Bright Little Fish

Scuba diving appeals to a diverse spectrum of people for as many various reasons. During the last three months the Blue Marlin shop has seen a whole host of divers crash forth from across the wide oceans like unexpectedly colorful shells cast up on a beach, ranging from bearded and tattooed pirates to adventurous businessmen searching for a new path in life. As part of the divemaster course, I have been assisting instructors with their courses, and was pleasantly surprised to find out that a 10 year old girl wanted to take part in the Junior Open Water Diver course. A wonderful Australian man named Bob was teaching the 4 day class, and I'd helped him out a couple times before and was always impressed by his humble leadership style, his knowledge and ability to clearly coordinate the lessons, and his interjection of humor to lighten the seriousness of learning diving, so I gladly agreed to help teach Desne to dive. Bob and desne both had a pink snorkle and mask, and joked with me that eventhough my snorkle was blue, that they would let me into their "cool" club. Bob and I made an odd pair, with his long shaggy hair and beard contrasting my clean shaven head, and while I dove in a full wetsuit with a hood and gloves, he was only in shorts. We nick-named him the polar bear.



Desne was a bright-eyed beauty with a firey mind, a little treasure that simply evoked joy to be in her presence. Perhaps a little shy to be around so many rough and rowdy divers, but quickly warmed up and I was amazed by her bravery -- turns out that she is the daughter of a South African miner living in Sumbawa, Indo. The PADI JR Open Water Course contains the same challenging material as the adult course, with the only difference that there is a 12 meter depth limit instead of 18 meters, so Desne was required to devour all of the same theoretical concepts like Boyle's Law (the inverse relationship of gas volume and pressure with depth), and was required to master the use of the Recreational Dive Planner tables to calculate nitrogen accumulation and off-gassing during time on the surface. My natural tendency was to talk down to this little 10 year old, but unexpectedly found out that at times she knew the course material better than I did and had no compunctions about correcting her rather arrogant mother when she tried to show off her outdated scuba knowledge.

We conducted a couple pool sessions teaching the 20 basic skills required to keep yourself alive underwater, and for each skill I would demonstrate, and Desne would repeat it -- if she did this correctly, then Bob would not have to do it "because he was lazy", his humble way of testing my demonstration abilities. After the correct execution of skills it was high fives all the way around, but Desne would dodge the high-five, running her palm across her hair to show her tricky finesse -- and she got us each and every time (wink wink). Feeling good about her mastery of the basic skill set, we took her out on the boat for the first open water dive at one of my favorites -- Halik Reef.

Desne's dream was to see one of the massive Hawksbill turtles, so we set out on a mission, as we drifted through the bizarre bombie formations of Halik, to find one of these gentle giants. The waters were somewhat murky, but we spotted the unique oval shape of a massive turtle shell, and swam into the current to get a closer look as it munched on soft coral. Desne was wide-eyed and ecstatic, smiling behind her mouthful of regulator.

OK, so I was excited to have helped manifest her dream, and was pleasantly surprised to soon after come across two black-tip reefsharks swimming in unison. These are rarely ever spotted in the shallows, so I was convinced that Desne was a magnet for the treasures of the deep. Soon after counting the fourth turtle, we floated over a large banded sea snake (which elicited a small bit of the primal fear from the last encounter with these curious creatures). Wowee!!

Desne is a natural diver -- no fear of the ocean at all -- "Tidak Takuk" as we say in Indonesian. I can only imagine the impact on her life of experiencing the amazingly rich and unusual realm of the coral wonderland. She will see things in her life that others can only see vicariously in movies, experience the weightless flight-like wonder of SCUBA, and at such a young age. Oh how this will set the stage for her life -- I am already deviously planning on how to get my neice and nephew certified -- only about 4.5 years, as my sister pointed out! The world will be a better place for the joy resulting from this micro-enlightenment.