Fiji Trip: Summary

At long last, I have posted my Fiji trip report!  Rob and I spent a week in Fiji, at Koro Sun Resort near Savusavu.  The trip was organized by Anywater Sports, and was our first ever shop trip.  The diving was nice, and some of it was super awesome.  We did a total of 15 dives over 6 days, which of course was not enough diving for Rob.  I thought that the amount of diving was in principle okay, but that the amount of time/effort spent diving versus the amount of diving was not really ideal.    It seemed like we spent nearly all day everyday diving, or walking back and forth between our room and the dive boat.  If I were to go back to Fiji (which I'm sure I will someday), I would do a few things differently.  I would definitely do it as a liveaboard -- both so I could do more diving (or the same amount, with more time to lay around and read), and because I imagine that on a liveaboard, a higher proportion of the dives would be of the super awesome variety.  I wanted to do something land-based because I wanted to see Fiji and its terrestrial creatures.  But I didn't really have a lot of time to chase butterflies anyway, so I think a better way to do it would be a liveaboard with a few non-dive days tacked on at the end.  So that's how I'd do it next time!  Also, unless I was taking a longer trip, I would try to go somewhere that does not require a flight within Fiji (and this may apply elsewhere as well).  We blew almost a day on each end with the travel from Nadi to Savusavu.  Assuming there's equally good diving to be done on the same island that you fly into, I would try to do that.

Since this was our first shop trip, here are my thoughts on that.  There were certainly both pros and cons to traveling with a group.  It was very nice to have someone else do all of the haggling with the airline, especially when they cancelled our flights!  On the other hand, our group was definitely too large for the dive shop to handle, and I suspect the diving experience would have been more efficient with a smaller group.  Or maybe it would have been exactly the same, but we would have had to deal with all the other crap ourselves.  I thought it was fun travelling with the shop, but it would have been a lot more fun with a much smaller group.  So I will probably stick to smaller group trips in the future.

Air Pacific is a pretty ghetto airline.  I didn't find the flight experience to be as good as I have on other recent transoceanic flights.  I guess you don't have that many other options though.  To be fair, I heard that the planes we flew on were about to be retired (like within a week's time), so perhaps the new planes are better?  I thought the resort was fine; it wasn't particularly luxurious but it was perfectly nice.  However, it is definitely a resort with some diving, and not a dive resort.  All of the people we interacted with at the resort were very friendly, and some of them gave really excellent service (like the bartender, who knew my name before I'd even visited the bar).  The dive shop clearly could not deal with so many divers.  They did their best to keep us happy, but I think we would have been a lot happier if there were fewer divers around while we were there. They were perfectly happy to let us wander off on our own, and did not (practically speaking) limit our dive time, which I liked.  And Colin really wanted to find good subjects for Rob to photograph (despite Rob's rather stubborn refusal to follow a DM of any sort :P).

So that's the summary.  Here are the reports day by day:

Fiji Trip: Getting to Fiji
Fiji Day 1: Hammerheads (or not) and Al50s
Fiji Day 2: Turtle Turtle
Fiji Day 3: Namena Marine Reserve
Fiji Day 4: Macro Day!
Fiji Day 5: Somosomo Strait
Fiji Day 6: The Elusive Hammerhead
Fiji Trip: Going Home

I have included a lot of Rob's pictures in this report, but there are even more and they can all be found here.

And the winner is...

I held off briefly on selecting a winner for the 2012 Calendar Giveaway, since I wanted to leave the Big Sur Banks post at the top of the blog for a few more days :)  But, I wouldn't want the winner to miss out on the January page completely, so the winner is... Doug (the author of the eighth comment)!  How convenient for me; since Doug is local, I can hand deliver the calendar.

Big Sur Banks in January!

