Today, I went diving with 3 fellow AUC 3rd semesters at Ocean Explorers in Simpson Bay. It was nice to finally get back in the water after not diving for a couple of months. For a couple of hours, we got to feel like tourists and not worry about studying. It was a welcome change.
Since there was one person with us doing their first dive ever, we went to Moonscape Reef, which sits in about 30-40 feet of water. Visibility was decent (much better than it was over the winter). The reef itself was a little dull, with not too much coral happening down there. However, we saw more interesting sea life than I had seen in one place on any other dive. The reef is pretty flat, but it has long distances of overhangs about 4 feet tall, where a bunch of sea creatures apparently like to live. Usually on a dive, we might see a turtle, or a ray, or a shark. But, just during this one tank dive, we saw a shark sleeping under a ledge (almost immediately after touching bottom), a couple eels, 3 or 4 large rays, 3 or 4 turtles, and a delicious looking ginormous lobster. If we weren't with a dive master, I definitely would have had to take that guy home for dinner. This was in addition to all the usual fish that you see in St. Maarten, from angelfish to sandfish. All that, for only $30!!
I'd never been to that dive shop before, but I'll definitely be going back. The staff was friendly, carried all our stuff out to the boat, and found us a good dive site. They also understood that we were all pretty experienced and didn't need a dive master following us around the whole time. So, as long as we stayed fairly close, they let us go pretty much wherever and let us monitor our own bottom time. Of course, the one time that I decide to not fool with my camera is the time that I would have liked to have had it most. Oh well, such is life...good time anyway.
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