Diving in Utilia

Yesterday I did some diving here on Utilia. I'm diving with Parrot Divers. Parrot Divers caters to the backpacking crowd and runs and alright operation. The dive masters are pretty cool and things are really laid back. After getting our gear ready we climbed onto their tiny little diving boat and headed out to sea.

My first dive was a tune up dive. Its probably a good thing I did a tune up dive because this dive was rough from the start. After jumping in my lovely fin decided to come off and sink to the bottom. After rescuing it it came off once again. After finally securing it we decended and coved some of the basic skills one must do in their Open Water Training. After fumbling around, trying to do all sorts of these underwater skills, we ended the dive with a 20 minute swim looking at some coral and fish.

After resting about 40 minutes we returned and dove the light house reef. A few comments about the state of things here on this side of the island. Its pretty aparent to me that the coral is dieing off. Most of the coral has turned brown and seems rather lifeless. You still see some fish, but nearly as many as in Thailand. I asked the dive instructors about this later that night and they believe the destruction is being caused by global warming and too much diving. The other side of the island (the north side) is said to be a lot better and still really good. On my dive I saw a lot of parrot fish and a bunch of other pretty fish I don't know the name of. The dive master saw a baby baracuda and a spotted owl fish(?).

After the dive there was a big party at the owners house. For 10 bucks you could eat and drink all you like. The food was pretty good (lasagana), and the beer was well...free. I had a lot of fun at the party and meet a lot of interesting people from Canada, the US, and England. Heck I even met someone from Portland....go figure.

Today I went snorkeling with my friend Ben. We went to a different spot this time, and it was a lot better than the previous location. The only drawback was it was pretty far from shore and we almost got run over by a boat. I saw a few parrot fishes and a bunch of other things that were on my dive the day before.

Later today I'll go for a hike around the island.