 As the weekend approached, we were watching the forecast closely.  It looked like it should be alright on Saturday but not so good by Monday (Sunday didn't really matter, since we weren't diving on that day!).  But the forecast was really volatile.  Every time there was an update, things looked different.  But Saturday looked like it would be at least pretty good.  On Friday, Kevin mumbled something about Sur 19, to which I silently replied "Kevin, you're a moron".  But as we headed out of Monterey Bay, the water was flat.  Jim asked where we wanted to go, and said that the GPS was currently set to GPS.  Okay, I take it back, Kevin is not a moron, or at least not as it regards this one small issue :)  Considering the blatantly flat conditions, we decided to have a little fun with Rob, who was asleep, and when he woke up, we told him we were going to head to Lunaticos, because it seemed a bit too rough to continue.  Since, as Rob says, I am a very bad liar, the jig was quickly up.  On the way down the coast, we saw a couple of gray whales, but we didn't stop to say hello -- there was a dive to do!  We also noticed the water color improving as we drove further south.  Woohoo.

When we pulled up to Sur 19, the conditions were great!  It was a nice calm day to get geared up and into the water.  I was the first to splash, and found very little surface current.  I'd almost say that there was no surface current, but I was technically slowly moving away from the boat.  I corralled the boys and we headed down the line.  The line was fairly vertical near the top, and then flattened out as we approached the bottom, because there was some bottom current.  The viz was excellent.  I think it was the second best viz I've ever had at Big Sur Banks.  But since the best viz I've ever had there is basically unbeatable, I think second is pretty good :)  I noticed an annoying noise as I was scootering down the line, and I eventually determined it was bubbles from my right post.  It wasn't that noisy, but somehow the combination of the sound of my scooter and the sound of the bubbles was surprisingly distressing.  It was like someone was whining behind my ear.  So I asked Rob to take a look and he made an effort to fix it.  That effort failed, so I just had to live with the noise.  But I remembered to do my flow check!

We agreed to do a little loop around the base of the pinnacle, looking for GPOs and wolf eels and the like.  We did not find any such critters, though I saw a surprising number of lingcod.  The school of rockfish that is usually around was not on the main pinnacle.  But I found a pretty big group of blues and olives on a little pinnaclet off to the side.  I was looking at them, trying to get Rob to come over to take some pictures, but he was not interested.  So we headed back to the main pinnacle and spent most of the dive drooling over the hydrocoral.  I found a lingcod guarding his nest, so Rob spent a while trying to get a shot of that.  The lingcod was really not very cooperative.  He was more interested in trying to scoot us away from his nest than posing for a picture.  So there was a lot of waiting for him to settle back down by the eggs.  Once Rob gave up on that, we spent the rest of the dive on the very top of the pinnacle.  The current seemed to have picked up by this time, so posing for pictures (and I imagine shooting them) was quite a pain.  Take one shot, get swept across the pinnacle, then scooter back and repeat.  But who can complain about having to drift across the top of Sur 19 over and over again?

The deco was pretty uneventful.  There were some jelly critters to look at, but not a ton.  Early in our deco, a sea lion made a very brief appearance.  I whipped out my hero cam in case he came back, but of course he did not.  When we got to the surface, we were the first team up, oddly.  The surface conditions were so placid that I was lollygagging at the ladder while getting my fins off, and let go of the ladder without either of my fins on.  The very mild surface current managed to drag me just beyond reach of the ladder.  After attempting to paddle back with my fins on my arms, I gave up and started to put them back on my feet, when Rob swooped by on his scooter and towed me back to the ladder.  I felt like a total moron.  Rob gave me some good advice about not letting go of the ladder this time :)  After we retrieved the rest of the divers, we headed back toward shore and discussed a second dive.  Woohoo, my sad little 32% stage has seen so many tech charters without getting in the water lately!  We wanted to go to Lobos Rocks, but by the time we got there, it was pretty ugly there.  There was much discussion about whether to go, and Jim seemed pretty negative about it.  Since I am a bigger wimp than Jim (by a very small margin, let me assure you), I decided that if Jim didn't think it was prudent to dive, we probably shouldn't dive.  So I was the first to say I was happy to dive elsewhere.  Someone (Jim I guess) rattled off some other options, one of which was MacDonald's.  So I seconded that, since Rob had never been there, and I was thinking with this viz, the arches would be great.

