Starting the Adventure

I had no idea what I was in for when I walked into the dive shop and signed up to take the PADI open water diver course. Diving sounded like fun. I just wanted to try it. But I really had no idea what was involved - you just strap a tank to your back and jump in the water! I found it amusing to find myself there on the beach for my ocean dives two weeks later, that same tank strapped to my back, and small kids pointing at me and saying "Look mom! A Scuba diver!" Wow! And by the end of the weekend, I was! It felt so strange to go from barely knowing anything about Scuba to being A Scuba Diver. What kind of person is a Scuba diver anyway?

Some highlights of my first weekend of diving...
We used a float to mark the spot we were diving. After swimming out a ways, we turned back and saw there was a sea otter hopping around in the float! That really made me laugh. Later, we surfaced and were hanging onto the float, and here came Mr. Otter again ... swimming right towards us! I was laughing and laughing as he kept swimming closer. He finally realized we were hanging onto his play spot, dove down under the water, and swam away. Hehe.

Though the visibility was only about 10 feet, we managed to see a lot of interesting critters. Tons of purple olive snails (that's the main type of shell I've found washed up on the beach in Santa Cruz and Monterey - fun to see them all in real life driving around in the sand in about 7 feet of water). Tons of starfish. A few sandabs. And my favorite of all - lots of really nice crabs. One nice sized yellow crab, who reached his claws out at us menacingly. One beefy squarish crab hiding down under a pipe. Now the quest begins ... which crab is which? Time to look for a book on crabs of the pacific coast!