Certifiably Insane

I am now an Adventure Diver. Which sounds special, but that just means I can go deeper, longer, and harder than you. Also, I can scuba dive.

The first step to becoming a certified underwater diver is to sit on your ass in a classroom for 5 hours. Luckily, PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) is an awfully trippy bunch. You dont need Nitrogen Narcosis (more on this later) to be freaking out.

The second step is to swim in a pool and perform tasks ranging from inane to annoying. Flooding your mask with saltwater and having to clear it with nasal spray is a personal favorite. Also, taking off all your gear underwater for no apparent reason, sadistically treading water for 10+ minutes, and being wholly dependant on the benevolance of your buddy to borrow his life-giving oxygen. God help you if your buddy is a prick.

The next step to becoming a skilled underwater diver... is to take a written test on basic physics. Then flood your mask a few more times. Congrats, you're ready for the ocean.

The next morning, bright and early, 6-o'fucking clock in the morning, Fearless Leader (instructer Gemma) picks us up in her van and takes us to the store try on multiple sizes of mask and wetsuit, all of which miraculously manage to not fit. I opt for a mask that potentially rips out my eyebrow piercing over one that makes me repeat that stupid fucking mask flood, and a wetsuit that actually fails in its job over one that constricts all my blood vessels until I become gangrenous. To the boat!

Normally, I'm a big complainer. However, the one thing I cant complain about at all on this boat was Ukari, the little asian girl galley slave. Everything she cooked was pretty fantastic. So my hat's off to her.

Now that that's out of the way, lets get back to complaining. After you passed your basic IQ test, you need to actually get in the ocean. In we got, down we went, and off our masks came. Goddammit, stop doing that! However, the monotony was broken when I found a stingray and swam over to emulate my hero's last scene. I was told later the instructor signalled frantically, banged on her tank and rang a bell to get my attention, and was about to rip my regulator right out of my mouth. Oops.

To be a diver, you need to float. If you sink, you're not going anywhere. If you float, you're not going anywhere. And if you sink then float, you're going to die from Decompression Sickness (the bends). I spent most of the first two dives shifting my weights, letting air in and out of my suit, and flailing in my best shark-attracting manner. Coincidentally, or perhaps not, we saw a Gray Reef Shark and a Blacktipped Reef Shark on those first two dives. We'd eventually throw in a Whitetipped for the perfect trifecta.

Equalization can be a problem when you dive. That crushing feeling in your ears when you're flying 30,000 feet in the air is nothing compared to the crush in 30 feet of water. You have to hold your nose and blow, inevitably spewing a tidal wave of snot. If you cant succesfully equalize, either your eardrums pop or your sinuses start bleeding. The latter would regularly happen to me, meaning I'd end every dive with the bottom third of my mask filled with bloody snot. After the third time, the divemaster looked at me with disgust and contempt, and told me to get far away from her. It was World AIDS Day.

Stupid skills out of the way, we were finally officially open water certified. We celebrated with underwater sommersaults and meandering paperwork. Both had their appeal. It was time for our first instructer-free reef dive. With just our buddy, and the compass skills we picked up in training, we were to navigate a very simple group of reefs, and if we're lucky, find a turtle.

We ended up a good 100 yards from where we were supposed to be, and had a good long swim against the choppy current back to the boat, coughing and sputtering as the waves flooded our snorkles. But we did see a turtle, from the deck of the boat as we desperately sought to catch our breath. Mission accomplished.

We still had 4 totally free dives the next day, so we decided to pay more for less. For an extra $150, you could go from "Open Water Certified" to "Adventure Diver", which meant you were qualified to go up go 100 feet down and dive at night, the latter of which we were allowed to do anyway. PADI was starting to sound like Scientology. That would explain why our Divemaster was such a thetan.

The night dive was actually really cool. No complaints there either. The swimming was easy, I'd become noticably better on buoyancy, and we saw shrimp, more stingrays, pufferfish, lionfish, and a huge sleeping turtle, whose name is Brian but she's a girl.

