SCUBA Diving Just Got Even Better!

We love getting to delight in one of our favorite parts about living where we currently do - SCUBA diving!! It's especially fun when we try a new location or see new sights or have new toys to play with. So for our first experience aboard Captain Mark's "Sea Lady IV", we were delighted with several new things. A new place was introduced in the way of the very vibrant corals at "Ammo" (aka "Mark's") Reef, not far out from the western shore of Okinawa, about halfway between Kadena Marina & Araha Beach (straight out from Sunabe "Junkyard," sort of). The name is derived from the WWII ammunitions still seen from time-to-time in the area (hopefully never handled in any way by divers that see them) or from one of the few boat captains that knows about it (if you prefer the latter of the names presented). It was indeed pristine (relative to the popular spots right up against the same shore that we've frequented over the past year). It was also our first dive with our new dive camera (SeaLife DC500 with an external flash) which isn't actually new to the ocean but it's new to US! We purchased it from one of Betsy's coworkers that is moving back Stateside in a few short weeks. We went a little nuts taking photos in our 50-min dive (these are all from the first of our 2 dives of the day, because we exhausted the battery & about 2/3 of the memory card in that short time span). But we got some fantastic shots (& some half-decent that I probably should have deleted but didn't)!!

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Our second (unphotographed) dive of the day turned out to be our first night dive. We did not plan it that way but fortunately at least 1 diver decided not to go down so he loaned us his awesome UK HID dive light (costs over $200 which is a lot for a flashlight, y'all!). So yeah, we're now officially spoiled for life on choice of lights, but boy, was night-diving cool. I bogarted the light so poor Betsy just held my hand & had to either look where I was aiming it or stare into darkness. It was so cool to see the same reef area before & after dark. You can really concentrate on the details at night. We saw an awesome pink stonefish & bright red shrimp (under a ledge) & multi-colored eel (medium sized) protruding with his mouth agape. We're definitely looking forward to getting our Advanced certification (probably soon after we buy much cheaper dive lights) & maybe a few free specialty certs!

P.S. Thanks to Kadena Marina's free specialty course of the month promotion (sponsored by PADI), Betsy & I are now also enriched air (aka nitrox) certified. It happened just 2 days after this day of diving, so we're anxious to get out & try a new gas! Yippeee!!!