam a little further, and, again, she gave me the "shark" symbol. This time, there was a six to seven-foot white-tip sleeping! And a baby (about two feet long) next to it!! As I swam next to the baby, it started swimming along-side me! Very cool!!

After some more skill work, we decided to end our dive and resurface. When we reached the top, our boat captain told us to stay in the water. He said, "there's a whale about 50 feet from you!" A WHALE!?!? We looked to where he was pointing and saw the whale's hump on the surface as it was blowing water from it's blowhole. We went back under and I couldn't see anything. As we swam a little closer, the most amazing creature came into plain view...it was a gorgeous, full-sized (they grow to about 52 feet long) humpback whale in the water! And if that weren't cool enough, she had a baby calf with her!! Blaine and I hovered in the water, just in disbelief at what we were seeing. The baby hid under the mother and then would find some courage and test it's swimming skills, diving down and resurfacing, swimming loops around the mother. It was as if they were putting on a show just for us. The mother remained suspended in the water, just supervising her calf and being available when the baby wanted to eat. I cannot describe in words just how humbling, majestic, and all-around amazing this experience was for us. Honestly, the awesome-factor of this made me a little emotional, being privy to such a large, but graceful, animal in it's environment .

When we got back to the boat, one of the dive-masters said that he has been on 5000 dives, and this was his first whale sighting. All of the experienced divers and instructors were so excited...it was a huge deal! We were pretty blessed to have such an amazing day of diving...and on my FIRST day!! Unbelievable...

We didn't have a camera, but, fortunately, another diver did! She captured the amazing photos and video I have posted to this blog. Thanks so much, diver from Denmark!!

Mother Humpback and Calf from Jennifer Baker on Vimeo