Let’s All Go Diving in the Turks and Caicos Islands
Where When How Turks & Caicos Islands November / December 2009
Scuba Diving Open Water Certification
I’ve taken the next step in my quest for world domination. I’ve learned how to survive underwater. Not only is this crucial, should I wish to make the Lair/Headquarters for my overall plans of World Domination in a cave only accessible by submarine, but it helps my self–confidence to try things which are outside my comfort zone. I read that in a parenting magazine. I don’t have kids... I’m just learning to raise myself.
Breathing underwater is outside my comfort zone. Way outside it.
I started out with a simple DSD (Discover Scuba Diving), or Resort Course, as it is sometimes called. The DSD course is an introduction to diving, giving students a chance to try scuba before committing to the certification course. It’s an opportunity to get out there and experience diving first hand in a very safe and secure way; on a DSD within one day you’ll be diving 40 feet under the sea where, quite frankly, most of the pretty things live. The DSD is a PADI approved course, it’s not something a dive operator dreams up and just does, you even get a fancy card at the end saying you’ve completed your DSD! That’s all I planned to do, really: have a little swim around in relatively shallow water; look at some pretty fishies; tell people I’d dove... uh, dived... diven? Whatever, I don’t even know. I just wanted to be able to tell the story and have non–underwater breathing people to tell me how cool I am.
Diver with Basket Sponges
Did I mention I’m not really that cool? In fact, on a regular basis I injure myself doing day to day activities. At University I was asked to leave my ballet class before someone was seriously injured; and a simple thing like answering the phone has once resulted in blood loss. So for me to go diving is, I think, a miracle. And so should you – but think it from a safe distance.
Underwater I’m a changed woman. There are no stairs to fall down underwater; nothing to trip over as one floats along like a mermaid. I am positively graceful!
And believe me when I tell you, if I can dive – you can very likely dive. There is a medical questionnaire to be completed prior to your Open Water Diver training which will help you and your instructor be aware of any issues you may have. Then there are a couple basic water skills requirements you must meet, one of them being a swim of 200 metres (or 300 metres with fins, mask and snorkel). I was a little intimidated by this til I discovered the swim is untimed and freestyle. I did the swim on my back, but I would have been fine using my fins, mask and snorkel as well. (My secret shame is that I have never learned to swim except on my back because – get this – I hate to have water near my face! It’s so bad that when I shower I need to have a towel handy to keep my face dry.) Kids as young as 10 years old are eligible, at the Dive Instructor’s discretion, to earn a diving certification as a junior, which can be upgraded to Open Water Certification when they turn 15. If you have a physical (or as in my case, psychological) limitation but are interested in learning to dive don’t hesitate to contact a PADI dive instructor to discuss your options. PADI has developed many adaptive techniques to aid individuals with special challenges to the physical requirements. Don’t assume because you have a physical limitation that you can’t become a diver.
Reef Shark with a Bar Jack
If you do start diving, and I hope you do, odds are you’ll love it. So once you have done the DSD course there is little doubt you’ll want to move on to the Open Water Diver Certification! On a diving website I once saw a quote which pretty much covers it... “Learning to dive gives you the courage to transform anticipation into passion.” Plus, when you are a certified Open Water Diver you get an even better card... and a deeper (Pardon the pun!) sense of satisfaction.
The Open Water Certification process is a far more in depth (I can’t help it) course than the DSD. To become a certified diver you start with book work. You’ll study, read, and watch a couple of informative DVDs before hitting the water... confined water first (usually a pool), then open water. If you plan to be certified while on vacation and are worried about the time commitment, fear not! With the aid of the internet you can complete this portion of your studies via the PADI website to get a jumpstart on your training. Then, upon arrival at your holiday destination, all that remains to be done are your confined and open water dives. The total time commitment will hardly feel like a dent in your holiday relaxation and will add countless enjoyable hours of bragging when you get home. A more than fair trade, I’d say. I did my entire course on island with Dive Provo, one of the many great PADI operators on Providenciales. I did my book work and then completed the tests. After the tests were done it was straight into the pool for the practical side of things. Once the pool work was out of the way it was open water for a total of four dives. And shazam, I’m an Open Water Diver. Yeah! In your face, nasty Ballet Instructor!
Although the hours of training will zoom by, take your time and book an operator and instructor you’re happy with, you’ll be spending a fair amount of time together so you will want to enjoy their company and feel comfortable with them. By the end of my certification I felt like a member of the family! Adding to this feeling of togetherness is the tradition of welcoming you to the world of diving by way of an announcement when you’ve successfully completed your final dive. Everyone on board your dive boat will cheer as you’re accepted into the privileged world of those who have seen the sea from the bottom up.