Neither Rob nor Kevin had been to MacD's before, and they were both pretty sullen about not diving at Lobos Rocks.  So I was responsible for navigating and showing them a good time.  I believe I pretty much failed in both respects.  The last time I dove there, the anchor was practically on top of one of the arches.  I knew if I could find that one, that I could definitely find the other from it.  When we got down to the pinnacle, I had not very much of a clue where we were.  The viz was not nearly as good as it had been at Big Sur -- it was stirred up in various places, but pretty good in others.  Overall it was good but not great.  But the water was also a lot more green than it had been at Sur 19.  We dropped down one side of the pinnacle, and I saw another pinnacle very close to us.  I didn't remember there being another pinnacle this close on this side, and I thought I recognized a spot on that other pinnacle.  So I thought we might be one pinnacle over from the arches.  After a meander around the other pinnacle, I realized this was wrong, and continued around the first pinnacle we'd dropped on.  And found the first arch in very short order.  The last time I dove this site, the viz was quite spectacular.  In this viz, the site just wasn't quite what I remembered.  The swimthroughs were still fun, though.  We posed for some pictures, and then headed off to the other one.  I totally overshot it, I guess because last time I was swimming and hence we passed it in about one-third the time.  Once I realized I overshot, we turned around, and I found the second arch on the way back.  We posed for more pictures (quite a lot of pictures, considering only one made the cut and ended up in the BAUE album!) and then headed back to the main pinnacle.  We landed near the downline, and I asked the boys if they wanted to thumb it, and they agreed.  So we headed up.  The conditions had definitely deteriorated a bit throughout the day.  It was still not very rough, but not super calm like the first dive.

Still calm enough to lay down on the deck for the ride home.  I was looking forward to laying down in the sun, but the sun was low enough in the sky that that didn't really work out too well.  I was frosty cold by the time we got back to the dock.

2012 Calendar Giveaway

Since last year's calendar giveaway was a smashing success, I'm doing it again this year!  Here's a thumbnail of the photos in this year's calendar:

Some might say it's too cave heavy, and others will say it's too octopus heavy.  Well, if you don't like it, don't enter to win.  I'm pretty happy with how the calendar turned out, considering that when I thought back over the year, it didn't seem like it was exactly an epic year for diving.  Or for photography.  For various reasons, far too many of my posts in the past year have been photo-less.  I told Rob that my new year's resolution is to have more pictures on my blog.  Sadly that is not really within my control, but maybe that will inspire/pressure Rob.

So, if you want a shot at the calendar, leave a comment by Tuesday, January 17 at 11:59 pm (Pacific time) saying what the coolest dive you did last year was.  Mine was definitely my birthday dive at Birthday Wall.  Close seconds would have to be the two other dives I did at that site, and the best octopus encounter ever.

Once again this year, I decided to do some data crunching for the past year (and once again I was left wondering why the heck I did it in Excel, instead of a relational database).  I "only" did 88 dives this year, which is much lower than last year, but I think I should get extra credit for those 3 or 4 hour cave dives :)  I also didn't include any dives in classes or assisting with classes, which by my count took another 20 days.

This year I dove with 15 distinct dive buddies, also down quite a bit from last year.  I guess I'm becoming a dive snob.  The top 5 buddies by dive count has changed a bit, but no surprises here:

Rob	73
Kevin	14
Matt	9
Clinton	7
Ted	3
Antonio	3

I guess that's technically 6, but there was a tie for 5th.  But if I counted all those C2 class dives, Antonio clearly would have kicked Ted's butt.

And the numbers by certification are:

Rec	27
R3	2
T1	8
T2	20
C1	9
C2	21

The count for rec dives might seem surprisingly high, but that's just because I haven't posted my Fiji trip report yet.  It's coming soon!

