牧羊少年奇幻之旅

12/18

I went scuba diving with Jame today. I had learned how to scuba diving and got the license before in Taiwan. Honestly, I am afraid of water, especially deep, black and cold water, but I don’t want to miss the magnificent underwater view. Exmouth is a good place for scuba diving and we, NTP volunteers, get special discount, so I can’t find any excuse not doing it. We booked a diving trip in a local company and made them picked us up at 7:30. I was half excited and half nervous plus a little bit frightened due to I didn’t have many diving experiences.

But they canceled it because it was a fucking windy day just like yesterday. Jame and I had planed this for couple of days and that’s why we were so disappointment when they told us we couldn’t do diving today.

Jame didn’t give up!

She went to the visitor center to query more information and found out there is a company offer afternoon scuba diving tour in the Navy Pier, where they say is one of the top 10 beautiful place for scuba diving in the world. The price was a little higher than the first company but I didn’t care as long as I could dive today. I wanted someone accompanying me, someone I am familiar, because that will ease my tension. I don’t want to go scuba diving by myself.

There is a massive communication station for U.S marine in Exmouth. There are 13 tall and separately towers formed the station. Each of the tower is higher than 300m. The tallest towers of the 13 even taller than the Tokyo towel. The U.S marine built a big jetty for shipping these towers from America. The jetty, Navy Pier, was where we were going to scuba diving today. Under the big jetty there were many massive pillars supported the structure. Spaces between these pillars become the shelter for all kind of fishes and that’s why it becomes the one of famous spot in the world.

The first scaring thing was how to get into the water.

We had to jump into the water from the jetty, which was about 2 meters high above the water surface. The waves under the jetty were not as tranquil as those for away from the jetty because the giant pillars stirred it and made it disquiet. Although I had learned how to jump in the water safely, but only in the pool, not in a real sea, I was still afraid to jump into the water. I told myself that I wasn’t spent money to terrify myself, I should enjoy in it.

Most of time when I am afraid of something, I will tell myself: The biggest enemy is your fear and I should conquer my fear. For sure, it is hard to overcome or even control your fear. Fear comes from your mind and if you keep thinking it, it will just like making a snowball, getting bigger and bigger and eventually, it will restrict and limit your act.

While I told to myself about above bullshit, I jumped, and that was bloody high.

After we got into the water, we saw schools of fish swimming between the pillars. Big fishes swam alone and small fishes gathered together. It was like a wall, a fish wall when you saw it. I also saw sharks but I was not afraid of it this time. They rested on the bottom and were easy to disturb. When people swam near them, they swam away. They didn’t seem as scary as in the movies or the documentary films. Maybe I had misunderstood them for a long time or just maybe they weren’t hungry.

I am a beginner for scuba diving so I couldn’t control my neutral buoyancy as well as the others. Neutral buoyancy is a term we used when we go scuba diving. The meaning of the term is to make you float in the water. We have to use our lung to control it. When we inhale, the air fill your lung and you will float up; when you exhale, it is just contrary. Control yourself underwater is essential because if you can’t control it, you will harm the marine life, such as coral.  

The gaps between the pillars were sometimes not easy for me to swim through. I kicked one of the pillars and cut myself. I was worried about my blood would rise the attention of the sharks. People say that human blood contained more iron than marine life and sharks are interested in high-iron blood. Fortunately, I started bleeding when I came back to the jetty.

We had two dives and the first dive wasn’t so good for me. When I dove into the water for a couple of minutes, I couldn’t control myself and started floating up quickly to the surface. I

After I reached to the surface, I tried to come back to where I was. I dove again and this time I dove into 9 meters deep in two minutes. I thought I was all right but I wasn’t. When we finished the first dive and reached to the surface, I found there was blood in my mask. I started bleeding just like last time in Taiwan. I thought that was because I float and dive so quickly and my blood vessel couldn’t stand for it and exploded.

But after the second dive I also found blood in the mask. Maybe that’s because the vessel wasn’t healing and the water pressure made it explode again. Although I enjoyed the view but I think I have to rest for a while before next diving.