Before we left the boat Marco had us perform some intelligence tasks. We had to tap the numbers 1-20 in order on his dive slate. (They were not in order) He timed us and wrote down our response times and then after got down to 100 ft. we performed the same task while he timed us. We were all usually a couple of seconds slower. When you get to deep water (between 80 -100ft) you get slightly drunk from something called Nitrogen Narcossis. Sometimes people act really weird and you really have to watch your buddy carefully so they don't do anything dangerous. I thought Scott and Kevin were acting kind of Narced when the got all kinds of excited over stuff we had seen before. Scott kept trying to pull a shrimp our of it's hole and Marco was taking off so I grabbed him to make him follow. He was probably fine and I was being a bit paranoid. Maybe that's my way of getting Narced. We didn't see a ton of stuff because the dive was just to test our deep water skills, but It was still fun.
We came back to the classroom and worked on our Navigation chapter. Then we went to the beach to try out our skills on the beach first and then headed to a place called the Treehouse. Here we went down to about 40 feet and did our compass skills. It was pretty fun to figure out how to measure distance and heading underwater. Then Marco "tried" to get us lost and kept asking us where the boat was. We did see a sting ray hiding in the sand which Kevin got a picture of. Then Marco chose me to get us back to the boat and I had to lead everyone back.I was able to do it with no problem.
We didn't dive in the afternoon so we decided to walk down to the market and deli down the road for lunch. We had yummy sandwiches and looked around at the souvenier shop for a while and then headed back to the resort where Michael and I laid out and then studied our night dive chapter and Kevin and Scott had a little snooze.
We made ourselves a quick sandwich and headed back to the classroom at 5:45 for our night dive chapter. After finishing a great briefing and getting our gear ready, we headed down the beach to the dock Kevin and I snorkeled at on Sunday and geared up to go. It was a place called Infinity Bay. We swam out a ways and then Marco had us finish getting ready and we headed down with our lights on. We swam through some great coral swim thrus and saw a whole different reef than you see in the day. The fish life and coral life is very different at night. The coral is actually more colorful and beautiful. We saw lobsters, sea anenomes, star fish, sea cucumbers fan corals, neuterbraes and much more on the wall. While we swam back over the wall, Kevin saw an octopus. He got a couple of pictures of it. They are rely cool to see at night. After we got over the wall, Marco had us kneel the bottom of a sandy area and turn off our lights. About three minutes went by and then Marco slowly turned us around and there was an amazing string of glowing pearls. It was amazing. But the adventure in the dark wasn't over yet. Our eyes had adjusted so we could see each others outlines. When Marco hit his tank we all started swimming in single file behind him WITH NO LIGHTS. As you kicked up sand little lights would spark and you could totally see the person in front of you. We swam like that for about 10 minutes. It was a real rush. When we got back to the swim through, Marco turned his light back on and we headed out the way we came in. It was one of the neatest things I've ever done.None of us wanted it to end. It was our longest dive yet at 70 minutes and it felt more like 15. I can't wait for our next night dive on Thursday.
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