My 2012 resolutions…

2011 is gone and we are living the first days of 2012.

As many of you, I also have made my resolutions list for 2012, some of them are the classic ones such as :

losing those extra pounds on my belly, eat healthy, don’t be late paying my taxes, stop my subscription to the playboy tv channel, etc, etc.

However…my list goes beyond that and has a special section advocated exclusively to diving and I decided to share it with you guys…here we go…

1. I will not make false promises to my divers when they come and ask me ” it’s for sure that we will see turtles, sharks, dolphins and a moose on the next dive? ” and I reply with a big smile and nod  my head : “of course!!! this is the place where we always see those ones!!! “

2. I promise not to fix the air pressure gauges of my rental gear  in order to show that the tanks are full when in reality they only have 2000 psi of pressure.

3. I will not point to a squirlfish underwater and tell my divers later on that it was a  Cozumel splendid toadfish (only because they have 3 days asking me to find one for them and I was unable to see any )

4. I will not tell my divers that the shipwreck was sunk in the 2000 while it was in commission transporting the CHUPA CABRAS and after he escape from his cage he found his way out by taking a huge chunk off the hull of the boat.

5. I MAY cut my hair very, very, very short. I came to the conclusion that it’s not a good thing when a brand new diver that was shooting pictures, in the best paparazzi quick trigger style, comes and ask me what kind of sea anemone is the one on the display and I look at it and turns out to be a shoot of the back of my head.

6. I will not eat more that the 30%  of the guacamole that Martin ( my deck hand ) prepare in between the dives before I handle it to the divers and/or keep doing double dipping.

7. I promise not to take my divers inside any swim trough without being sure that there is in fact an exit on the other end.

8. I promise not to criticize in a negative way to other Divemasters that need more that 4 pounds of weight to dive while wearing a short 3 mm suit only.

9. I promise to buy a new bcd ( the cheap piece of crap that I have now ONLY lasted 3000 dives…I’m almost sure it’s made in China )

and finally:::

10. I promise to come with a way to improve the service that ALEXSCUBA delivers to all of you…besides our standard 60 minutes bottom time dives, fruits or snacks during the surface interval, great service of my deck crew, good shape rental gear, personal attention to each one of our divers, professional but easy-going dive instruction and of course the sincere desire of help you to have the best dives possible.

I wish you the best of the best not only for the 2012 but for all your life…stick to your resolutions (or at least try!!) and come and dive with us soon.

Be safe: Alexscuba

p.s. Any resemblance with real life diving experience with us is purely coincidence…with the exception of resolution number 10 of course.

 

 

 

Diving with Bull Sharks

November and December are officially the months where we can finally say that we are hurricane free… the time to go and eat all the tuna cans that we save just in case and to take all the wooden boards off the windows…BUT… it’s also the beginning of the “Nortes”: strong winds from the North, cold and the cause for the harbor to be close for one or several days. So… the question is: What can a diver do in Cozumel if the harbor is close??  I know that 80% of you are thinking that a cerveza and some ceviche on the other side of the Island sounds like a great idea!!! but what about the other 20% hard core-I-came-to-dive divers??

Well…options are: Cenote dives, a classic alternative for those windy days… very interesting dives, something to do at least once in a lifetime.  Even that I enjoyed the times I went cenote diving I have to say that it’s not my favorite thing to do. That’s why option number 2 seemed to me very tempting…

DIVING WITH BULL SHARKS!!!

This is the deal: We have to cross to Playa del Carmen, a quite exciting ordeal on its own…especially if you are prone to seasickness.  Anyway – there we go to do 2 dives with a local operator.

Now, for all of you who are used to dive in large, comfortable, well-equipped boats with crews that treat you even better than they do to their own kids…get ready for a reality check: diving is not always rosy!! Diving in Playa is like one of those flash backs that you see in the movies….it’s like….going back a good 2 decades to the good old times when all of us dreamed to be like the sea hunter…so… do not expect fancy there..and you better be sure that you remember how to assemble your own gear and take some classes on shore diving entrances!!!

