Since our professor had to go diving
Friday with some bigwig donors of the university (rough life, I know) we
couldn’t have class. Think we were going to be out-done by our professor? No way. We took this opportunity to go night diving Thursday night, and what a great decision that was. As
we got onto the boat and moved away from the dock around 7pm, the
number of stars kept multiplying and multiplying until I couldn’t see
and farther. Once the lights in the sky became commonplace, the ocean lit up (but not from starlight). Plankton
has a unique property of bioluminescence and, as the boat hit them and
moved them around, they lit up like fireflies underwater. After donning all of our gear plus a flashlight, we took the backwards plunge off the boat into the dark depths. Even
though I was a bit uneasy at the idea of only being able to see what
was in my flashlight at any given time, there were enough people (10)
with our group that there was plenty of light during our dive. The ocean is a different world at night. We
saw lobsters, new types and more abundant urchins, and hundreds of sea
cucumbers (all of which we had not seen during the day). My
dive partner, Katy, also spotted a huge stone scorpion fish and we saw 3
different types of puffers (including my favorite, of course, the
bullseye puffer). We also confirmed the theory
that rays are attracted to light as a huge diamond stingray played with
our group for a few minutes as we shined our flashlights from different
directions. My favorite part, however, was
shielding the light for a second and waving my hand through the water –
inciting the plankton and surrounding myself in a field of
bioluminescence. Capped off by seeing some lobos hunting underwater, my first night dive will definitely not be my last.
Saturday, we set off for another day of
diving at Leon Dormido with hopes of the ever-elusive Tiburon Martillo
(Hammerhead shark). Although the hammerhead increased its lead on me to
3-0, Leon Dormido is such an incredible place to dive that I almost
didn't notice (almost...). At one point I could see 13 Galapagos sharks
at the same time and two of them came within a few feet of me, casually
swimming with so much more efficiency than us bulky humans that it was
hard not to be jealous. An octopus, some turtles, a school of tuna, and
being engulfed in a bait ball were some of the highlights of another
great day of diving. We are off to Santa Cruz tomorrow for our last
week of this class and we are trying to work out how to dive over there,
but we shall see.
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