5. Deep, deeper than I’ve ever gone before, diving!

Back on the coast, in the sunshine and originally with the idea of taking 5 days to just do very little aside from enjoy the beach. However, for some time now, I’ve also had the idea / ambition sitting in the back of my mind that I might like to get a further scuba qualification with a speciality accreditation. With my current certification, I can dive up to 30m but the limit for recreational diving is actually 40m - and really whenever I’ve dived beyond 30m depth (rarely and only when I’ve had to due to currents or dive sites, like in the Maldives), I’ve had a nagging feeling that I might be on risky ground with insurance if something went wrong. There are also a few wrecks and sites around the world that you have to have your deep speciality certification to dive. So I looked into it and the next thing I knew, I’d booked to do my deep spec! With a dreadful, classic PADI e-learning module complete, I then had to complete 4 dives over 2 days with an instructor to participate in a series of ‘skills’, experience diving to 40m and be officially certified.

So on my first full day in Sanur, I was sitting at the hotel reception at 7am awaiting my pick up for a day of diving. Unfortunately, my research hadn’t got as far as checking you could actually dive fairly locally to Sanur, which it turns out they don’t really do. Instead, I found we had a 3 hour drive round to the east cost to a town called Tulamben. I didn’t have my flask of tea with me or enough entertainment for what ended up being 7 hours of driving across the day, thanks to Bali traffic! However, by 10am, we’d made it to our destination - a shore dive of the USAT Liberty Wreck. An American army cargo ship that in 1942 was sailing from Australia to the Philippines. The ship was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine off the coast of Lombok (an island off the coast of Bali). At the time and due to conditions and the damage, they towed it as far as Bali but realised it wouldn’t make it to its intended destination of a Dutch owned port in the north so they decided to at least try and get the cargo off. The ship was beached on the east coast of Bali, effectively parking it on the shore of Tulamben. The then ship remained beached, stripped of all its cargo and fittings and then left by the Americans to be someone else’s problem. In 1963 the nearby Mount Agung volcano erupted to the accompaniment of an earthquake. The carefully beached ship was shaken enough to cause it to slip off the beach and roll over onto its side, where it ended up 20m off shore submerged just below the surface sitting at its lowest point at a depth of 30m. It has stayed there forever more and become Bali’s most popular and famous wreck dive. The wreck is degrading and breaking up and has become a fab reef having been reclaimed by the sea. I actually dived it when I first visited Bali back in 2018.

As with last time, you gear up on the shore and stagger under the weight of a full set of scuba gear, which for me, with my gear, tank and weights is at around 35kg. For this shore entry, you lumber over the rocky shore, into the waves until you get deep enough for the water to take the weight of you and your tank so you can pick up your feet, float, get your fins on and then descend. This shore exit caused me a bit of bother last time so I was prepared but over confident with the entry…. Off we went, bracing against the little breakers and onwards … when I misstepped and stumbled on a boulder, caught my tank into the water, over balanced, tumbled over and smacked my leg on another rock. Not quite deep enough to float, not shallow enough to be able to get my balance in amongst the breaking waves, and stand back up, I terribly unsuccessfully just ended up rolling about in the waves. Just generally rolling about like a great beached, tank wearing whale, without any grace or dignity whatsoever. By the point of realising my fate was probably just roll about in the waves for the day, I was laughing too much to get up. My lovely instructor Andrea (pronounced the Spanish way like And-ray-er) was initially a little alarmed then also laughing while trying, unsuccessfully, to brace her self enough to heave me back up. Eventually, I rolled, stumbled and dragged my way out deep enough to right myself, take back control and our dive commenced! I would be much better with what is referred to as a ‘short’ tank - still 12l capacity but wider and shorter, so it would fit my height much better - and I’d have been able to sit up on the floor and get myself back up more easily. But the average man is tall and has no bother with the longer, thinner tanks. Therefore, that’s what 99% of dives shops stock. This means the standard tanks come almost to my knees behind me so I can’t sit at all when I’m wearing one. In all my time of diving, I have only ever known one dive shop who had the shorts on offer! Diving a massively male dominated sport - and worse off for it.

The ‘skills’ elements of the deep dives are more just looking at stuff you’re shown to illustrate the impact of reduced light and increased pressure at depth - they vary between quite interesting to taking account of the fact you could be a moron who found primary school was a stretch too far.  We looked at something that appeared red on the surface but is black / grey under water (because light can’t penetrate the water and red is the first colour in the spectrum that is lost. In fact, full red light can really only penetrate to about 6m so everything starts to appear greyer beyond that - and nothing underwater appears red unless it has it’s own light source!). We also blew a balloon (a glove!) up on the surface to absolutely bursting fully inflated then looked at it at 40m, where is was considerably ‘deflated’ looking because the pressure of the water had compressed the air inside so much. We’d taken an empty bottle with a lid on with us too and it was all crumpled up by the time it got to depth and looked like it was imploding in on itself. That was then refilled while we were at 40m and the lid secured. Once on the surface, as soon as we went to unscrew and loosened the lid, it fired up and popped into the air like a champagne cork. Important to note this is why you mustn’t ever hold your breath underwater if breathing pressurised air (from a scuba tank). As you ascend, the air expands as the pressure decreases and could cause lung over expansion injuries that could include the air sacs in your lungs rupturing. A ballon inflated at 40m would likely burst on its way to the surface. If an emergency ascent is ever required, which is something that we practice in a controlled way when you first learn to dive, you’d do it while breathing out all the way up. It’s why free divers (diving without a tank just holding their breath) can hold their breath to descend / ascend (because they breath normal air, not pressurised air on the surface only) and one of the reasons they can’t take a puff from a handy scuba diver they meet below and continue free-diving in their ascent.

