Diving and Dolphins

http://www.sailblogs.com/member/osprey2003/?xjMsgID=123647

OK, so the photo is a cheat, as my camera is not very waterproof, this is a shot of the cave used in James Bond Thunderball, which I've lifted off the web. However this morning I went diving (with my Instructor and 3 from Basil Read) and we passed through an elongated Arch underwater which looked very much like this. It was an absolutely amazing experience and I really really wished I had a waterproof camera. There were a couple of other, smaller, caves which I only looked in - I'm still a bit unsure of myself underwater and didn't want to get into trouble in a cave. Today lasted 47 minutes at a depth of about 12-15m max.

Towards the end of the dive I was running low on air and we had to swim back to the boat, so rather than surface, with our 3min safety stop at 5m we swam along underwater at 5m back to the boat, as the sea floor was about 12m we were about half way down and it was another quite new experience. Normally we're trundling along the sea floor, a little like crawling around the ground; other times we're on the surface - swimming. This time we were mid water and not going up or down, the closest to flying or weightlessness I think you can get J I loved it - forget all the fish people insist upon pointing out (although we did see a cool octopus, an enormous lobster and a big, um, fish?) - I learnt to dive for the feeling of floating effortless with a 3 dimensional space which you can explore.

One thing I was a little gutted about was that the Dive Club had a dive this morning about half a mile from our site, they saw 3 manta-rays, which apparently came up real close, we saw none - luck of the draw. However after the dive on the way back we were followed by a ?pack? of Dolphins - easily over 100 of them - with some making massive leaps really close. I've been meaning to get out on another Dolphin Trip, but not really got around to it, so to see them after a dive was a huge bonus, shame I still didn't have my camera.