The octopus fell from my mouth during a dive and I watched as the regulator freeflowed air. I tried to grab it but didn’t get it on the first try. I didn’t panic. I went back to take hold of the regulator attached to the tank on my back but that wasn’t needed. I was able to get hold once more of the other regulator and waited for the water to be gone from my mouth before breathing in again. This happened about 45 minutes into a dive.
That had been the fourth and final dive in Spain. I had visited three different divesites on two different dives. The last time I had dived was by Portland harbour in Dorset England and this was in June of 2001. The biggest change was the visibility. In the Mediterranean you see quite a bit further and rather than doing wreck dives you explore the geology of the waters around where the cliffs were. You see quite a few boulders covered in sea grass, a few patches of sand and several schools of fish.
What makes diving around Moraira, Spain different from England is that visibility is much better, and you’re wearing a wet suit. The water is a comfortable 17 degrees. You get an opportunity to swim through rock arches and dive over and around other boulders. You change depth varying from 14 meters in some places to 7 or 8 in other places. For the first two dives the water was calm but you could still feel the surge as waves came in and out from the rocks. Occasionally we would arrive to underwater caverns and caves. Swim into the cave low and then swim out higher. As you rotate your body and look up you see urchins, sea anonemes and the occasional antennas sticking out from a single crustacean. In one case a fishing net was draped around a rock.
For the second day of diving the waters were rougher and the water was filled with sediment so visibility was not as good as on the first day. When you swam in certain areas you would feel a stronger surge. When the surge was against you it’d be an opportunity to stop. When the surge went the way we wanted to go we swam forward. As we took on the second dive the surge was strong. It meant we were using a little more air. We did see schools of fish on this dive, swimming up to them and crossing through. I was now looking around more because I was feeling more comfortable. I was trying to move my arms less, to control my buoyancy better and to glide more. This was only my fourteenth dive in four years.
On the last dive between the surge, the duration of the dive and the cooler waters I was down to fifty bars and quite quickly I was down to 20 bars. That’s when the instructor provided me with the octopus. That’s the backup regulator. I breathed from that one for the rest of the dive. It was a new sensation for me. On all my other dives I had always had enough air to reach the surface with air to spare in the tank. That’s when I found myself without the regulator to breath from for a few seconds. No panic though. It was just a matter of being methodical, knowing exactly what to do.
By the time I arrived to the surface from that last dive though I was tired. I inflated the BCD and swam back to the boat. Once there I took off the weight belt and rested holding onto the rope of the Rigid inflatable boat (RIB). Once I was back on board the boat I was tired. Finally I had the opportunity to dive, having waited years for this chance.
A few years ago when studying in the South West of England I had worked on an underwater documentary for Dorset as part of my HND and as a result had established some friendships with two of the scuba centers based there. In fact a friend was going to lend me a dry suit and all the equipment I would need to dive. If it hadn’t been for a change of plan I would have spent the summer diving around that area.
Now all these years later my parents bought a house close to Moraira and diving is affordable once more so I’m going to take advantage of this opportunity. I am in the process of purchasing all the equipment I need to go diving more frequently. It’s an activity I enjoy and the only thing that had been holding me back was the price of accommodation. As I grow more comfortable underwater I will purchase an underwater housing for my camera and start taking some underwater video.