Dive 7: Advanced Open Water Certification: Deep Dive

Date: Sunday, June 4th, 1995
Location: Georgia Straight, BC
Visibility: 20-30ft
Depth: 100ft
Duration: ~14min
Surface Interval: 21 hours
Tank: Al80

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This was the Deep dive part of the AOW certification. I was 15 at the time and had never had any sort of buzz at that point. I was concentrating very hard on the dive in order to help prepare for narcosis. We settled down to the bottom in the near stygian darkness of the Georgia Straight and my instructor started pulling stuff out of her mesh bag. First she handed a tennis ball to us one at a time. I remember thinking it was neat at how crushed it was. Next she pulled an orange out, and cut a slice out of it. She offered it to us one at a time, and I remember wondering what I was supposed to do with it. She made encouraging 'go ahead' motions to me, but I just looked back at her a little confused as to what she was getting at. She then proceeded to offer it to the next student.

She hadn't told us to expect the show-and-tell, but after the dive on the boat she explained it was a sort of test to see if we were narced. She claimed that she'd had people wanting to take a bite of the orange at depth. I'm not too sure of the safety of this, but I never noticed any sort of feeling other than perhaps wondering if she was narced.

We spent only a few short moments at 100ft, and then gradually followed the sloping bottom up to the surface. Because we were diving square profiles, all time at depth was considered to be at 100ft, so we didn't spend much time at shallow depths.