St. Thomas and Scuba Diving

 Because we arrived in St. Thomas in the late evening, I had no idea what to expect when I first woke up.  Even then, the curtains were drawn.  I threw on my workout clothes and rushed outside.  This is what I saw:

This place is beautiful.  It’s known for its white, sand beaches, and what a surprise to find one of them right outside my door.  If I hadn’t already committed myself to the fitness center, I would have jumped right in the water.  However, exercise helps control my allergies which I need to control when scuba diving, so it was off to the elliptical.  There is a shuttle that runs from our bungalow back to the main hotel, but who in the world would give up the 5 minute walk along the beach?  Not me!  It was one of those moments where words just can’t describe the scene.  Between the waves lapping on shore, the sun rising over the ocean and the breeze on my face, I felt like I was in heaven.

After a good workout (in a great fitness center), it was back to the room.  As I jumped in the shower, I realized what a fool I was.  Why hadn’t I put on my suit and jumped in the ocean?  Or the pool?  Lesson number one about island life—showers are for dinner.

At 12:00, John came back to the room from his conference, we picked up our scuba gear and we were off.

Something John and I are beginning to appreciate is that in order to scuba dive, one must utilize many methods of transportation.  Just to get to a place where we can dive, we must drive to an airport, get on a plane, and take a shuttle to the hotel.  Once there, we are transported to the boat dock via cab, or shuttle, and then must wait out a boat ride to the actual site.  It takes a while.  (I will never forget running to catch the ferry from Cancun to Cozumel, only 9 months after breaking my ankle!)  This time was no different.  We were picked up in a truck that has seats in the bed of the truck.  

Our sweet ride...

So, as our driver was driving on the left side of the road (it’s an experience like no other when one is accustomed to driving on the right) with pedestrians, and animals (i.e. chickens) and other crazy drivers, we were trying to mentally prepare for our dive.  We finally got to the boat and prepared for the trip out to the site.

Duane, me and John (aka Fish Butt)

I like this diving company (Admiralty Dive Shop). They are a small, local company, and so far, their employees are great.  Our divemaster was a guy affectionately called “Fish Butt”.  Legend has it that he has that name tattooed on his back side, or a picture that represents that name---I’m unsure of the details as I didn’t really want to ask.  I have no idea how old he is—he seems young, but he has a lot of experience.  I’d go so far as to say he’s skinnier than Mark, tanned and a great guy.  At first, he seemed rather rude, and one of the ladies going with us (named Theresa) didn’t seem too happy. When I told him to call me Ann (my go-to name when I have to give my name and don’t want to spell it, or hear it mispronounced repeatedly) to avoid confusion between Theresa and Larisa, he seemed pleased and told me that he had changed his name to Fish Butt for the same reason.  There are a million “John”s on the island, and he wanted to distinguish himself.  I was happy to call him John after that   The best thing about him was that despite his coolness, he is a total naturalist which pleases me like nothing else.  The main reason I love scuba is to learn about the underwater world.  I have spent several hours perusing books of tropical fish so that I can know what I am seeing under the water.  I like to know their characteristics so that I know what to look for.  As an aside, my favorite fish to spot is a juvenile parrot fish, but my favorite fish to swim with is a yellow snapper.  They are curious to no end, and I love to fake them out when they are swimming close by.

Anyway, John had a lot to tell us, especially about the invasive species of lionfish that are killing the native fish in the Caribbean.  As he was explaining the measures that are being taken to exterminate the fish, I knew he was going to talk about catching them and killing them on the spot.  He turned to me and started to say something, and in my excitement at seeing the execution, I said, “Oh yeah, BABY!” at which point a look of relief came over him and he said, “Good, nobody has any problems with that.”  What?  Did he think I’m some kind of animal conservationist?  Hey man, if we lived 200 feet further from another home, I would buy my own shotgun and take out the deer that walk through our land, eat our plants and drop ticks on the ground!  I’m not sure why he singled me out as being possibly sensitive to this fact.  I’m just glad that something is being done to save the reef, having seen what an invasive species has done over the last 30 years to the fresh water springs in northern Florida.