Hawksbill Turtle with Yellow Tube Sponges
But before you get the cheer, you have to complete the course, here’s what you can expect:
Once you’ve passed the medical questionnaire, done your bookwork, completed a supervised written test, and your instructor is satisfied you fully understand the material you’ve covered in this time (including the all important hand signals to communicate with your instructor or, once you’re certified, your dive buddy) it will be time to go to the pool, complete your water skills requirement, and learn all about your dive gear.
Your gear normally consists of a wetsuit, a Buoyancy Control Device (or BCD which is a vest type thing you can inflate and deflate via a couple of buttons, it acts as a floatation device on the surface and helps you to control your buoyancy when underwater), a mask, snorkel, fins for your feet (not called flippers, apparently), a weight belt (to help you sink and keep you from floating to the surface against your will), an air gauge and compass, and the all important tanks and regulator! The tanks, of course, hold your air and the regulator is what you breathe through.
Your instructor will show you how to put your dive gear together and how to check to make sure that it’s all working properly. Then you get to put it all on for the very first time!
First you go under water and take some breaths through your regulator to get used to that feeling. Which, I have to say, is just so incredible! Then your instructor will signal for you to watch him or her perform the skill that you must copy. There are a variety of these skills that you will have to complete, all of them 100 per cent doable. Even the ones that sound impossible are, clearly, not impossible at all. I watched in amazement as my instructor removed her dive gear underwater and put it back on again (this is a skill you need on the unlikely occasion you become tangled in something and need to untangle yourself). Thanks to her skill as an instructor, I did it too – no problem. Even if you do have a little difficulty with a skill, your dive instructor is trained to help you overcome any challenges you may face. Even now, I hate it when there’s water in my mask, as you might imagine. But thanks to my training I can clear it without any great effort. I could also take the darn thing right off and put it back on again at 100 feet below sea level if I had to! It’s not on my list of awesome things to do, but it is nice to know I can do it. I’m not pretending I didn’t have speed bumps in my training, because I did. Mask clearing aside, there were other moments when I was anxious or worried I couldn’t do something. Each time I felt that way I told myself the very true story that it was my dive instructor’s sole responsibility on that day to see me safely through whatever it was I was doing. Which reminds me... don’t forget to tip your dive staff.
Once you have mastered all the required skills in the pool to the satisfaction of your instructor it’s time to head out into the sea. There you will, once again, perform all your skills, but this time, instead of hotel guests in the pool, you will be looking at fish and coral and, if you’re lucky, even more impressive things.
Diver on Coral Head with Small Mouth Grunts
The waters around the Turks and Caicos Islands are literally teeming with marine life. During my certification dives I was fortunate enough to see turtles, rays, barracuda, eels, a whole lot of parrot fish (you can actually hear the parrot fish as they nibble on the coral), grouper, a multi–pack of jacks (cooper, horse eye and so on), some weird crab thing that looked like a spider (I didn’t enjoy that one) and... the piece de resistance... one... lone... shark! Hooray!
Look, I know what you’re thinking. If you’ve never been underwater before you may be forgiven for believing sharks are scary, I definitely did, thanks to my brother exposing me to the movie Jaws at a fragile age. But by my last certification dive I was actually praying to see a shark. Incidents between divers and sharks are extremely rare and are almost always the result of something like feeding or spear fishing. Seeing a shark is a special occasion and in no time at all you will regard it as a treat. The shark I saw, for the few seconds he stuck around (and according to the many dive professionals I consulted this is true of most sightings) was simply not even curious about why a human would be bobbing about in his home. Which I think is pretty remarkable, considering if I wandered into my livingroom and found a shark there I’d be extremely curious.
Aside from the abundance of beautiful things to see, the warm, clear waters of the Caribbean sea are, in my opinion, the very best place to learn to dive – mostly because they’re warm and clear. During the summer months many people dive in the Turks and Caicos without a wetsuit, including yours truly; a pair of board shorts and a rash vest were all I needed to stay warm. If you’re generally sensitive to the cold it would be wise to go with a wetsuit, though. Particularly in the winter months when the water can be a chilly 76 degrees – it might sound crazy, but eventually that will feel cold to you. Especially as you will be just gliding along, trying to not expend too much energy; the less energy you expend, the less air you use, the longer your dive can be!
