All in the Family

One of my fellow lieutenants in the unit has a brother in the 82nd Airborne Division and he decided to come to Okinawa on leave. During his first week on island he got scuba certified and on Saturday the three of us went diving! Jane chose a spot I hadn't been to before called Junkyard, however the nearby name sake had recently been cleared out. Maybe in the not too distant future the dive site will be called Apartment Complex, anyway...

In keeping with my tradition of seeing a sea snake on every dive I saw about 10 in the two dives we made, including these two... I imagine they were doing something mating related, either that or they were throwing down MMA style.

My favorite part of these dives was the lion fish just hanging out. It was the first time I'd seen one still enough to get a good picture of.

Jane and Drew swimming by.

Life abounds off Okinawa

Aloha!

Back in March the Army sent me to Hawaii for a week long airload planning course. Yet another benefit of being in Japan is that when I'm sent back to the states for official business I cross the international date line which authorizes me to arrive two days prior to the start of class to get over any jet lag I might have. As usual, I left Okinawa about noon and arrived in Honolulu about eight in the morning the same day... I love time travel. Since the flight takes place when I'm usually asleep anyway I'm relatively rested when I get to Hawaii and can really enjoy my "recovery time." ***Editor's Note: I went to pick up my compact rental car and the lot attendant asked me if I'd rather have a convertible... well, I couldn't say no to that, so they gave me a free upgrade to a Chrysler Sebring, which is a pretty nice ride, you just have to make sure you're not caught with your top down when those random Oahu downpours occur... I got pretty wet one afternoon... it was worth it!!***

The best part of my trip was being able to make my first two boat scuba dives (with the reefs around Okinawa most dives here are shore dives, where, as the name suggests, you just walk from the shore to the dive site [some swimming may be required]0. I saw a scuba flag in a shop window down by the Planet Hollywood on Waikiki Beach so I went in to check it out. I got to chatting with the lady working there and she told me about a charter dive that was going out the next morning if I was interested. After a bit of deliberation (it was about $120 after all) I decided to go for it and am very glad I did. There were three groups of divers on the boat, a group a Japanese tourists from Hokkaido who thought it was cool that I am living on Okinawa, a group of local (non-natives) who had gone out with this captain before and seemed to run in the same diving circles as he did, and my group, a small group of three who were directly with the captain. The ship's first mate was my dive master. Captain Dave had lived in Hawaii nearly all his life and had been "skippering" charter dives on his boat for some time. My dive master was half Hawaiian, very jovial and enjoyed talking about the University of Hawaii's football victory over Boise State the previous November, but he didn't seem to like it as much when I brought up EVERY OTHER game between the two schools. The other two member of my group were husband and wife combo from Virginia. They have a son who should be receiving an Army commission from the Citadel any day now if he hasn't already. They were making their first Hawaii dive together (he had been to Hawaii before but hadn't been able to come with his wife until now). after diving for years on the East Coast and the Caribbean.

Our first dive was to a sunken fishing boat called the Sea Tiger that rested in almost 120 feet of water. Visibility was great and the water temperature was perfect.

This picture is of divers from a another group descending to the ship

A school of fish hanging out near the ship wreck

This is a random shot of the corrosion on the deck of the Sea Tiger

The second dive was done at a reef in about 40 feet of water. There was a lot of interesting sea life in this area. We saw a reef shark who was hiding under a overhang so while we could see him, I couldn't get a picture of him.

I did get a shot of an eel

There were three or four sea turtles in the area, and a particularly curious one came on over to check out what we were up to. This guy got so close I could have reached out and touched him.

Look, a fish!

These were both great dives and I hope to have a chance to do more Hawaii dives in the future!

Diving

Well, I haven't been able to get out too much since I was certified to SCUBA dive but I hope that changes in the not too distant future... also, I just got a dive camera. It's nothing fancy but it does allow me to take digital photos under water so I thought I'd post some of my inaugural shots. I was still figuring out how to use it so I didn't get a whole lot of great pictures but there were a few that I liked so here they are, if for no other reason than to get my sister-in-law Sarah and brother-in-law Jared to cross the Pacific and come dive with me.

The first place I have pictures of is called Horse Shoe. It's about a 100 yard or so snorkel from the beach and then it just drops off to over 170 ft. I know a few crazy kids who wanted to see just how deep it was, when they got to 170 they turned around but said it would have probably bottomed out at about 200 ft. For those not in the know 120 - 130 feet is about as deep as they recommend you go.

There are a lot of bright, little blue fish around the island that I am a big fan of.

And here is a shot from about 60 ft below. Like I said, I'm still getting used to the camera.

I had a bit more photographic success at the second dive site of the day, Toilet Bowl, about a two minute walk from where our cars were parked for Horse Shoe. It's a bit of a perilous walk to this entry site down some lava rock, you just have to watch where you're stepping and choose your path carefully. If there are any scouts out there looking for an Eagle project, building steps down to Toilet Bowl on Okinawa would be a great one! You have to be careful here because the site is right below a fisherman hut and I guess if you get too close they like to throw rocks at you. We didn't have any issues though.

Every dive I've done here I have seen a sea snake. Here's one next to one of those blue fish.

Here's a fish posing for the camera.

This is Duane and Will, two of the three guys I was diving with.

There was a school of trumpet fish just below the surface where we exited the water.

Toilet Bowl is a good place to dive.