Tropical DVM: Open Ocean diving

So our third round of block exams came and went. This is Lindsey, Kristen, Kristin, and myself enjoying a celebratory shot that they are over! Worth celebrating too, I got 2 A's and 2 B's, good enough for me (:

So I did not get to celebrate pazcki day, but I did have some fun on St. Pattys day! Though the girls and I were talking about how we have reached a point that we want to go home, we still had fun. I have come to the conclusion that around the last 3 weeks of the semester, enough is enough already! I will most likely hit a wall at this point every semester in which I want to go home and am sick of it here. It will get better I hope, everyone has bad days right?

They had green island beer called STAG, not any Caribe ):

Lindsey lives in Warren MI, holla MI!! Her mom sent her a bunch of St. Pattys attire because they usually celebrate it big time at home!

So in light of it being the weekend after exams, and there being a full two weeks before the next exam block, we decided to get our open water scuba diving done. We had two dives on Sunday and two dives on Monday. I am not going to sit here and say I wasn't terrified to jump into the ocean and go down 60ft....I actually believe I told Jenny I wanted my money back and that I couldn't go haha..However scared I was, once I jumped off the end of the boat and went under water I was fine. I was actually more than fine, I was elated! So happy that I decided to go ahead and do this because I saw the most amazing things. I did have trouble equalizing the air pressure in my ears at first, it started to get a bit painful decending down to the 60 ft. I got the hang of popping my ears under water with a mask on and a regulator in my mouth eventually.

We are on our way to the first dive site which was off of Reggae Beach. There was pretty good visibility, about 60-70 ft. There was a sunken freighter and a van (lol). But the freightor had been there for a couple 100 years so it looked really cool. We couldn't swim into it or anything (like I am even that skilled yet), but it was amazing to swim around it.

So scared!

Just waving to our instructor. A fun note is that our instrutor has been teaching scuba for over 12 years, he actually taught the first veterinarian to go into outer space how to scuba to prepare him for weightlessness...pretty coool!

This weird creature that looks like an alien is a sea cucumber!! One of the other instructors picked it and pretty much threw it to me..now mind you, throwing something under water is pretty funny how long it took to get to my palms. It felt rather slimy and grosse, I would not recommend it.

Crawly, HUGE lobsters under a rock in a reef.

Dive #3-4! At Camps reef and West Farm reef, which are right infront of school. It was pretty awesome to scuba looking at school knowing everyone else was cooped up in a classroom. (possibly one of the only reasonable perks of Vetprep)

I felt much better about this second dive, and a good thing too because it was a bit wavy that day. Here I am just setting up my gear. Unfortunately I had a tendency to suck up too much of the air in my tank. I was down to 500psi out of 3000 on my submerssion pressure gauge after about 50 min, whereas everyone finished at about 1500psi...lol I just like my air I guess.

Attaching my BCD (jacket) to the tank and then attaching the regulator to the cylinder valve.

Did I mention how unbelievably cold we were after each dive. I had to wear a long sleave and full leg wet suit and my lips still turned purple! One would think that it would be really warm in the carribean, certainly not 60 ft down though!

Kristen, Maddie, Jenny, and myself.

This is where I got really terrified my first dive...but by now (my third dive) I am a pro (;

The dreaded mask removal!!! In the pool training we had to remove our mask, put it back on, and get the water out, all without getting water up our nose! This was even worse in salt water, yuck! It is over now though, so I don't have to worry about it ever again.

One of the first fish we see during the third dive was a puffer! Our instructor pulled out his macgyver moves and actually caught one for us to hold.

I don't think I have to explain how unbelievable that was...

Spiny dude, but we held him really gently so no worries about getting poked.

Lion fish

Actually, the thumbs up symbol means I want to ascend to the surface, but you get what I am throwing out here right? Actually this was right before our instructor brought us to a volcanic vent on the ocean floor. You could feel the heat coming out, so inevitably we all wanted to huddle around it to get warm...

Tube coral

Angelfish rock beauty

Great barrcuda!! Ahhh

Taking our 3 min rest before completely ascending to the surface. Don't we look pretty, when in realty we are all fricken freazing! Jenny and I were joking around about how we were going to purchase wetsuits made out of pure whale blubber in order to remain warm...I think it is a fantastic idea!