So onto the good details that I’m sure Mark has been waiting to hear…if he is still with me on this after reading all these boring details.

As we headed out to the site, the nerves started.  I don’t know what it is, but there’s something about getting ready to go underwater.  I think, being new, some of the anxiety rests in the fact that I only have 10 dives under my belt, and diving isn’t completely natural yet.  However, I’m coming to realize that every dive is a learning experience, either through something scary happening, or through the lack of any excitement.  Don’t I WISH this dive had been one of those non-exciting experiences…

We were going down to a wreck at 60 feet.  No big deal.  I’ve dived to 90 feet off Cozumel, and our last dive in Cancun was to a wreck at 70 feet.  Since there had been a brief shower that morning, the visibility was only 40-50 feet (instead of the usual 80-100 feet), but the water was 83 degrees, BABY!

We have never dived on an overcast day, but I learned that it makes a big difference.  I could see fish that I recognized and knew, but it was like their brightness had been dimmed.  I needed the “Brightness” switch on my TV to turn up their color.  I missed that.

The crazy thing was that I couldn’t equalize.  You know the pressure you feel underwater (like at the bottom of a 20-foot pool)?  Well, going down you pinch your nose and blow every couple of feet as you descend, and the craziest thing happens.  Your ears squeak and the pressure is gone.  It’s a lovely reinforcement that all is well to hear that squeak.  Well, I’ve had really bad problems with my allergies since I returned from Michigan this summer, and as much as my allergist and I are trying to get back to my normal baseline, it hasn’t worked.  Usually when I come scuba diving, I go on steroids to make sure that I don’t have any inflammation or water in my Eustachian tubes, so that I can equalize easily.  I’ve been taking my normal dose of 20 mg a day (quite a strong dose) in preparation, but my ears were having none of it.  There was a line down to the bottom of the ocean that we were supposed to follow, but I had to keep going back up the line to try and clear my ears.  Of course, I had been the last one in line off the boat so everyone was down waiting for me, and I felt a lot of pressure.  I saw myself as having to go back up and quit the dive.  However, I finally got my right ear to a point that was not horribly uncomfortable (about 50 feet).  I was so thankful that I could still go with the group.

That being said, I had a lot of problems.  Because of the stress of trying to clear my ears, I wasn’t feeling very calm.  My regulator wasn’t sitting straight in my mouth, and instead of trying to readjust it, I just held it in with my hand.  Turns out (and I didn’t know this), but the vents on the front of the reg are needed for the air to flow.  I was covering them up, and air wasn’t coming in.  I started to panic along with swallow sea water.  Of course, my mask was also filling up with water at the same time, so I had sea water going up my nose too.  It was one of the first times where I thought I was going to need to shoot to the surface.  However, diving is all about remaining calm, and remembering that you have been trained for these kinds of situations.  First, I got my hand off the front of the reg, and the air started flowing again.  I swallowed more sea water, but in my head I knew that wasn’t anything terrible. Next, I cleared the water in the mask by using the survival skill taught in my certification class.  I tipped my head back, let the bubbles from my reg fill my mask, and closed it up.  It was scary as all get out, again because of the pressure I felt to not shoot to the surface—it would ruin everyone’s dive—but I handled it and all was good.  Like I said, every dive is a lesson.

Here’s another problem that I’m discovering about diving.  Once you have visited the Rolls Royces of diving sites, everything else pales in comparison.  Cozumel, Grand Cayman and Isla Roatan were over the top beautiful.  In fact, I remember being emotionally overwhelmed when I first headed underwater there (and those were still my certification dives).  The colors are unbelievable, and wildlife is everywhere.  When I tell people about it, I compare it to walking through the forest and having herds of squirrels, and flocks of birds and families of foxes all within arms reach.  And they are there as long as you keep walking.  In other words, the density of wildlife is thick underwater, and it’s my favorite part of diving.  Just as I have a physical reaction to the music of J.S. Bach and something inside of me resets my “health” button when I hear it, the same with the artistic palette of the ocean.  It resets the psyche to see so much beauty in such a small area of water.

