This week at work was very much the same as the other weeks. I medicated animals, maintained their cages, and followed their diet plans. I also took an SDI open water scuba course this week.
This course consisted of five confined water days in the pool followed by two open water dives. The first open water dive, we did two dives in an old quarry, Fantasy Lake, in Raleigh. The quarry closed in 1950 when a spring was hit and the quarry began to flood. In 1980, the quarry was purchased and converted into a unique dive experience. In the hot 90 degree weather we began to squeeze ourselves into our 9mm wetsuits, hood, and gloves as the thermocline was about 68 degrees. After a lot of struggling and sweating we were finally ready to dive. Well, almost. Naturally my BC was leaking so I began sinking and had to remove all of my gear to get a new BC. There was underwater basketball (a bowling ball was used for the ball), a car, bus, and a lot of fish. We saw a massive koi fish as well as a lot of smaller fish who were collecting rocks and building nests. There had to be at least a 100 nest sites in one area and later we swam by an old nesting area. There was also a site called "Elvis's Graveyard" which we did not get to see.
The ocean dive was by far the most fun I've ever had! There we were, cruising out to sea with our Captain Ernie playing 80s rock music and the sea spraying us. We got to enter the water using the classic back roll entry which was super fun. Then we began our descent to a max depth of around 60 feet. The first dive was awesome although the visibility was only around 10 feet. The second dive I decided to collect a souvenir shell and we saw a ton of fish as well as a starfish. Just minutes after we got out of the ocean a pod of dolphins swamby the boat to explore.
If you ever get the chance I highly recommend trying diving (if you're in the Jacksonville, NC area check out New River Dive!).
I wish I had the opportunity to do this before so I could have seen the bottom of the ocean sooner!