We're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat

The first thing I learned about Palau was that it's known as the best location in the world for scuba diving. The coral reefs surrounding the islands provide for beautiful plant life, and the currents offer up some amazing shows of fish, tortoises, manta rays, and, yes, sharks.

The idea of scuba diving has always appealed to me, but I'd never done more than snorkeling before coming here. So I felt a little foolish moving here without my scuba certification, and without knowing whether I'd freak out if I went more than 3 feet under the water. But along with the best location for scuba diving come the best instructors, so I had a fantastic scuba cert experience, which I'll tell you all about now!

Normally scuba certification is a four-day process where the divers have one full day of classes, a day in the pool to learn basic scuba techniques, and two days completing the four required open water dives. But because we had a three-day weekend, my friends and I decided to condense it all. The classroom day went by slowly and was boring but informative. We learned all the ways you can maim yourself while diving, the physics of diving, and all about the equipment. And thousands of very specific terms for our equipment...which somehow have simply been replaced by "that thingy." Our instructor, Joe, patiently answered all of our questions, and tolerated our criticisms of the imprecise phrasing of the practice quizzes we took. He clearly has instructed other lawyers because he was unphased by our antics.

Our second day was more exciting. I was a bit tired after my friend's Ryan birthday celebration the night before. Ryan is the new counsel for the senate, and he requested Trivial Pursuit for his celebration. So an extremely competitive boys v. girls game of Trivial Pursuit ensued, making the 8:30 start on Sunday a little painful (FYI. I don't have cable or a TV, and my internet is slow. But I do have Trivial Pursuit. People I play trivia with, you've been warned). We started the day at a hotel pool near our training location at Sam's Tours. We learned how to correctly assemble our scuba gear, put it on, and swam around in the 5-foot pool, getting used to the strange but exhilarating feeling of breathing underwater. After lunch, we took a boat from Sam's Tours out to Pinchers' Lagoon, where we did our first open water dive, going 40 feet deep!

(Double OK!)

Even though we didn't see much beyond a few fish and coral, swimming at that depth was an amazing experience. Not that I wasn't nervous though. I positioned myself in our single-file line directly behind Joe. And I didn't let him get more than about two feet in front of me, for fear that I'd lose him or that if he wasn't uncomfortably close to me at all times, some sea creature would swallow me up. I was hoping that Ben and Alexis wouldn't see this...but they noticed my wimpiness. Apparently at one point Joe's fin hit me in the face because I was so close. Not to be deterred, I simply readjusted my mask and scurried right back to my spot immediately behind him.

But in my defense, there are many, MANY sea creatures here! On the second day--the three-dive day--we headed out to complete one more 40-foot dive and two 60-foot dives. As we were driving to the first dive, I gave myself a mental pep talk: "It'll be fine, the first dive will just be another 40-footer. We've done this before. No biggie." Of course, just as I'd built up my confidence, we pulled up to our first dive site.

Looks harmless, right? As the boat slowed, I found out that because our boat was driving more experienced divers in addition to my gang, we were doing our 60-foot dives first, both in Blue Corner.

Unlike seemingly everyone else on this island, I haven't yet memorized all the dive sites here. So I had to sheepishly ask what the story with Blue Corner is, and the only response I got was "It's where the sharks are." Not "Beautiful coral" or "It's a great beginners' spot." Nope. It's the favorite spot of the creatures who are so mysterious and feared that they get their own week on the Discovery Channel. Fantastic!

For those interested, here's a more in-depth overview of this dive site:

http://www.underwatercolours.com/palau/dives/bluecorner.html

Luckily, about 30 seconds after I found out where we were, Joe told us to put our gear on and get ready to head out, so I didn't have time to mull over an escape plan or feign injury. I just put all my gear on and hopped in. We descended to about 45 or 50 feet and swam through some coral. The first 35 minutes or so were incredibly peaceful. We saw quite a bit of sea life, and because it was a beautiful cloudless day, visibility was fantastic and the colors were incredibly vibrant.

Things got pretty exciting at the end of the dive, as we approached Blue Corner. Joe pointed ahead of us, and, sure enough, looming a few yards away...

Now, I knew I'd see some sharks, but the wild card was how I'd respond when I did. So I made sure to make "What to do when you first see a shark" part of my mental pep talk to myself. And, thankfully "Just keep breathing" worked like a charm. After a quick adrenaline shot, I calmed down, stared at him, and kept on following Joe. What I didn't give my pep talk about was seeing more than one at once. A few minutes later, when we saw 2 or 3 at once, on either side of us, I definitely got a little excited. Which leads me to a quick note on scuba diving. Beginner divers spend a lot of time trying to maintain neutral buoyancy in the water. Neutral buoyancy means that you're neither moving up or down in the water. This requires very consistent and smooth breathing, and knowing how to manipulate the scuba equipment. But ultimately consistent and smooth breathing, along with slow, smooth movements, are key. Well, that all went straight out the window when I realized that I had more than one shark to keep an eye on at a time. I simply stopped breathing, which caused me to start floating further away from Joe and closer to one of the sharks. Lesson learned. I'll be breathing slowly and consistently from now on.

(He won't phase me anymore.)

After a few minutes of shark gazing, we exited the dive. We lounged for about an hour on the boat, enjoying our lunches and repeating, without shame to the experienced divers nearby, "Whoaaaa...we saw sharks." After lunch, we drove a bit to enter Blue Corner for our second dive. And this dive was anything but peaceful from the start. We saw schools of fish, a group of sharks feeding, a reef shark sleeping on the ocean floor, to name just a few sites. It was completely out of this world. Everywhere we turned there was activity. Some of it closer to us than we may have realized at the time.

(Alexis, blissfully unaware of her swimming buddy)

(Me, giving up a thumbs up to scuba-diving and apparently the nearby shark, off to the left. Again, Mom & Dad, I'm sorry.)

After completing this dive, we finished up our certification dives with the 40-foot dive near a sunken seaplane. Sadly, I didn't get pictures of that dive, so I'll have to make sure to devote another blog post to the underwater wrecks of Palau.

Even though I talked quite a bit about the thrill of seeing sharks, the overall experience of my first day diving was magical. It felt amazing to experience breathing underwater, see the colorful coral, be literally surrounded by fish I'd never laid my eyes on before, and to have the privilege of being an observer of this other world. Overall, I have to give my first real scuba experience two very enthusiastic thumbs up!

(I styled my hair before this picture was taken...I can't imagine what happened.)

That's it for now! There'll be more pictures in the coming weeks.