Homework. Diving. Take Your Pick.

This was a relatively uneventful week. Actually, I take that back. As a result of having engaged in absolutely zero homework for two weeks straight, this week I got to partake in a small amount of catch up in order to turn in three papers, give two presentations, and take a final.

I did, however, manage to squeeze in some fun. After making the aquaintence of a dive shop owner at three in the morning outside a karaoke bar on Saturday night and proceeding to converse halfway intelligently throughout the following hour, I was invited to join the his current open water class on their dives to Tijeretas and Karahua on Monday afternoon. So, after putting a presentation together while my professor lectured tonelessly throughout the morning, I headed out once again to explore ecosystems thriving on submerged basalt and steel. At Tijeretas, upon summersaulting off the boat, we found ourselves directly above a massive marble ray dosing in the sand in a break among the boulders. We went on to swim with turtles, scare up a zebra moray, discover giant green and yellow sea cucumbers wedged under rocks, and encounter an octopus who initially managed to squeeze the whole of himself into a hole bored in his resident boulder by a long-dead sea urchin. After waiting a few seconds and determining that humans in actuality posed no threat to its earthly existence, it oozed out of its hideaway to the top of the rock, keeping a watchful eye on us as it perched, all eight legs curled under, body swaying slightly in the mild current.

Upon arriving in the middle of the bay, approximately 150 meters from each of two buoys and directly between León Dormido (far in the distance) and the cemetery (adjacent to the bay), we discovered that the air-filled plastic gallon jugs connected to the line to Karahua had managed to fill themselves instead with water, failing to uphold the line and leaving us with (having forgotten the GPS) no way to find the wreck. So, following our brave and fearless leader’s dead reckoning, we dropped down to the bottom along our anchor line and began swimming. Sure enough, after five or ten minutes, the wreckage loomed through the murk up out of the ocean floor once again. We encountered the seahorse again, wafting back and forth as it curled up asleep around a branch of coral growing horizontally from a steel beam. We again explored engines, propellers, anchors, and the boat’s skeleton before heading back up to the surface and reattaching a previously cut buoy to the line. My invitation was then extended to join the group on Wednesday to repeat the dives in the group’s advanced open water course.

Wednesday turned out to be Friday. This time at Tijeretas we dropped down to the seafloor, situated at about 31 meters, to where a colony of sand-colored garden eels extended out of sight. Each individual snaked its head and the front half of its body out of a hole in the sand, camouflaged nearly to invisiblity, snapping at microscopic prey passing by with the current. As we passed over before setting down, the eerily serpent-like eels retracted, leaving nothing to show for their presence except a vast, sandy seabed riddled with tiny holes, heads hidden out of sight around curves.

Nothing new, brilliant, exciting, and heretofore unmentioned occurred at Karahua. Upon returning to the dock to unload, however, we spotted a school of at least two hundred baby golden rays passing under the boat as adults hovered over and around them. After popping on snorkels and hopping in, we realized that our 7mm wetsuits (wonderful for diving to 30 m with full gear and extra weights) had the exact same effect as the dead sea (which, in fact, is technically a solution due to the low water/other ratio). We therefore floated above the rays, entirely unable to dip below the surface of the water as we lazily paddled after them as twilight descended around us.

Also, this week is break. Not much going on: a lot of snorkeling to turn up moray eels, sea cucumbers, turtles, and countless species of fish. Also relaxing on the beach, reading, and sleeping in. So, this week and next week may be combined into one post.