Diving In: Maldive Adventure, Part 2

So, after the interruption and some good sleep, we got up and had a late breakfast and went to the beach. While lying in the sun, I asked my partner if he wanted to do an experiential dive with the PADI school on the island. When he asked why I asked, I said that after Ms. S came and asked us if we wanted to go diving, I realized that I had always wanted to try Scuba diving and had never had the opportunity, but now we were here on this island paradise, surrounded by the ocean, and the chance to give it a try. He said, "Hell, no. I am definitely not interested in going underwater to meet the sharks!" I tried to tell him the only sharks inside the atoll were the little reef sharks, which are essentially harmless, but he still refused. So I went by myself to the diving school and and arranged to give it a try, while he decided to have a wind-surfing lesson, instead, as he much preferred to be on the water rather than in it.

One other reason I wanted to try diving was that on the flights on the way to the island, we found ourselves traveling together with a famous Japanese actor, NT, a very handsome man about my age, who was traveling with his own diving instructor, Mr. S. They had told me how wonderful the diving in the Maldives is, and my curiosity was piqued. . . .

When the time came, I went to the school for our pre-diving instruction. They had already warned me not to drink any carbonated beverages or gas-producing foods before the dive, so I was well warned. We were given instruction on safety measures, told what to do and what not to do, and shown how to use the equipment, etc. When we had finished all the preliminaries,  they helped get on all our gear, and we entered the sea at a shallow beach and just had a test dive to see if everything was OK. While "diving" in the shallows (it was really like deep snorkeling, as we were just getting used to everything), I saw a beautiful cone shell that I picked up to look at. The dive master saw me and immediately told me to drop it, which I did. When we got to the top, he said, "When I said don't touch or pick up anything, I meant it. The shell you picked up fires poisonous darts at predators, and you are mighty lucky that you did not get hit with one." He went on to stress very strongly that the prettier something in the sea looks, the greater the chance that it is very dangerous.  We all got the message. Then we did our real dive, along a wall reef.

The Biyaadhoo Wall

Scuba diving is done at a leisurely drift pace as the Indian Monsoon Current sweeps through the island atolls, moving nutrients and divers along. This nutrient-rich water flows up along the walls, feeding the beautiful sponges and soft corals clinging to the rock sides. This leisurely wall dive was fairly easy, with a light current. The instructor had told us to stay close to him, since, when faced with a wall in a deep place, people tend to forget how deep they are and wind up going way beyond the 30 m limit. So I was conscious enough to stay nearby. The island itself is like a pencil that rises up from about a mile deep, so the wall continues down forever. There was much vegetation, abundant coral, and lots of fish—the waters around Biyaadhoo are filled with numerous types of aquatic life. You can see clownfish, blue-stripe snappers, groupers, butterfly fish of several colors, sea turtles, and tunas. I also saw plenty of sea life, including a group of golden angel fish, a big napoleon wrasse, a moray eel, a colorful lionfish, and white tipped reef sharks. Some people said they saw some spotted mantas and some eagle rays. Sometimes we were surrounded by dozens of blue-and-yellow palette surgeonfish, or by colorful parrotfish, and we were all amazed by the lushness and brightness of the colors as well as by the enormous quantity of fish. The number of colors and varieties of both the corals and other marine life was so amazing that I just wanted to stay there and look at it all forever. It was so beautiful, it opened my heart with deep love for the Earth and the treasures of her seas.

Friendly Surgeonfish

While floating almost effortlessly in the water, another member of our group, an Italian guy (?) got too close and accidentally yanked the regulator right out of my mouth. The instructor later told me that he was amazed at how casually I just reached for it and put it back in, not really phased at all. I had really taken to heart his dictum that "panic underwater = disaster." That was really all it was—I was determined not to breathe in water or panic. He praised me for my cool thinking and quick action, and recommended that I go on to get my PADI certification. We did not stay long enough for me to do that, but as we were again on the same flight with NT and Mr. S on the trip back to Japan, I arranged to get my C Card from Mr. S a couple of weeks later in Tokyo.

Diving in the Maldives is amazing—it must be one of the top spots in the world. The water is so clear you can see for 20 m easily. It is like diving in an enormous aquarium, except that the water seems even cleaner and goes on forever. The Maldives are an underwater photographer’s dream come true, so it is a great place to take the PADI Digital Underwater Photographer course. In addition, because of the gentle drift current, the PADI Drift Diver course will prepare you for the drift dives through the channels. These days, enriched air (nitrox) is also available, so the PADI Enriched Air Diver course is a good idea for those of you who want to extend their underwater time on shallow dives.

It was an incredible adventure, and ever since then, whenever I travel anywhere where the diving is good, I always try to manage to get in a few dives. The best so far have entailed being kissed by a Manta (off Kona, Hawai'i); swimming with a whale shark (Maldives and Bali); playing with the dolphins and being visited by a pod of humpback whales (also off Kona, Hawai'i); and meeting Mustafa, the guardian barracuda of the "Liberty" wreck in Tulamben (Bali); and being visited by eagle rays in the Red Sea (off Sharm el-Sheikh, the Sinai peninsula).

After the dive, I made my way back to my room (on the second floor) and rested before dinner, but  before that I had heard the next chapter in the story of Ms. S. . . .

It seems that after we shunned her, Ms. S managed to get taken out on a boat bringing out a group of divers to a good dive spot, but then she used someone else's air (as she has not reserved her own ahead of time, there were no extra tanks on board for her to use); without even asking, she just took it and attached her gear and went diving. When told of her mistake, she did not think she had done anything wrong and  was not willing to make any recompense, thinking the air was there for whoever used it first. So the person who had paid for the air and the dives was not able to dive. And as if that had not been enough, she even broke the guage on that other guest's tank! If it had been me, I'd would have pushed her overboard and quoted Paul Lynde when asked what someone says instead of "Man overboard" when it is a woman: "Full steam ahead!" The head of the diving center was livid, and had been complaining when my group got back from our dive. I told M all about it and he said that we should have nothing more to do with her during our time on Biyaadhoo. I thoroughly agreed, and we shook our heads and laughed at how self-centered and inconsiderate some people can be. . . .