Happy New Year!

Is this dive site getting old? No!

The weather for the weekend was looking not so good, with Saturday looking really bad and then it calming down a little for Sunday.  Rob, Matt and I were planning to go out with Phil on Sunday.  Matt also had Phil on Saturday, and Ted and Rob were joining.  I decided to sit that one out, and wait to hear on a conditions report.  Rob claimed that the conditions were not as bad as expected considering the dire predictions, and that Phil didn't seem concerned about Sunday.  Our goal was to hit Birthday Wall, which Matt had never been to before.  The downside of planning such a dive is that if we can't make it to Yankee Point due to weather, there aren't that many other options for sites to go to with 12/65.  But it turned out to settle down quite a bit by Sunday, and getting to Yankee Point was not a problem at all.  In fact, I would describe the conditions as "calm".  It was a delightful day to get geared up in the RIB and have oodles of bottles clipped to you.  The only problem we encountered was a current that looked to be, umm, what's the word, ripping.  It was one of the few times that I really wasn't sure we were going to be able to make it to the site (or to the front of the boat, for that matter) even with scooters.  Somehow I was the unlucky one to be volunteered to roll in first.  I rolled in, and held on to the line on the side of the boat while Phil got my scooter for me.  He handed me my scooter, and said "don't let go, don't let go".  Then I was faced with the question of how to hold my scooter, hold the boat, and clip my scooter.  I'm nearly certain that requires three hands!  In the past when we've deployed in such current, Phil has held the nose of the scooter while I clip it on (which I remembered AFTER the dive).  So, alas, I let go. I figured that if my scooter could not get me back to the boat, then it wouldn't get me to the line at the front of the boat anyway.  Once clipped on, I hit the trigger, went up to 5, and kicked a little, and made it to the front of the boat.  I had told the boys that I was going to go down the line and wait at 20 feet.  The 20 feet part may have been slightly mumbled.

I went down to about 25 feet, because that's where the current seemed to let up just a bit, and I held onto the line, occasionally hitting the trigger to relieve my arm.  Matt appeared behind me on the line after a minute.  I waited a minute more and then asked if 3 was good and could we head down.  Apparently the communication was botched; I guess Matt thought I could see Rob, and I thought he could see Rob, so he gave me the okay to go.  We headed down the line, and were scootering for what seemed like hours.  In fact, it was more like 7 minutes.  Somewhere on the way down, Matt passed me, so I figured it was not my responsibility to keep tabs on Rob.  So I turned to look back for him, and he wasn't there.  So I stopped and looked around some more, and then I saw a tiny beam of light.  Apparently we had completely ditched Rob (who was delayed while getting his camera).  Oops.  He caught up and we eventually made it to the pinnacle (7 minutes in).  We switched to backgas, and then headed down the wall.  The viz at the top of the pinnacle was quite good; the water was sort of a milky green color, but you could see far, and it was very bright.  As we got down deeper, the viz deteriorated, and it was night dark.  I guess the big weather from the past days had really stirred up the bottom.  There were just a lot of particles in the water.  I would still call it at least 30 foot viz, but chunky and very dark.  We headed out to the deep area, near where we'd seen all those ratfish last time.  We were moving kind of slowly, due to the not so hot viz.  Rob found a flag rockfish in the same area where we'd seen one before.  So I guess he is a resident -- yay!  I have dubbed him "Flaggie".  I know, I'm so imaginative.  Rob was shooting wide angle, and managed to get only a not very in-focus shot that proved we saw a flag rockfish, before the fish scattered.  Wide-angle really isn't the right lens for this site!

