Dive Course on World Oceans Day

Karen and I are taking a PADI Advanced Open Water dive course in Savusavu, Fiji right now. It’s particularly appropriate that we are spending a couple of days in the ocean, since today is World Oceans Day – a day to honor the world’s oceans. We are not only learning how to dive safely, but also how to keep from causing harm and respecting the marine life we see there.

If you haven’t checked lately, you should look for the Ocean layer in Google Earth to learn more about the world’s oceans. Google Earth has some excellent layers of information about the oceans, from the world’s best research institutions, that has never been put into one place before.

The scuba diving course we are taking involves five advanced dives and today we will end the course with a night dive. Night dives are especially interesting because the fish are much more docile and you get a much better chance to look at them. And, you often see different fish you don’t see at day.

Since we do a fair amount of diving as we’re traveling around the world, it makes sense for us to take courses occasionally to improve our skills and keep our diving knowledge fresh. We want to make sure we stay safe, and keep training ourselves to do the right things while on our dives.

Learning to do a search and recovery can also be very useful. If someone loses something overboard, we now know the right steps to take to find and bring it back up to the surface.

We are using the services of a local Fiji dive master named Lino who runs Captain Nemo’s Divers here in Savusavu. Lino gave a course to our friend Paul a couple of weeks ago.