Day 4: Lion fish, Sting ray, and Sharks Oh My!

Today I left the little man at the beach with his snorkel to practice and headed out for a double dip, scuba diving adventure.

My dive log says the last time I dove as in Thailand in 2014.  That is far too long for anyone to go without some ‘bubble time’. Scuba diving is liberating and exhilarating.  It is basically like being able to fly – except that you are underwater.  Floating freely without restriction, the ability to rotate 360 degrees in any direction, and the only sound you hear is you breathing.  It should really be called Scuba Zen-ing.

After the dive briefing, we put in our requests for what we wanted to see on our dives.  Turtles, manta rays, and lobsters were requested.  Lobsters are lame.  I CHOSE A SHARK.

We drop in and the first thing I see are these little cuties swimming by and I know it’s going to be a great dive.

We’re about 15 minutes into the dive and the dive master starts pointing frantically at the sand.  Or so I think it’s the sand.  It takes me a minute to see it, and when I do I squeal with delight.  Can you see it?  (The answer is at the end of the post)

All of the pictures and videos were taken with my GoPro – which I will never dive without again.  For those of you who don’t have one, you need to know that like a side view mirror, the objects are MUCH closer than they appear. So you can imagine my surprise, delight, and paralyzing fear when I saw this:

It had been hiding in the sand, woken up and was now swimming towards us!!!

Had I been up to speed on my shark-ology, I would have known that this was a nurse shark and entirely harmless, and I would not have peed in my wet suit.

This captured my reaction, but does not do justice to how close and how large my friend really was:

For the return trip I had a bird’s eye view from the Captain’s deck.  While we were up there he jokingly (?) offered to take my boyfriend for a ride… and leave him in some shark invested waters… so that he could take me to some nice restaurants and maybe afterward go see a movie…

Gaston is on high alert…

As for what was hiding in the sand…