As usual, there were quite a lot of juvenile rockfish.  I always look at the schools, and find that they all look sort of the same and hard to describe, and hence hard to ID.  But today I actually noticed some very distinctive looking fish.  I saw quite a few that had a reddish "smear" on the sides of their bodies.  Like if you dipped a finger in red paint and poked the side of the fish and then smeared it horizontally along its side.  Then later on, as we were heading back toward the shallower area (but still relatively deep), I saw some other interesting looking ones that were sort of a mottled red and white on top, with a yellow underside.  Pretty bright yellow.  Since these fish were distinctive enough for me to actually described without too much wishy washiness, I was on a mission -- I was going to ID these fish!  After doing a bit of research (looking at other juvenile fish pics that Rob had had ID'd from this site before), I thought that the ones with the red smear may be pygmies... though in Rob's earlier picture, the line wasn't nearly as distinct.  So I emailed Tom Laidig with my descriptions, and my pygmy theory, and he told me that yes, the first fish sounded like a pygmy.  And so did the second.  Apparently they can look different depending on where they are -- on the bottom versus in the water column.  He sent along a picture for me to look at of the second variety.  And it looked just like the fishies I saw.  I was very proud of myself for noticing enough details about some juveniles to actually ID them (without a picture!).

Anyhoo, we headed shallower and ended back at the pinnacle we started on.  We tried a new profile today, with a deep segment for 20 minutes and a shallower segment for up to 20 minutes (or until we hit gas).  Previously we've done a three-level profile, but it seems much more onerous to keep to the schedule with the shorter segments.  I definitely prefer the two-level dive.  When we got back to the pinnacle, Rob took a few shots of us there.  There is always a bit of a swirly current around the pinnacle, and while it wasn't super high current today, it was still enough to make posing for pictures a bit of a pain.  Eventually we thumbed it on gas and started an uneventful deco.  I felt pretty uncomfortable for most of the deco.  I just could not get in trim and comfortable... my isolator was sticking in my head if I was in trim.  And if I was out of trim, well, I just wasn't comfortable!  I felt like I was finning all of deco.  I'm sure it wasn't as bad as it seemed to me, but I was definitely sculling A LOT.  I'm sure it was highly annoying for Rob and Matt.  However, I didn't need any assistance with my bottle rotation this time, so that was good!  I actually remembered to move my shoulder D-ring a bit after my epic fail last time.  Okay, I guess it's not an epic fail if you don't actually drop a bottle.  Anyhoo, I finally managed to get comfortable for the last 10 minutes of our O2 stop :)  I think I just found an out-of-trim position that was comfortable.  Rob said that he thought my tanks looked way too high on me.  But he always says that, so I wasn't really sure what to make of that.

The surface conditions seemed even better on the way home than they were on the way out.  It turned out to be a great day on the boat.  It just goes to show you can't always believe the forecasts!

By the way, Rob has dubbed the little boulder pile with the flag rockfish "Flaggle Rock".  I think this is an adorable name, since I've always been a HUGE Fraggle Rock fan (and I make frequent references to it to Rob, which he finds rather odd).

Sadly, I have no pictures to post for today.  Rob claimed none of the pictures were good enough to post, even though I disagree.  He's not being very supportive of my new year's goal!  But don't worry (SPOILER ALERT), there are some awesome pics from this site coming soon :)

Update: After much whining, Rob offered up this one picture from the dive.  So now you have the privilege of looking at Matt, sporting his analogous color scheme, shooting a bag.

Madison

On  Monday, we went to Madison.  The temperature must have dropped like 20 degrees from the day before -- it was pretty freakin' cold while we were setting up!  So, Rob has apparently decided that the only dive worth doing at Madison is Rocky Horror (or rather past Rocky Horror).  On our last trip, he and Kevin dove there (without me) and I guess he thought it was super awesome.  So he decided, without really asking my opinion, that that's what we would do today, and so we would double stage so we could bask in the full glory of the awesomeness past Rocky Horror.  I was not too convinced, first because I wasn't totally thrilled to double stage it, and second, because I am in mortal fear of Rocky Horror :P  So I warned him that I might wimp out, but agreed to at least go down there and check it out.  Rob also wanted to go in at Martz, which I know nothing about.  We pulled in to the parking lot, and I really really had to go to the bathroom, and he told me I had to decide *right then* where I wanted to enter (so he could decide where to park).  So I told him to just park by the main entrance.  I think that was the wrong answer, but that's what he gets when he asks for a snap decision when I am under duress!

