We got in five dives today — two this morning, two this afternoon and one night dive — equaling my personal best.
Without getting into all the details, the pressure underwater does a few things to the chemistry of the oxygen in your bloodstream. None of it is bad when monitored correctly, and it only presents a short-term cumulative effect, about 24 hours or so. There are tables and computers to monitor all of this, for safety reasons, and you spend a lot of time learning the safety measures before you get your certification. You keep this stuff in mind. Most dive days feature three or four tanks because of that accumulating bottom-time. We added the fifth dive this evening just to make up for part of what we missed. We took all of this into consideration for our dive profiles as we are experienced safety-first divers.
Here are a few of the highlights of our four day-dives.
I didn’t carry the camera on the night dive. Night dives are different experiences. You can only see what’s directly in your flashlight beam, and I didn’t want to juggle that much in the dark. But that was the best night dive I’ve ever experienced. Turtles, octopi, crabs and lobster at every turn.
Four more dives tomorrow!
