Finally, after long planning Alex and I got to go diving since the last time in the Philippines almost 3 years ago. Everyone else was able to join our boat trip out to the Kerama islands to do snorkeling which they’ve never done before. The nice thing is that we had very thick wetsuits which made the water warm and the weather was beautiful.
We arrived at the dive shop Reef Encounters and met up with our guides Amber and Neville. Amber was from Cali and has been living in Okinawa for 6 months because her husband was stationed at the base and Neville was born and raised here and speaks fluent English. The boat we were on was a charter that took several dive companies out to the islands, which was about a 30 min ride away from the main island.
Everyone except for Alex and me did snorkeling. When we arrived to the right location, one of the guides jumped into the water, surveyed the area to make sure it was good for diving, and tied a grappling hook to a chunk of rock. I jumped into the water and began my dive but started panicking for some reason. It was a combination of the water depth, where it felt like I was going to fall from a 4 story building and my body knowing it couldn’t breathe under water. It took a few minutes, I was able to calm down and go under water. Unfortunately, Alex didn’t bring his mask from home so the one he rented was leaking water every once in a while and he was having trouble with equalizing his ear. It’s like when you get on an airplane and can’t clear your ears from the pressure. Apparently there was a white tipped reef shark that I missed seeing, kind of bummed about that. Towards the end of the dive we began our ascent to the boat and Alex ran out of air before he got to the surface. Luckily he stayed calm and was 2ft from the surface.
We got back on the boat and did another dive afterwards. The snorkelers had a fantastic time swimming out to the beach on the island and seeing all the fish. Stephanie did especially well and expressed interest in possibly doing it again with us tomorrow if we did a beach dive. They thought it was cool that they could see us from above while we were diving.
By the end of the day, we were totally pooped, slightly sunburnt, and full of sea water. Alex and my two dives were kind of stressful today because our dive master was moving quickly and should have been a better communicator about things like safety, dive plan, and helping Alex with his air intake. I requested that we get a different dive master for tomorrow’s shore dive so hopefully it goes better.