There were two other teams there, and we chatted a bit with the guys getting geared up next to us.  I guess Rob had chatted with the other team, who was entering at Martz, and no one was planning to dive Rocky Horror.  So we didn't have to worry about that.  We setup our bottles (brrrr) and loaded them all into the water, and then got geared up and into the water.  After clipping on all those bottles, we headed in, with me leading.  The viz was not too stellar in the early part.  It was pretty green and relatively murky until just past the Martz jump.  Then it was crystal clear.  A bit after that, we saw a team coming out ahead of us.  The tunnel was not terribly wide at this point, so I found a spot to tuck into the side, and waited for them to pass.  Just as I was about to get going again, I saw a light ahead.  The other team was coming out too.  They were a little ways down the passage, but I decided to just wait where we were for them to pass.  Then we got going again, and dropped our stages before the half-hitch.  When we got to the jump, I installed the spool, and we headed down the tunnel and I dropped my second stage just a few minutes before hitting the checkin sign.  By the time we got there, I had already decided I didn't want to do Rocky Horror, but I had been thinking I'd at least go to the end of Potter's Delight.  But then when we got to the sign, I figured it would be easier to just turn it there, rather than having a big conversation about it in Potter's Delight.  So much to Rob's dismay, we turned around.

We headed back out and when we got back to the mainline, I asked Rob if he wanted to head back up the mainline.  He shrugged so I took that to mean yes, so I dropped my stage and headed right.  From there we just followed the mainline for a while.  We got just a few minutes further than I have ever been.  Eventually I turned the dive because it was getting silty (actually it had been silty for a while) and twisty turny and a bit smaller, and I got tired of threading myself around while trying not to stir up silt.  As soon as I turned it, Rob sort of took off, I guess to demonstrate to me just how slowly I had been going on the way in.  I got back to my stage, and picked it up and switched onto it.  While the flow was down, it was definitely there, and we made much better time on the way out.  When I got to my second stage, I still had a ton of gas in the stage I was breathing so I just picked it up and never even went back onto it on the way out.  Just a bit after that, I got to a spot where the cave went from about 60 feet to about 65 feet, and I could not clear my right ear.  It was like it had half-cleared, and every time I swallowed, I could hear it click, and it was very uncomfortable.    Meanwhile, Rob was swimming really fast and I was barely keeping up with him.  I was a bit worried that when we came over the hill right before (after) the Martz jump, that I wouldn't be able to clear coming back down.  But actually coming up shallower in that spot let me finally clear.  Then I suddenly realized, that I had dropped a cookie on the way in, at the jump to Martz (because someone else had installed a line there), and I had neither noticed it nor picked it up on the way out.  Doh!  I guess I was a bit distracted trying to clear my ear and keep up.  So I had to stop Rob and turn us around to go and get that.  Once that was taken care of, we exited without incident.  

When I got to my O2 bottle, I picked it up and rotated one of my stages back, as I continued swimming through the cavern zone.  I was thinking... why can't it be this easy to rotate bottles at home!?!  When I mentioned this to Rob, I said it was probably because I didn't have gloves on (well, fingerless gloves) and my hands weren't cold.  He suggested that it was probably psychological, because I wasn't afraid of dropping the bottle (and watching it plummet to the bottom, 1 foot below me :P).  True.  We got out to the basin and negotiated a little bit of deco -- 10 or 12 minutes I think.  As we walked up the path back to the car, we were greeted by a stiff breeze.  Brrr.

Ginnie, with Pictures!

