Today, I completed my 6th and 7th dives (total count) at a local dive to the Chesapeake Light Tower, also called The Tower. These were my first dives as a certified open water scuba diver (no instructor) and my first dives in saltwater. I’ve been on boats in rivers in lakes, but this was also my first boat trip on the ocean. Even though the seas were calm, I took Dramamine last night and again this morning to avoid getting sea sick. I have never had any type of motion sickness but I thought I would be extra careful.
For my sixth dive, my maximum depth was 46 feet with a total dive time of 47 minutes. The following shows the dive profile. Notice the step up on the ascent? That’s called a safety stop at approximately 15 feet below the surface for 3 minutes. My dive computer tracks this for me so once I start ascending and reach 15 feet, the computer starts a countdown from 3 minutes. This gives my body a chance to slowly release some of the nitrogen that has been absorbed in my blood and tissues at the greater depths reached earlier in the dive. The water was also pretty warm too – 80F at the surface and maybe 72F at 45 feet.
Also saw some interesting wildlife on this dive. I pulled a few clips from the GoPro showing a constellation of starfish (brilliant, that’s the correct group name for starfish), a highly camouflaged flounder, and a barracuda (ooh, barracuda).
Once we arrived at the boat, we had a mandatory surface interval of one hour (the amount of time you must remain at the surface before diving again). After eating some granola bars and drinking some more water, we started our second dive for the day and my seventh dive overall. The depth profile is shown below. The max depth was 46 feet and the dive time was 35 minutes. Both me and my dive buddy had plenty of air remaining but the four other divers had returned to the boat and so we went back just in case we missed a signal to return or there was a problem with one of the other divers. Turns out they just stopped diving early.
Here’s some more wildlife we observed while on this particular dive: a barracuda, a jellyfish, fighting crabs, and a northern puffer fish.
And the highlight of the trip for me was getting to swim in a school of Atlantic spadefish. The video doesn’t do it justice – it was surreal.
Garret Bonnema 