Happy Valentine's Day, I guess? I don't think it's really celebrated here in the Maldives, but there are signs on the store about it, so they clearly at least are willing to play it up for tourists.

Another great busy day. We got up early, well, actually I got up at 6:24 and needed to be at the dock at 6:30. But I moved quickly and had showered last night, and when I got there we still hadn't left yet, so it was okay. We headed out to the main boat, had a breakfast pretty similar to yesterday's (bangers, bread, I tried ketchup this time, and watermelon), though with hard-boiled eggs that I didn't partake of. We were heading out to a dive site 2 hours away, so I sat and relaxed, talked a bit, read a bit, napped a bit. I learned a lot from Saffah and Nasseef about the local weather patterns, when it rains, that sort of thing. We got there and suited up for our first dive on a thila (tee-la), the local word for precipice. Went down to 31.6 this time, and though my buoyancy control wasn't quite as good as the last dive, it was still a great dive. Certainly, I'm still doing better better personally than I was at Koh Tao. We saw a white-tipped reef shark, more fish than I'll ever remember, and what was especially cool was our ability to see fish and coral life change with the current and height. We started out fighting a strong current and saw lots of fish, then the current let up and it was almost empty. Mostly horn coral grew down below, but when you got to the flat top of the precipice, there were absolutely enormous plate corals everywhere. It was fantastic. I came close to running out of air near the end, still need to work out that, so I breathed off of our guide's secondary while we did our safety stop.

After that, we found out the area was also good for snorkeling. I jumped off the top of the boat, around back, and Nasseef handed me my gear. Well, I messed up my mask putting it on, so I had to get onto the back of the main boat and fix that. By the time I was done with that Nasseef was jumping into the water from the dive boat, so we had to grab someone's attention and get my fins, but finally I was all geared up and ready to go. And wow, it was a gorgeous. More huge plate coral, all kinds of fish, little silver ones near the blue, great colorful parrotfish closer to the coral, Nate and I saw a turtle (and I nearly dove down to touch it, but stopped just short not wanting to disturb it), lots of small asconoid sponges, sea anemones opening and closing, a sea cucumber, cleaner wrasse (and yes, they were cleaning), it was fantastic. The only unfortunate bit was when I found the ship's anchor: another reminder of the damage we're doing even as we learn about global warming and human impact on this trip, seeing the anchor of our boat lodged in the coral.

I talked with Saffah about it earlier, how hopefully we can do enough to make it worth it (specifically the planes), he said seeing all this should make us better environmental advocates. That's certainly the idea, I hope he's right. Actually, that was later in the day, before that we went on our second dive.

This one was another thila, though unfortunately we dove into a very strong current. We probably spent the first fifteen minutes or so fighting it, and visibility wasn't as good as it had been. Lots of fish and coral, nothing too exciting to report other than the general “holy crap, I'm SCUBA diving in the Maldives instead of freezing in the snow back in Ohio.” There was a large cave, which was cool to see. Brenna and I both had air issues, I ended up breathing off of Caitlin's and we had trouble staying below for our safety stop, but it was okay overall. I figured out that I burn about 100 bar in the first 10 minutes, then last another 20 minutes on the other 100 bar, give or take. Whatever I'm doing wrong, it's at the beginning of the dive, so I can fix that up I think I'll be okay.

Talked to Saffah for a bit, like I mentioned, and here I am. I tried to look at a fish guide for a bit but got frustrated, my memory isn't good enough and there's just too many fish there to check against. We're heading back in, when the boat's done moving we might do some more jumping, there'll be a class tonight. I'm still loving sitting on the deck, the wind blowing past me, the gentle rock of the boat. I'm even starting to get used to the background hum of the engine, though it's not quite “enjoy.” Another dive and maybe visiting a school tomorrow, from there it all depends on the weather.

Sunday, February 14th, roughly 4:45-5 PM local time