After last year's successful New Year's trip in cave country, we decided to do it again. We flew out on Thursday night, on the redeye. I think I got about 2 hours of sleep between the two flights, plus I had a horrible cold (so bad in fact, that I even verbally questioned to Rob whether I could make the trip). When we got to High Springs, I promptly collapsed in bed and declared my need for a nap. Rob disappeared to EE and the storage place to get tanks and such, and just under 2 hours later, he started to make it known to me that he would really like me to get up soon. Grumble. So I dragged myself out of bed and we headed to Ginnie. I finally convinced Rob to bring his camera to Florida, so I suggested we just do a not too ambitious dive at Ginnie, and he could bring his camera. So the plan ended up being to head up the Hill 400 line to wherever, just taking it slowly so Rob could get some pictures.

I volunteered to lead the dive. It has been a long time since I have run the line at Ginnie. Since there seems to be a constant escalation in the amount of gear schlepped along on such dives, I have been making Rob run the reel there a lot lately. So I figured it was time to suck it up and do it myself, plus with "only" one stage, now was a good time to do it. Well, a stage and a deco bottle, but that doesn't really count. I think we finally got to Ginnie around 3. I was delighted to find that Rob had already setup my doubles for me. I should nap more often! We got geared up and into the water, and we were off. I was sad to find that someone else had already run their line pretty much the way I like to run it. After negotiating that and running the line down to the 30 foot room, I found a pair of divers loitering in there, and had to make my way around them. We dropped our O2 bottles and then I headed to the sign. At this point, I found that the existing line started on the right side, then moved over to the left. I crossed under it so I could start on the left and then couldn't figure out what to do next, without having to cross back under it again halfway down the restriction. So, naturally, I gave up and handed the reel to Rob and told him he was captain :) After some eye rolling, Rob headed down the chute, and pretty much ran the line in the only mediocre way that I could come up with to run it. Once we got to the mainline, I took the lead again.

It was a pretty crowded day at Ginnie. We passed another team (or maybe it was a singleton, Rob said after the dive that he thought it was) in the gallery, and then a team of 4 just past the lips. We would eventually pass another team on the way in as we were headed out. Anyhoo, we got through all of the annoying parts and dropped our stages just a bit before the Hill 400 jump. As planned, once we got to the jump, we switched order, so Rob could stop and direct me where to pose for pictures. After we installed the jump, he made me go back to the mainline to pose for some pictures of me entering the hill 400 tunnel. After that, we slowly ambled up the tunnel, stopping now and then for pictures. We eventually made it to the bats and then I turned it. We swam back most of the way, and stopped a couple of times for more pictures once we were almost back to the mainline. And then of course, Rob had to get some pictures of me pulling the spool. He loves those action shots, but I always feel like I am being judged. However, I do think the pictures right at the jump are some of the best... I like how you can see the two tunnels diverging. As we approached our stages, I just knew he wouldn't be able to help himself, so I posed as I approached mine, and sure enough, he had whipped out his camera for some pictures. We got back onto our stages, and continued out. As we approached the park bench, he was signalling and pointing, and I thought he wanted to go up that line. I didn't want to, because my sinuses would bothering me. But then I realized he just wanted me to pose for some pictures, so I obliged. Then he stowed his camera for the ride out.

When we got back to our reel, Rob asked if I was going to get the reel. I was like "no thanks, you can do it". I could tell he was miffed by this. I headed up to the 50 foot room and waited for him. When he got there, he was clearly annoyed with me for sticking him with the reel :) I headed up the restriction, got my O2 bottle and waited for him. The ascent was bothering my sinuses, so by the time we got to 20 feet, I had a wicked sinus headache. I thought my eyeballs might pop out of my head during deco, but they did not, phew. I took my favorite spot on the ledge, and Rob was just hanging out in front of me. I asked him several times if he wanted the spot next to me on the ledge, but he did not. I guess he was really annoyed about my reel shenanigans! I think he was a bit unhappy that we didn't go anywhere too exciting on this dive, but I think the pictures turn out pretty nicely, so I thought it was a good way to spend the dive.

All of the pictures from the dive are here.