Learning to live underwater! 🤿
Always being scared to go to the deeper side of the swimming pool — I decided to go head-on with my fear & pursue my open water & advance…
Always being scared to go to the deeper side of the swimming pool — I decided to go head-on with my fear & pursue my open water & advance open water course, certifying me for recreational scuba dive upto a depth of 100ft, across the world.
This irrational decision coupled with my curiosity to observe and experience life under the waters, motivated to book my spot for training at Temple Adventures in Pondicherry!
The course starts with a theoretical lesson — explaining the basics of underwater pressure and buoyancy. My first day of training was in a swimming pool. The first breath under-water through your regulator (mouth-piece through which you breath) is sensational! All my life, I went into panic mode as soon as I was submerged underwater in a swimming pool or a bath tub, but here, after the initial reaction — being comfortable while completely under the water was a new feeling altogether.
As a part of the training in pool & lake, we were taught some key skills that had to be demonstrated to our trainer. The ones I really liked were —
Mask removal 🥽 — While you get comfort in the fact that you will be wearing a mask underwater to prevent water touching your eyes or nose. This skill requires you to remove your mask, ensure you don’t panic before you can put it back and blow air to clear the water from the mask. The key here was to make sure you consciously breath through your mouth and not involuntarily from your nose.
Hovering🧘🏻♂️🧘🏼♀️ — I personally liked this skill since it advocated mindfulness! When we breath underwater — air fills in the lungs and increases our buoyancy, therefore moving us upwards towards the surface, similarly we move downwards towards the bottom when breathing out. In this skill, we had to control our breathing to stay consistent at a depth.
Each of these skills were simulations of what to do — and be comfortable in the ocean!
The first day in the ocean was nothing like I have experienced before — It was a bright sunny day with very good visibility underwater. Observing the aquatic life underwater while floating was much more calming that I could imagine. 😇 The first school of fishes was batfish🐠 — followed by gun fish🐟 & we were lucky to spot some sea horse near the reef as well! It was so calming that I could just stay there and keep watching for the entire dive, but Rajat (my dive instructor) & I had to goto the bottom and perform some skills on navigation. What amazed me underwater was the fact that complex sentences such as “Move 10 flaps (1 flap ~ 1 meter) towards the north and come back to the current point following a square pattern”, was seamlessly communicated to a newbie like me using only hand signals . This was the first time I appreciated the language of hand-signals!👌🏻☝🏻🤙🏻
While the experience was enjoyable — I admit, I did have my “O Shit” moments during the dives — nothing scary but it was just a part of me still getting comfortable underwater
Buoyancy control in the sea — During my first dive in the ocean, buoyancy control was all that I was trying to achieve during the dive — now looking back it was funny enough since my instructor, Rajat, was stable near the sea-bed while I was going up almost 2 meters while inhaling and rapidly dropping on the sea-bed during exhaling — this continued in cycles. Thanks to his guidance underwater and during the debrief post-dive, I was much better in the second dive.
Yeah, I was guilty of disturbing aquatic life underwater during my first dive. In the mission to control by movement underwater, I temporarily lost control and swam right into a school of fish which dispersed immediately probably thinking I was threat to them. It was fun to watch, but is dangerous and frowned upon in the dive community.
Swim test — Okay this was scary even before I started, standing on the edge of the lake (yeah not just the deep swimming pool I am scared of), I was preparing myself to go 100 meters towards the center and come back. Ignoring all thoughts of sinking to the bottom at the center of the lake I started swimming towards the center, slowly observing the bottom disappear while trying hard to stay positive. Well — while it sounds all good, I admit I had panicked when I had to turn around in the center but I knew I had no option left other than swimming back to the boundary of the lake! Thank god Rajat didn’t make me do it again! 🙈
Apart from the fun of observing life underwater — the open water course taught me some key life-skills of staying calm in an alien environment even when unexpected things happen. All my instructors were super-cool which made the experience more fun & am super excited to complete the advanced open water course as well.
