First ocean dive of 2023
It may be April on the calendar for most of the United States but here in Florida it feels like the beginning of summer, highs in the 80’s with lows in the mid 60’s. The temperature of the Gulf is warming up quick, right now it’s 74-76 degrees. The reason I know this is I took my open water class to Panama City Beach yesterday. We met at the Dive shop over there at 7:30 a.m. central time then we went to the dive boat at the marina a couple miles down Thomas Drive.
I introduced my class to Captain George and the dive master JC. We then started to unload the truck with all the Nitrox cylinders plus all the dive gear they used in the Vortex springs on Saturday. Once the gear was aboard the students and my dive masters assembled all the gear then rechecked it to make sure it was assembled properly. We pressurized the system and shutoff the tank to make sure there were no leaks. Captain George gave his safety briefing then went up to his area and started the engine. When the boat was untied he proceeded to head out to open water, at this time the dive master gave his briefing, and then we were in for the ride to either the Dan Safety Barge or the Navy trash pile.
Both places are within a half mile of each other. We saw that there was another dive boat at the safety barge so we proceeded to the Navy trash pile. The Navy trash pile is an interesting site: it has a lot of stuff that the Navy has dumped there over the years to make a pretty good artificial reef. It’s pretty spread out but kind of in a big circle. The visibility was around 15-20 feet but that’s normal for this time of year. I had one student who has had difficulty with her sinuses when she would take off her mask. Every time she would get a lot of water up her nose and was unable to deal with it. I gave her a solution and that was to put her on one of our rental full face masks. It’s the Neptune 3 system by Ocean Reef. I personally bought one about 2 years ago and loved it so much I stocked them in the shop and put four in for rental.
Being a public service diving instructor I have used several different full face masks over the years but this one is a whole new design concept. Anyway I decided to have her try it to see if she would be able to complete the dives. The first time she put her head underwater she had this amazing smile on her face. She was absolutely beside herself she really did well with the equipment. When we got to the Navy trash pile JC hooked the anchor chain to one of the big metal structures and then the divers were ready to get wet. I took the lady with the full face mask with me and we went down the anchor rope to the bottom. The visibility was about 20-feet so she and I stayed close to the anchor point. Just in that area we saw all kinds of fish including about four big mangrove snapper, if I had my pole spear I could have had some nice fillets.
She was pretty excited and after 20 minutes she showed me her pressure gauge and it was down to 900psi, mine was still at 2300psi so we slowly went back up the anchor rope and stayed at the 15 foot for 3 minutes then proceeded to surface and climb on the back of the boat. Her excitement was very inspiring to the other students and to hear what the others saw was so great that after 37 years as an instructor it made me feel like I was making a change in someone’s life. While on the surface interval we went over to the Dan barge to make the final dive. This time she asked if she could buddy up with her son and that was great. Everybody jumped back in and after they came up they were all excited and ready to go diving on the next trip.
Keep making bubbles!
Russell Miller NAUI #59999 IANTD #224715