The only real problem was that there was a thunderstorm overhead the whole time. Isnt it a bad idea to swim in a lightning storm? I tried to bring up my concerns with my Divemaster, but he just laughed me off and never gave me a real answer. I'm starting to hate the smug bastard.

Next morning was our deep dive. And when I say morning, I mean 6am. Wake up and get your ass in the water, no breakfast. Still, I wondered what huge amounts of water pressure would do to digestion. Anyway, we got our briefing, and performed a little timed counting task while still in the boat. Why? Because of a little something known as Nitrogen Narcosis.

Chemicals, even air, act differently under pressure. Oxygen becomes toxic to the body at big depths, but Nitrogen becomes intoxicating even under moderate depths. Divers get drunk off their own air, uncontrollably giggling into their regulators, feeding said regulators to nearby sea turtles, making sand angels, or spinning on their heads, all at over 100 feet under the waves. I very much looked forward to finding out for myself, though I scoffed at the idea that it would hit me hard. The Divemaster assured me that at 28 meters exactly, his brain goes fuzzy. Might be fun.

Down we went, pretty slowly really, finally kneeling in the sand in a level area just shy of the 100 mark. We almost doubled our previous dive, but it barely felt like anything, despite the surface being so far I could barely see it. The only major differences was the Giant Moray Eel hanging out in a rock hollow right next to us. I wonder if he'd like to try my air tank?

We tossed around our red tomato, which looks green at depth, and I attempted to perform tricks. We counted again. We wrote our names backwards. I made funny faces at everyone. In other words, nothing was different; disappointingly, I never experienced narcosis. In fact, my counting was even faster on the bottom, because I wasnt in my sleep haze anymore.

When we surfaced, he was waiting with a smirk, and immediately asked me how bad my brain was fried. I told him I didnt feel a thing, and reffered to him as 'soft', which I dont think he appreciated but was still likely true.

Finally, it was time for our last adventure dive, the Underwater Photography. Didnt sound very adventuresome to me, but turns out I was wrong. To take underwater photos with a shitty digital camera, you need to get really really close. That means nosing up to stinging Anemones and biting Triggerfish. But worse, everyone else is nosing up to Anemones and Triggerfish. 5 divers all within 2 feet of fragile coral and each other's flippers. I got kicked in the stomach, elbowed, nearly had my mask (and eyebrow piercing) ripped off multiple times, and bumped into fragile irreplacable coral more times than I care to admit. Gone was all my careful navigation and steering, back was the mad handwaving to avoid my faceplant into limestone and stingers.

Yet, ultimately it might've been the most fulfilling dive. Once we all spread out, we all found our own little surprises. The photos we bring back are tangible evidence and memory of what we'd accomplished. Despite the standard buddy system, we all pretty much switched and swapped, spending a generally unsafe amount of time on our own in dark crevices where Stonefish and Blue-Ringed Octopus may (but sadly didnt) reside. Coming back this time still had the strong current, but this time it was on our side, pulling us along on a leisurely cruise with a few snapshops before we ascended the ladder for the last time.

We'd managed to swim with sharks, which bite humans sometimes, triggerfish, which bite humans in their territory, jellyfish, which sting humans that brush against them, pufferfish, which stab humans who grab them, lionfish, which poison humans who step on them, moray eels, which remove the fingers of humans sometimes, and stingrays, which kill Irwins every so often. Also, we'd reached 100 feet and withstood narcosis, braved the dark without freaking out or getting accidentally stung/bitten/killed, took pretty good photos without killing each other or too much of the wildlife, and accidentally enjoyed drift diving (and its nasty opposite, swimming against the motherfucking current). All things considered, I'd say we've earned the name Adventure Divers. All it took was 800 dollars.

So what's next? Well, I might go Wreck Diving back in Brisbane, or swim with the Nurse Sharks off Byron Bay, or maybe even enjoy some cold Dolphin Diving in New Zealand. But first, I need to go sell my body on the streets of Cairns to pay for it.