About Last Night

Last night was a long one, and potentially the least pleasant double date I've ever been on. The boat started getting extremely rocky around 9 pm, just as we were trying to go sleep. It got to Isabel and we spent the next three hours at the back of the boat as she was seasick. One consolation was that she was not the only one, there was another girl, Bew, who had it just as bad. He boyfriend Carl was out there with her, thus a double date. Also, Estelle, one of the hostesses (crew member) was out there too. She was a saint for putting up with them. Anyway, that's enough said about that.
Let's talk about diving. There were five planned dives today, which is a lot for those who don't know. Isabel took a miss on the first one, as did Bew. Rins the trip director did wouldn't even entertain the idea of them going on that dive. As was to be expected, I didn't really get enough sleep last night, but a pretty effective way to wake up is to jump into the ocean with a bunch of weight on your back. Sink or swim takes a different, and more confusing meaning. It should be sink or maintain buoyancy...
That dive we saw a few little black tip reef sharks, but nothing too outlandish. Sharks are cool though

Sharks are not scary underwater. They do their thing, you do yours, and no one gets upset
In the words of Shark Hulk, you wont like me when I'm angry

Some idiot swimming around with his reg out

Honestly, I can even remember much of the next dive. Isabel was back and the entire group had to go up before the divemaster and I due to air concerns. We saw a few more sharks once everyone was gone, but yeah, it was mainly the usual suspects. This does mark two dives in a row that there have been sharks but Isabel didn't see them. One day she'll see a shark. 

Third dive had a massive barracuda and some reef fish and a lionfish.

They're not evil in the Pacific, but if you see them in the Atlantic, kill them. Or get someone
who knows what they're doing to kill them as they're extremely venomous. Then you can fry
the meat and they're quite tasty. See more in my cooking blog speargun sushi

The fourth dive, finally something that can be exciting to explain to others. We were checking out a site with a lot of caves, which I hate because it's claustrophobic and terrifying, but I'm too self concious to ever admit that. I can write it here safely because no one actually reads the words. I whacked my head on the first, my tank on the second and just didn't go into the other ones. I swam over the caves and followed the bubbles. So the group we've been traveling with a fair amount I will refer to as team bro. There are two Kiwis who I'd put in their late twenties, Tom and Andrew. I'm betting they were partiers in college, but not have settled into their careers and while they like to have fun, have nothing to prove. Then there is also Bobby, who is a American doing a semester abroad in Australia. He plays lacrosse...enough said. He's adorable in an I-think-I'm-very-cool-but-come-off-as-an-eight-year-old kind of way. He learned how to dive last week, so he's a bit inexperienced, but someone gave him a GoPro. This means rather than trying to improve his skills he tries to get pictures of everything. It's a bit irritating, but after a few dives you figure out just to give him a wide berth. The last group members are me, diver extraordinaire (unbiased opinion of course), and Isabel, who is awesome and great and don't hurt me. So the other three guys guzzle down air, probably a bit due to being a little comfortable underwater and probably due to being larger me. So they got sent up and then AJ (leader of that dive) brought us over to some anemone fish.

This would have been much more romantic Isabel hadn't been floating just above my shoulder

The reason the fish were completely fearless is that they were protecting their eggs, so pretty much we harassed them and made faces at them until Isabel ran low on air.

Sushi with roe for dinner anyone?

Then AJ and I swam around for a while, saw a giant Wrasse and then called it a dive. We each had about 50 bar left, not bad for an hour underwater.
The last dive was a night dive that took place in the same site as where we we're pissing off the anemone fish. The site was named Admiralty because there was a large, old school anchor hanging out in a cave. Rins asked us if we knew how it got there, because he didn't. Big heavy anchor, with no easy way for it to have gotten there. We'll never know

Anchor

The highlight of the night dive were two fold. Firstly we saw flashlight fish. They're pretty cool. Secondly I found a black and white banded eel that looked a lot like a seasnake (it wasn't). So I'm having my flashlight wildly to get the attention of a nearby group, but they had seen something and were doing the exact same thing. I swam close to see what they found. It could have been the twin to my eel. They found the exact same thing at the exact same time and we all wanted to show each other something they'd found by themselves...typical.
We finished the dive and then it was bed time. The journey will be much less rocky tonight, so that's a relief. Hopefully I'll get more than 5 hours of sleep.
Anyway, here's a picture of the Spirit of Freedom for fun