WANDERING DIVER
TANKED UP
‘The pay for our new job – $50 a week, each – was on the low side, to say the least, but we did get room and board plus free beer from the hotel bar.’ It’s 2001, and diving instructor BEN THOMPSON and his partner Vicky Page have just got themselves work at the remote South Caicos Ocean & Beach Resort in the Caribbean. Here’s an extract from Ben’s new book…
ONE OF THE THINGS that excites me most about starting a new dive job is getting to know the sites and learning how best to dive them to take advantage of the conditions, and to maximise chances of seeing the biggest possible variety of local marine life.
Bob and Diane were both new to the lifestyle and tropical diving, so they were still very enthusiastic about getting out on dives and exploring new areas, and eager to share this with us, which was great.
All the sites were accessed by boat and were on fringing reef that dropped off very dramatically to great depths. The closest were literally two minutes away, with the furthest taking up to 20 minutes.
There were no other dive-operators in the area, though a liveaboard boat from the luxury Aggressor Fleet brand would come by a couple of times a month.
They had very kindly put fixed buoys down at some of the most impressive sites. This made life a lot easier, as it meant that we didn’t have to anchor the boats, and it is a lot better for the environment.
The idea was that once we knew the sites, Vic and I would operate a boat each, motor out to the location, moor the boat, dive and return to it.
There was no surface-support driver on the boats. I think Vic found this a little daunting, as it would not only entail captaining a boat, but also having to dive and return to the exact place.
The most noticeable thing about diving in this part of the world is the water clarity; the visibility ran consistently at 30m or more, and we did not suffer from too many “bad-vis” days, which is rare.
Together with the dramatic walls and drop-offs, this made for some spectacular dives. The disadvantage was that it was so easy to descend deep into the gin-clear waters that you constantly had to check your instruments in order not to end up too deep or stay too long; with the water clarity, these simple errors were dangerously easy to make.
MANY OF THE SITES were deep, but Bob and Diane did know a great location for a refresher dive.
It was a wreck of a plane that was lying in shallow water with a surprisingly intact fuselage, cockpit and wings.