The trick to being a good diver is in the buoyancy. Getting the correct amount of weight in your weight belt is a critical piece of the puzzle, it’s much much harder to sink than you imagine, but your instructor will help you with that, then it’s up to you! You may find you have to use your BCD a fair bit in the beginning... adding and removing air to go up and down. But once you get the hang of the concept that breathing in will make you go up, breathing out will make you go down... you’re flying; gliding over the ocean bottom like Atlantis’ version of Superman – only slowly... so you don’t miss anything. And it’s that flying thing that is the real attraction for me. Sure the fish are cool and breathing underwater is a trip, but flying is the bomb, baby. We went out to do a wall–dive, where the depth of the sea goes from 60 feet to about 6000 feet in a sheer cliff–like drop off. On a wall–dive you get a chance to travel a bit down the wall, we went down as far as around 100 feet. Then you hang out and peek in on all the creatures who make their home in the nooks and crannies of the first several feet of the underwater cliff face. Instead of being intimidated by the idea of 6000 feet of deep blue below me I purposefully swam just barely off the edge and hung there for a moment, appreciating the exhilaration of knowing I now possessed my very own superpower... I can fly.
Tiger Grouper with Gorgonian
A Short List of Dive Sites
PINE CAY SITES
Football Field: Named for a large area of sand at 70 ft; lots of lobsters to be seen here. The mooring pin is at 50 ft near a steep wall. Bermuda chub, barracuda, jacks, groupers.
Eagle Ray Pass: Sand Gully leading to the top of a wall. Beautiful coral and a sandy bottom at 100 ft.
GRACE BAY SITES
Coral Gables: Gradual slope makes this spot good for all levels of divers as you can choose the depth and still find lots to see. Sand chute stops near top of wall.
Graceland: Sand chute and swim–through leads to wall beginning at 50 ft. Great wall diving.
Grouper Hole: A deep sandy grotto with large coral head. Sand chute leads divers to wall.
Aquarium: Spur and groove formation wall with sand chutes running through the reef to a depth of around 100 ft.
Northwest Point: Vertical walls begin at 35 ft. Lots of formations. Big fish and big sponges here.
Shark Hotel: Wall starts at 45 ft and drops to 80–100ft where there is a shelf. Beyond the shelf the depths are said to be anywhere from 5000 to 7000 ft. Great spot for pillar coral and, as you might have guessed, some sharks.
Amphitheater: Wall drops to an amphitheater formation with a sandy bottom at 85 feet. Large elephant ear sponge and rare orange rope coral.
The Crack: Named for the crevice in the wall from about 50–100 ft. Lots of life around the crack and maybe a chance to spot sharks and rays.
The Hole in the Wall: Hole drops vertically from 55 ft and comes out at the wall around 95ft. One diver can make their way through at a time and come out on the other side into the blue. Great experience.
OTHER SITES
Highway to Heaven: Dive begins at 50 ft with colony of garden eels in a sand flat. Lots of stingrays, some coral arches and swim–throughs here as well as large fish and sharks.
Elephant Ear Canyon: 11 foot elephant ear sponge marks this site. Reef at the top of the wall at 50 ft cut through by sand chutes.
Gulley: Wall starts at 50 ft with dense coral reef. Gets its name from a cut that forms two sections that drop off vertically.
Driveway: Large sand area leads to sand chute through the reef to a ledge at 80–100ft before the wall drops.
Whiteface: Named for cliffs on the shoreline the top of the wall here has a very healthy reef with pillar coral. Lots of fish to see and an anchor imbedded in the coral at around 70 ft.
South West Reef: Wall starts at 50–70 ft. Vertical with lots of sponges and frequent shark and ray sightings. Sometimes tides are an issue.
Molasses Reef: Reef has claimed many ships but dives take place on the deep water side. Rays and sharks are common beyond the wall.
Double D: Just off French Cay, gradual sloping wall.
Half Mile Reef: East of French Cay, section of reef located in a large bowl on the wall, helps avoid current issues. Two large elephant ear sponges at 85 ft.
West Sand Spit: West Sand Spit is a sand bar which has is about 50 ft long at low tide. Wall starts at 60 ft and drops to 150 ft. Sand area is home to four large stingrays. Remote location and current keeps this reef very healthy.
All underwater photos this page by David Volkert courtesy of Provo Turtle Divers.
For advise about diving in general and listings of dive operators check out the PADI website at www.PADI.com.
A Good Diver is Always Learning – Diving’s Educational Resource – www.dtmag.com.
Care was taken to ensure correctness of information at press time. Information is subject to change without notice. Ad Vantage Ltd. accepts no responsibility for such alterations or for typographical errors or omissions. Entire contents of this page may not be reproduced in any manner without written permission of Ad Vantage Ltd. © November/December 2009 Where When How - Turks & Caicos Islands.
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