Utila – Week 2, Day 7: A Devilish Smile
UTILA
Week 2
Day 7: A Devilish Smile
November 26, 2022
Two weeks in, and I think it’s safe to say that by now I was pretty invested in this whole diving thing. With the excuse of it (still) being Black Friday, I decided to splurge a bit and buy the latest GoPro. Multiple times during my trip I found myself wishing I had one, but I always talked myself out of it cause a waterproof case for my phone kinda sufficed. But for diving? Not quite.
Not having to rely on the kindness of strangers for underwater footage, every dive from now on would offer an opportunity for me to document a new marine creature. The Halliburton Wreck would be the perfect site for me to test it out. I’d be assisting Miguel and his two students once again on his PADI Advanced course, but with it being just a fun dive, I’d just be tagging along and help out if need be.
The second we descended, I found myself amazed at the beautiful sight of the sunken ship once again – I don’t think I could ever get used to it, to be honest. One of the students had some buoyancy issues and kept floating up, but after dragging him down a couple of times and signalling him to expel some air from his BCD, it was all smooth sailing. I got to use my GoPro and get some cool footage, despite the manoeuvring messing up my buoyancy. I almost grabbed onto a fireworm in order to regain my trim!
After circling the base of the ship – which is covered in coral and surrounded by all kinds of fish – we went up to the deck and then to the stern, where there are four rooms stacked on top of each other. Of course, we couldn’t enter the wreck, but we kinda didn’t want to either. At the entrance of the lowest room, we could see a glint of silver in the pitch-black darkness. At the sight of this, we all approached the door, slowly and cautiously, not knowing what the creature might turn out to be.
It was this huge goliath grouper, measuring over a metre in length, with its slender silver body and a devilish smile featuring a set of very long, very sharp-looking teeth. I watched – half in awe, half in fear – as the beast circled the room. The last time I felt like that was in Belize, when I came super close to a Caribbean reef shark.
Finding My Way
Our second dive was at Moon Hole. While the students performed their navigation flawlessly, I joined them on the same exercise as part of my course.
In all honesty, I had a lot of pressure about this. First off, my navigation skills weren’t the best. Second, if I failed at this, it’d look so unprofessional in front of the students who had just aced it. I was part of the staff now – I was expected to be at a higher level, even though we’re always introduced as trainees. But really and truly, I was still an amateur at best. Sure, I was getting better and improving my skills day by day, but excellence was still a far way to go.
Despite my initial hesitation, with Gloria as my buddy, I took charge and decided to just go for it. We set a direction, headed there, saw a huge pufferfish and then went back. Then I got to inflate a delayed surface marker buoy (DSMB), and that was that. I had just gotten two more skills checked off my list and the students didn’t even realise I had left them!
After we got back, I didn’t have much time until my next course – a PADI Reactivate workshop. Here, Fleur explained that some divers who haven’t dived in a while would need a quick tune-up course to go over the essential skills before being allowed back in the water. As future divemasters, we’d need to know how to demonstrate these skills, since we’d eventually be running them ourselves if we got certified. Having just finished my skill circuit, this workshop was admittedly a breeze, basically covering the same stuff.
I have to admit, after the whole lionfish hunt saga, I really needed the mood boost that came along the previous couple of days. Completing the skills circuit, assisting on my first course and finishing my first workshop earned me a few points on the divemaster scoreboard. It felt like finally I was in the running to become an actual divemaster!
Stay wild,
Marius
Post-Scriptum
Seeing that I had so many wins over a short span of time, the Law of Balance took effect. At the end of the day, Tammy informed me that my first aid accreditation wasn’t valid – despite being a fully graduated doctor with two years of experience with an Advanced Life Support certification. This meant I couldn’t get certified as a Rescue Diver. But “It’s okay!” they told me, “We’ll give you a special discount!”.
Needless to say, I wasn’t gonna go down without a fight. I sent PADI a wordy email about the whole situation. Now I’d just have to wait for a reply…