On Sunday, Amber and I drove to Portsmouth, NH where we boared the Lady Patricia and headed on out, along with several other memebers of our dive club, to the Isle of Shoals. There I had probably one of my best dives ever. More experienced scuba divers have much better stories than this, I'm sure, but for her and I, it was simply amazing.
The Isle of Shoals is a collection of small islands. When I say small, I mean really small as far as islands go. If the waters dropped low enough, you'd probably have a decent sized, but still small, island with a lot of low trenches. Each of the peaks forms one of these rocky mounds that sticks above the surface of the water, and a lot of birds and seals congregate on these rocks.
Amber and I headed out, not really following any set direction, just kind of wandering around like we normally do. The visibility was very poor in some areas and the water was really cold, but the plant life was abundant and rather colorful for New England waters. Amber tugged on one of fins at one point and pointed off ahead of us. When I turned to see what she was pointing at, I saw a seal swimming away from us. I couldn't get too clear a look at it since the visibility was so poor, but it was really cool to see a seal swimming around that close to us, even if it was for only a brief moment.
We pressed on, and, in all honesty, the rest of the dive was rather ho-hum. There was just more plants, more crabs, more lobster. It's stuff that's kind of neat to look at, and once in a while you'll see something rather odd, but for the most part, it's nothing that we don't see in abundance when we dive right off the shore. The only real difference was that the colors seemed to be richer. So that part at least was nice.
We had just started making our way down this one rather wide trench, and I was looking at all of the life on both sides of me that I happened to look straight forward and saw another seal. Rather than swim away immediately, though, this one actually approached me and got within 10 feet of me, looking directly into my eyes. I froze completely, not in fear or anything like that, but in an attempt to not scare him away in hopes that he would come even closer. Unfortunately he didn't. He turned and swam away, demonstrating to me just how clumsy I actually am in the water in comparison to the graceful way in which they can propel themselves effortlessly through the water.
Needless to say, I was rather excited at this point and so I pressed onwards, hoping to have yet another seal encounter. I turned to Amber to see if she had seen the whole thing and I noticed that she had a pair of seals behind her circling around and checking us out. I pointed them out to her and when she turned to look they both swam away. She turns back to me and I can see, even through her mask and her regulator, that she's got a huge grin on her face. It was right about then that I realized how big MY grin was.
So, eagerly we continued on, always on the lookout for more seals, oblivious to everything else around us. We didn't have to wait long. I saw a seal swim into view and duck down behind a rock, with nothing but his eyes showing. I approached as carefully as I could, hoping not to spook him, and ducked down behind the same rock. So there we were, both of us peaking up over the top of this rock at each other, not 4 feet from each other. Simply incredible. He finally got bored and left and when I turned to see if Amber had witnessed this encounter as well, I saw her making peek-a-boo faces at me. Apparently she had.
It was right about this time that we decided we had to turn the dive and head back to the boat. Or, more accurately, our air supply decided it for us. If we had had enough air, we probably would have stayed there all day. Well, the water WAS really really cold, but the excitement of seeing the seals seemed to make us forget about that. So we turned around and headed on back with me once again leading.
There's a maneuver you can do while diving that makes it really easy to check behind you. You kind of just duck down behind your legs and look. It's a lot easier to do underwater than turning around, and it makes for a good way to check up on your partner and make sure they're still with you. I use this method all the time while leading a dive. And this time was no exception. I checked on Amber a couple of times. One time I ducked down and checked and I saw four seals right behind her, obviously interested in her fins, maybe also wondering where their new-found friends were going. I pointed them out to her and when she turned to look they all scattered. After she turned back and started following me, they would all return. She told me later that at one point, one of the seals had tugged on her fin.
The seals followed us all the way back to the boat. I was heading on up the anchor line to the surface and I could still see one of them circling around me, almost as if he was reluctant to see us go. At least I'd like to think that's what he was thinking. When I finally climbed on board the boat, I saw Amber sitting there, with the biggest grin on her face I'd ever seen. We both agreed that this had been, by far, the best dive of our lives.
So anyway, I just thought I'd share a little bit of what I've been up to this summer.
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Topic: Damn I love this sport... (Read 1469 times)