The Pensieve

The Underwater Adventure continues as we have now also recieved our PADI Advanced Diver certificates.  What is a PADI Advanced Diver you ask?  Well you wouldn`t be the first.  Let`s start at the beginning: PADI.  PADI stands for (we think) Professional Association of Dive Instructors.  It is the biggest organization in the world for dive instruction and probably the most respected and recognized.  It was originally created in the United States, but now exists the world over in many different langauges.  That being said it is a bit of a scam.  When it comes down to it PADI itself doesn`t really do anything besides for produce the book that is required to be bought and authorize the instructor to issue us certificates.  It is supposed to be a regulatory body to prevent abuse of student and increase safety, this it does on a pretty limited level.  For instance one can achieve the level of Open Water Diver in about 3-4 days and our level of Advanced Diver in about 3 more days.  The next step is Rescue Diver in about 4 days and beyond a big step is taken, that is Dive Master in about a month.  After this you have Assistant Intructor and then Instructor, this time varies, but usually not more than a month.  So in reality you can go from never having worn a mask in your life to teaching othes in about three months.  On the whole this should not inspire confidence, when you consider the fact you are generally between 10-30 meters (30-100 feet) under the ocean.  That being said what is comes down to is how good your instructor is and nothing really about PADI.  PADI is said to stand for PUT ANOTHER DOLLAR IN, and looking at our bank account after our adventure I have to agree.

The next word is Advanced.  The first certification Open Water, allows one to dive up to about 18 meters (60 feet) unsupervised, which is nice but a lot of cool stuff lies a little deeper.  The next level is Advanced which allows you to go to 30 meters (100 feet).  Cool things start to happen at about 24 meters, namely Nitrogen Narcosis.  The cause of NN is still unknown but it`s effect is pretty much a state of slight intoxication characterized by euphoria, slowed relexes, poor judgement, anxiety, and even panic.  What fun!  Sadly we were not incredibly affected by it more a sense of woolyheadedness.  Even so it was interesting to witness.  Also cool things happen to colors, red and orange pretty much cease to exist instead appearing as brown.  Finally the pressure at 30 meters (anyone aynone?) is four times as strong as the pressure at the surface, meaning volume like air is four times as small, meaning your are running through your air supply very fast and it is harder to breath.  On a cool note there are a lot of ship wrecks at about this depth. 

We did six specialty dives called adventure dives to get our certification.  The two that are required are a Deep dive, 30 meters, and a Navigation dive, swimming around with a compass attached to your wrist and trying to find your way home.  The Nav dive went poorly for us but we managed to pass, we blame the compass.  We also got to choose four other dives of our choice.  We chose Night, Wreck, Drift, and Peak Performance Bouyancy. 

The Bouyancy was kinda cool as we got to adjust our weight and worked on raising and lowering ourselves in the water using only our breath, very Jedi like.  We practiced hovering in the Buddha position, Mission Impossible spread eagle, and upside down.  We also worked on swimming through hoops, something Blair`s size made extremely difficult. We also took off our fins and practised Matrix style fighting although I don`t think that was part of the course.

In the Drift dive, one is literally supposed to do nothing and let the current drag you around.  Doing nothing being our speciality this struck us as a good idea.  Sadly the current was rather slow on our dive so we didn´t really experience this.  We did get to see an amazing selection of plant and animal life, Angel fish, Lobsters, Trumpet fish, Trunk fish, Drum fish, and many more.  The diveristy was amazing almost like swimming with all the fish at the largest pet store you have ever been to, but far superior.

The Night dive was intresting, but not as cool as we intiatally though it would be.  The cool parts included seeing amazingly large lobsters and really chilled out fish.  There was also Phosphorescent plankton that would glow when you moved your arms rapidly.  On the whole though it was like diving with very poor visibility.  I would suggest it only if you were in search of a special creature that only came out at night like and eel or octopus.

Finally, the Wreck was everything that we wanted and more.  The wreck dive is truly the dive that hooked us.  About 25 years ago the Colombian Government sunk a ship to create reef material.  This being Colombia there is rumor of drugs being smuggled on the boat.  It is amazing at how quickly the sea has claimed the ship for its own and how many creatures have taken up residence.  The visibilty is quite poor so when approaching the ship you see nothing and then BAM! ship.  The ship was not incredibly large but it was about 40 meters long, and it was really cool to imagine it above the waves.  By Scubaing a wreck you get a chance to see a ship in a way that you never would have imagined possible.  The closest is to think of being able to fly and hover over a ship examining every nook and cranny from both above and below.  We plan on hitting up some wrecks in the Great Lakes when we go back for the summer.  Any volunteers? 

P.S. Blair would like to rescind his remark about being the first certified Oesterle Scuba diver.  His cousin Matt beat him to it…the bastard.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 10th, 2007 at 1:00 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.