Diving
On Sunday Jason and I finally managed to get in a dive, our first actual dive on Okinawa!
We dove Maeda Point which we had snorkeled before, so we sort of knew what to expect. We went out with Justin, who is a Divemaster, to keep us in line. My last logged dive was in 2002 and Jason's 2003 so we wanted to do a refresher dive. Basically it was us out there trying to remember what to do with all of our gear and all that and enjuy a little tooling around in the water.
On the first of the two dives we fumbled a bit getting into the water as there was a bit of chop. Not exactly the glassy surface I had in mind for "where is my regulator? and "why wont my fins buckle?" but I think we did pretty good. Good enough that we managed to dive any way!
The second dive went a bit smoother, though getting out of the water was a bit difficult for myself. The waves had picked up a bit more and I kept getting tossed, but a nice Japanese instructor came over and lent a hand and I got my footing. I must confess thats one of the best aspects of diving, the community of people who do it. Guy saw I couldn't get to my feet and came over to help out, no questions asked.
The dive itself was pretty good. Most of the coral at Maeda, as I have said before, is dead but some of it is recovering. The aquatic life is still there, in large sizes and numbers. The highlights of the two dives included a sea snake, Stonefish and Justin saw an octopus.
While we did not take out Fish finder cards down with us (we figured we had enough to worry about for our refresher dive!) we did look at them after. The only trick to Okinawa, is that there are no fish finder cards for here. We have Australia, Hawaii and Micronesia and Guam, which all have similar fish, but they may be called different names.
Here is a short list:
Black and Red Anemonefish,
Circular Spadefish,
Cleaner Wrasse,
Dusky Anemonefish,
Long-nosed Butterflyfish (Foreceptsfish),
Moorish Idol,
Palette Surgeonfish,
Bullethead Parrotfish,
Pennantfish,
Pufferfish,
Queen Triggerfish,
Racoon Butterflyfish,
Sea Snake,
Stonefish,
Trumpetfish,
Vagabond Butterflyfish,
Yellow-Faced Angelfish,
Yellow Tang,
and many more!
We dove Maeda Point which we had snorkeled before, so we sort of knew what to expect. We went out with Justin, who is a Divemaster, to keep us in line. My last logged dive was in 2002 and Jason's 2003 so we wanted to do a refresher dive. Basically it was us out there trying to remember what to do with all of our gear and all that and enjuy a little tooling around in the water.
On the first of the two dives we fumbled a bit getting into the water as there was a bit of chop. Not exactly the glassy surface I had in mind for "where is my regulator? and "why wont my fins buckle?" but I think we did pretty good. Good enough that we managed to dive any way!
The second dive went a bit smoother, though getting out of the water was a bit difficult for myself. The waves had picked up a bit more and I kept getting tossed, but a nice Japanese instructor came over and lent a hand and I got my footing. I must confess thats one of the best aspects of diving, the community of people who do it. Guy saw I couldn't get to my feet and came over to help out, no questions asked.
The dive itself was pretty good. Most of the coral at Maeda, as I have said before, is dead but some of it is recovering. The aquatic life is still there, in large sizes and numbers. The highlights of the two dives included a sea snake, Stonefish and Justin saw an octopus.
While we did not take out Fish finder cards down with us (we figured we had enough to worry about for our refresher dive!) we did look at them after. The only trick to Okinawa, is that there are no fish finder cards for here. We have Australia, Hawaii and Micronesia and Guam, which all have similar fish, but they may be called different names.
Here is a short list:
Black and Red Anemonefish,
Circular Spadefish,
Cleaner Wrasse,
Dusky Anemonefish,
Long-nosed Butterflyfish (Foreceptsfish),
Moorish Idol,
Palette Surgeonfish,
Bullethead Parrotfish,
Pennantfish,
Pufferfish,
Queen Triggerfish,
Racoon Butterflyfish,
Sea Snake,
Stonefish,
Trumpetfish,
Vagabond Butterflyfish,
Yellow-Faced Angelfish,
Yellow Tang,
and many more!
Labels: Diving, Justin, Maeda Point
posted by Crystal at 12:18 PM
1 Comments:
There is quite a bit of dead coral at Maeda (mostly due to the DSDs that crawl all over the shallows there). But if you either go out to the second reef, or you head south along the wall, there is plenty of good living stuff to be found.
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