sábado, 11 de abril de 2015

On improving your skills and never stopping learning…



Hey there!

I am really sorry I haven’t been writing here at all lately although (or because) it has been anything but quite around here! While I have been trying to upload the manta database to mantamatcher and noticed again how much work it is, I have also been reading about Hydatina physis and started to look “into the insides” of the two specimens I collected in the rock pool here in Zavora. Furthermore, we had two very nice young girls here that were doing their first diving certification (Junior Open Water Diving) and for which I prepared a little presentation about marine life and marine biology. They enjoyed their time here a lot and for me it was truly great to see them smile during their first dives and later discuss what marine organisms they had seen. I think it was awesome that they saw a white tip reef shark and a sea turtle (among other also great marine organisms) on their “introduction dives”… That doesn’t happen to everybody…It was really a nice time for everybody.
[Sea turtle we saw on one of the four Open Water Dives the girls had to do.]
Another thing I did the past weeks is an Advanced Nitrox course with Jon! Remember I told you not to tell my mum about me wanting to go “all technical” in diving? Well, I told her about it, and after a while she pushed away the rather unnecessary worries and she recognized the advantages it has for my future to get more diving experience and try to get beyond the limits of recreational diving in order to be able to do better scientific work under water. Nitrox mixes (which is basically a mix like air but with more or less oxygen and nitrogen) offer possibilities that you wouldn’t have if you were diving on compressed air. To say the least, you can reduce your probability of decompression sickness if you dive conservatively. Moreover, you can stay deeper and/or longer when you are diving on Nitrox allowing for more time on the bottom (on a reef) for example for sampling and getting data for scientific purposes. So basically I am improving my diving skills in order to be good enough for when I truly need it in my scientific future.

[Julian, with whom I did my course together with.]
That’s why I “jumped” on the chance to join a course Jon had planned to instruct to a very nice guy named Julian. He used the free time during Easter holiday to come from Maputo to Zavora just to do the course. Some friends of him came along and I think they had quite a good time on the beach and the Rock Pool with Yara as well. An advanced nitrox course is not done in just a few hours or days so I spent more time with Julian though and I was happy to have a buddy to do the course with (my previous experiences with diving courses have been rather “the-instructor-and-me” kinda experiences, which is nice, but you don’t have anybody to share the same experience with). Plus, taking a course together with someone else is more fun anyway! While trying to get my buoyancy right in the pool and during the dives I didn’t feel as bad as I think I would have if I had been alone. We both were having some problems! And we could discuss the exercises and the dives. We could discuss what it felt like to be at 45m and try to deploy an SMB (surface marker buoy)… ;)

[The plates that we used for our twin-tanks with wing jackets. You basically assemble the twin-tanks, a wing jacket and a plate together like a sandwich and off you go.]
Honestly, my biggest problem in the beginning was getting used to the new equipment set up. Let me say this…when you have been diving with a “normal” BCD (a jacket) with a single tank for many years and now have to dive on a twin set and with a wing jacket…just trust me…you really have to get used to it. Moreover, with two tanks on my back I suddenly dropped like a stone because of all the weight and had to get used to inflate my jacket more. Furthermore, when doing deco dives you take a stage bottle with which has the deco gas you use for the deco stops. Basically, you are loaded with tanks (and it is just the beginning) and you have to get used to working with them attached to your side. 

[Twin set tanks and some stage bottles we used on one of our dives.]
Good for me, the equipment is basically the only thing that I will really have to get used to and see whether I manage to feel as good wearing a twin set than I do already diving with my beloved and well-known jacket with a single tank. But giving all the advantage it has diving on a twin set with a wing jacket…I want to adjust as soon as I can. It was nice to see that Julian also found that the new equipment takes some time getting used to.
[Stage bottles we used in one of our dives. See the little one? That one is a 3L tank. It was enough for me for the deco stop of one dive! Isn’t it cute?]

In my opinion though, the coolest part about the course was the physical, mathematical and physiological theory on decompression diving and dive planning; when it’s all about gas mixes, pressures, not getting oxygen toxicity and not getting bent. When you try to figure out what is the best breathing gas mix for a dive you plan to do. When you know that theoretically your dive will be safe and good if you stick to the plan and don’t surpass the limits. When you visualize your dive in your head and calculate the minutes you have to do a deco-stop to allow for the minutes you want to stay in the bottom. When you go deeper than you have been before and the adrenaline starts pumping through your veins because of the unknown. New flora and fauna but also new mental experiences you have to account for.

It is a good feeling to know that I am getting new diving experiences and that with that I am actually learning how to dive safer and take better care of myself under water and learn to be disciplined enough to plan a dive ahead as good as you can (I think I don’t need to be disciplined in that since for me it is very much fun!). Nonetheless, if you want to dedicate your life to something, you should keep in mind to be as safe as you can while you are in the environment you are gonna be working in. I am one step closer to be a safe scientific diver! 

I think the nowadays fashionable recreational diving restricts a scientific diver in their performance by not really allowing safe (!!) solo dives. Having said this, I am aware that scientific dives have to be performed solo if there is no other way (no scientific buddy or dive buddy in close proximity and individual data has to be sampled!)… So in my opinion technical diving offers the diver a (safer) freedom that recreational diving never could. Needless to say that it does so while surpassing the depth AND time limits of recreational diving.

All in all, I really enjoyed the course, I learned a lot of new things and I had really good dives. Jon truly is a very good instructor! Thanks Jon! :) I will surely try to come back to be further instructed in the art of technical diving! 

On one of our dives Julian and I saw a Blotched fantail ray. Awesome moment! It was on Yogis (remember? the reef I kinda felt in love with?) and we were leaving the known 33m to go deeper on 40m diving over an edge…and the ray actually followed us to the edge…maybe making sure we were gonna be ok down there? ;) Sadly, I didn’t have my camera with me (the underwater housing is only rated to 40m) so I didn’t take any pictures at all…

Nonetheless, while on a dive to get used to the equipment we were on a shallower reef to which I took my camera with. J And luckily, I saw something interesting I had not seen before. It can be called “nudibranch-porn”. The two specimens of Halgerda wasiniensis on the picture are mating! See the “tunel” between them? It is actually their penises! 

 [“Nudibranch-porn”: two nudibranchs mating.]
Now, you might be asking about the turtles….”what happened with them?” “Did they hatch?” Well…long story short…this year there was no luck with the sea turtles except for seeing them under the water. On the surface…no hatchings, poached nests and little amount of tracks of turtles nesting. Nonetheless, we never gave up hope and with the help of Jess (a girl in Tofo doing a PhD on sea turtles of Mozambique) we (Alex from Dunas, Yara and me) dig up a hole in the dune where we expected the eggs to be. We dig and dig and dig…and nothing. I don’t know if you can see how big the hole was…we had already covered it a little bit up when I took the pic, so it was bigger than it seems… Let’s hope next season is better!

[Hole we dig to search for the eggs.]
Next post I will tell you about my social experience in Quissico, a little town south of Zavora…just one anticipation: Comex, school children and a white girl with long brown hair in a little town of Africa…

Until then, have a nice day…baba :D


[How could I not post a pic of the white tip reef shark I saw? ^^]


Sem comentários:

Enviar um comentário