The problem is that other sites aren’t like those.  While I can see hundreds of Blue Tangs in the Western Caribbean, here I was lucky to see two.  While the walls of corals extend for miles in Cozumel, here there is just a small outcropping of reef surrounded by sand.  It’s hard not to feel disappointed, and I think the challenge is to find other fascinating creatures of nature that aren’t quite so obvious.  

We did see a spotted eel, but I almost missed it.  It was seriously the color of the sand, and if it weren’t for its eyes, I would never have known it was there.  Lobsters were abundant, and in the sand, John (my John) saw two eyes protruding.  Turns out, it was our friend, the ray, and John couldn’t resist spooking him from his covering layer of sand.  He swam up three feet, circled (maybe he took lessons from our airplane flight), and settled back down in the sand.  Very cool.

When we came up, I was very upfront about the troubles I had.  Turns out, just about everyone had had issues, but of course none of them said anything until after both dives were over.  One guy who hadn’t dived in 5 years (and hadn’t taken a refresher course) said he couldn’t ever clear his ears during the first dive, and he spent the entire dive feeling like his head was going to explode.  That’s where the pressure of diving with a group is a negative.  He probably felt the same pressure I had felt (not the ear kind, but the social kind) to not hold anybody back, and he suffered for it.  I honestly don’t know how he stayed underwater.  (I was told a couple days later that he came up with his mask filled with blood--poor guy...)  I was glad that I had taken the time to work through it (despite people waiting for me) so that I could enjoy the dive more, and I felt sick for him.

The second dive was so much better.  My ears finally cleared at 40 feet, and the dive didn’t go much lower than that.  We saw a beautiful Hawksbill turtle resting under the reef, and of course John (again, my John) couldn’t resist going close enough so that he swam out for all to see.  On this dive, John (the other John) found two lionfish.  Unfortunately, air was low so we couldn’t stay around to see him slaughter them, darn it, but he brought them back to the boat afterwards.  It’s amazing to see how big and fierce they look in the water (and they actually are with their venomous spines), but how tiny and well, fish-like they look on land.

We popped gum in our mouths after the dives, a Larisa remedy that I’m finding more and more people appreciate.  After diving, there’s so much sea water on your face and lips that it tastes bad.  A lot of people drink fresh water after a dive, but I’ve found there’s nothing like spearmint gum—it’s not that you’re thirsty after a dive, but you want something in your mouth.  Too, I learned several years ago that peppermint is the homeopathic remedy for nausea which I have suffered with my entire life.  There are so many people who feel seasick after diving, and that tasty piece of spearmint gum has been a lifesaver for me.

John didn’t look so good, and it was at this point that he told me that he too had been having troubles with his ears.  Man, I don’t know if it was the water, or what (obviously it’s not the water, but that’s the saying—it’s something in the water—which doesn’t work so well when you are actually in the water.  Nevermind…)  There were lots of issues, but the crazy thing is that we still want to go back.  Every dive isn’t going to be perfect, and I must admit that I learned a lot from the troubles I had.  Too, I moved up another peg on my diving-confidence scale.  It’s all good.

John and I came home tired, but John’s hunger overrode our exhaustion, and we headed out to eat.  We didn’t want to get in another taxi to take in the local cuisine, but succumbed to the fare at the resort.  It was good, but the best part was sitting by the ocean while eating it.

We came back to our new room (John had insisted that the resort move us because he said the other room smelled like mold.  Not a good thing for me when my one and only allergy is to 9 out of 10 molds on the planet).  We watched Survivor (a bonus to staying in the US Virgin Islands—American TV) and we went to bed.

A great day overall.