We broke an egg under water too. The idea of this is to show how much it stays together under the pressure of the water. It’s the one element of the deep dive skills I’ve never fully understood because as far as I can work out, eggs stay together as one big globby mess in my kitchen too. Perhaps it would be easier to keep it together and successfully poach at 40m with way less effort than it takes in a saucepan on land!? We didn’t try that so I don’t know for sure!

I also did a few bits of maths and games to test how narcosis, that tends to set in the deeper you go, might effect me. It took me 4 seconds longer at 40m than it did on the surface to do the game of pointing out numbers 1-12 from a grid they were written in in random places while touching my nose in between each number! I didn’t particularly feel ‘narced’, which is a really a thing but also a phenomenon that science struggles to fully explain or understand still. Extreme narcosis could cause poor decision making, slow reactions and maybe putting your self at risk due to reduced abilitiesor feeling quite unwell fairly suddenly. If you begin to feel it, you cure it by slowly shallowing up until it eases then stops, without any longer consequences or impact on the body beyond that, as far as they know so far! It could happen quite shallow but is more common at 30m and deeper and could effect you one day but not at all the next.

Fortunately, the end-of-dive shore exit and second entry/exit went much more successfully so I’ve only got one massive leg bruise from my first attempt to get into the sea - not dissimilar to the bruises I usually end up with all over my arms and legs from my attempts to get on and off dive boat ladders anyway! My second day of 2 further dives went much the same way although, thankfully, the dive site this time was only an hour’s drive away and also involved going into one of the little Balinese jukung boats, with the outrigger supports, out to a couple of dives sites. I did a few more skills while I proved I could sensibly and responsibly dive at depth without breaking eggs, needing the colour red or requiring a fully Inflated balloon. There was a bit of surge even at depth on our second dive that you had to kind of ride backwards and forwards as we went along, which was quite fun. We did a vertical swim through, which was like an underwater vertical tube that we entered at about 28m and swam slowly up through, exiting at about 18m. Only with the surge, it a turned into a bit of an underwater blowhole (like a Hedley’s Hole, Mum) so I went in, waited while hanging on about half way up as the surge tried to suck me back down deeper, looked up and planned my route then got shot up through the final 3-5 metres out the top, where the surge fortunately eased so the mini fast ascent wasn’t a huge issue but was quite fun! We had two men with us for the second day’s dives so they were both only 30minute long dives as they were rubbish on air but otherwise all lovely. Just as we were finishing the final dive, a lovely puffer fish came by to congratulate me on behalf of the ocean, so that was nice! Dives and online course successfully completed and I now have my deep speciality certification and can dive up to 40m deep. There’s mostly no point as the prettiest, liveliest reefs are generally around 15m and shallower. Occasionally though, there can be ‘big stuff’ down a bit deeper so maybe I’ll get to see more of them some time …

To celebrate my new certification, I took myself out for dinner (as I do every night!) at the restaurant next door and had a cocktail and then also ordered ‘London fish and chips’ … but I think something got slightly lost in translation ….

When it arrived, I said

‘Oh, I thought it came with chips’.

The server said, ‘yes ma’am, with chips’

Me: Oh, I see, sorry, I thought it was chips. Like fries, like they’d have in London

Server: yes ma’am, these flat chips

Me: er, yeah, crisps

Server: yes ma’am, flat chips exactly like in London.

Me: errr …. Right … sure… thank you.

And off she went and I ate my crisps and then fish, which was delicious.

My final days in a Sanur have been very much just relaxing, on my balcony with cups of tea, on the beach and having various dinners and food. I watched the local fishermen wade out onto the reef and right out to the edge of the reef just before the big waves are breaking. They stand out there for 4-5 hours line fishing. Sadly, they fish the reef fish but they just catch what they then take home for their families to eat. Apparently some of the reef fish are delicious. I won’t be finding that out! At least the puffers wouldn’t be caught and kept to eat - far too deadly poisonous a toxin in their body to risk trying to prepare them for your tea!

I’ve mostly had a lovely relaxing time although one or two slight errors, including ordering a latte coffee but forgetting to include the all important ‘hot’ in my order so it arrived iced. Utterly gross and proper weird. I also treated myself to a lovely massage and although I remembered to give the full brief on very gentle pressure only and don’t pull my fingers and toes as I like all my joints to remain in their sockets, I forgot about my big leg lump bruise as it doesn’t caused me any problems unless I press on it. Forgot to tell the lady and she didn’t see it since they like to do massages in barely lit cave type rooms, presumably for relaxation purposes. I narrowly avoided aiming a swift knee to her head when she ran her thumbs up and pressed on it and reminded me of my injury. After that, and once I’d explain to the slightly startled lady and she saw the bruise, she avoided it and the rest of the experience was far more relaxing. I’ve even had a bit of time to do some housekeeping as there’s a little sink and kitchen area in my hotel with a sponge marginally less disgusting that the one my mum considers her ‘best’ sponge so I gave all my tea cups a good wash! I spotted some interestingly named shops in town too, complete with the 4 pronged infamous design. It reminds that I must look into if they have a different meaning here as seems an odd choice of name really. A terribly busy day!

My task tomorrow is to locate the correct ticket office to collect my reserved boat tickets from and then get to the correct port and ferry for my transfer to Nusa Penida Island and six nights staying at Scuba Junkie resort!