Boat was waiting for us about, mmm….30 to 40 ft from the beach…shallow water, shallow  enough to walk with the whole scuba gear on your back until we made it to the boat.  Bright side about having a Norte in Cozumel is that Playa del Carmen water conditions are just super nice..at least wave wise…nevertheless I got a couple of  good splashes on my face caused by a wave that obviously had not clue about “water conditions in Playa del Carmen when there is a Norte in Cozumel”

…any way…once on board of the maximum 7 passenger fast boat (a fancy way to describe a fishermen little boat with a off-board engine) we start heading toward the dive site… a 5 min boat ride and we were there…

…we got a briefing about the formation we must keep while kneeling at the bottom and they provided us with a pvc stick which main purpose was to help us to stay anchored at the bottom and if the situation called for it…scare the sharks away… let me tell you something: a cardinal rule in diving is to Believe whatever your Divemaster is telling  you…  even when at first sight seems to make no sense whatsoever…so… I truly believe then and now that a 3 ft long pvc pipe is enough to keep away a 5 to 6 ft long Bull shark…end of the discussion.

Ok. Time to get in the water..yeahhhhh… oh, yes, of course the entry is done with an old-time classic “back roll entrance” with camera on one hand and shark stay-the-hell-away-of-me pvc pipe on the other!! R.I.P Jaques Cousteau would be so proud of me !

… and there we go!!! 2 shark handlers, 4 of my divers and myself… descending to 65 ft of decent visibility sandy bottom area where god knows how many sharks are awaiting for lunch time… because there is the beauty of this, the shark handlers and the captain in the boat in fact feed the bull sharks and carry a pipe of, yes… you guessed right! PVC full of fresh chum!! leftovers from the morning fishing trip…yummy , yummy!!!

I have to confess something, as I was descending I began to question the level on insanity involved on doing this kind of dive…you know what I mean?? it’s safe? what about if this?? what about if that?? but this intense self-questioning ended as soon as I  pondered the fact that there is nothing sane to begin with on going underwater with a 3000 psi cylinder attach to my back…I mean… there is enough pressure there to blow a hole the size of a mini cooper at any concrete wall you chose!! So… that kind of rational thinking brought a great deal of peace to my mind.

Once at the bottom the whole dive went flawless…what the dive operation in Playa lacks on glamour they compensate on skills… they keep our group under control and they handle the shark feeding in a way that even I could not surpass (notice my outstanding level on confidence of my shark feeding  skills….and consider that I had never done that before).

Really, it was a great experience to look so close to those marvelous creatures (the sharks…not the divemasters) and at the same time a little sad to realize that we as society, in our never-ending greediness and lack of understanding about the nature and the need to keep an equilibrium, are so close to bring those creatures to their extinction (the divemasters..not the sharks)…but I think that a video can show you more that all my words….so…check it out at my facebook page ALEXSCUBA …and remember that there is always something to do when a Norte hits Cozumel… note – the shark season ends in March.

Allow me to highly recommend this dive and take you there….sure..there is some level of risk on it, sure..the sharks may not have received the memo that says that they should stay away from the pvc pipe, sure ..they are wild animals and reality is that anything can happen any time…its also true that nothing has happened in all the past seasons that they have being feeding those sharks…

…during the whole 35 minutes that we spend at the bottom with those 16 or 17 sharks around there were only 5 seconds when my soul was full of fear…and it was when I JUST COULD NOT REMEMBER if I left the oven on or off.

Have a great holiday season and I hope to see you here soon.

Alex

www.alexscuba.com

Devil’s Throat…

Every  dive destination has one of those challenging/scary/deep dive sites, and of course their names are always something like: ” The wall of the death man”, “The Blue Hole”. “No End Wall”; etc, etc, etc…and of course here we have: La Garganta del Diablo!!!

True, it’s a dive that demand some level of experience and well handle diving skills such as: good air consumption, good buoyancy control, good equalization skills, capability of dealing with currents and so on. Besides that, you want to dive Devil’s Throat when the water and weather conditions are good…and yesterday the conditions were excellent!

We took 4 divers with us, making a total of 6 with Julian and myself. That makes a good size group with the advantage of having 2 instructors in the water, this is not a standard procedure, the reason was that Day and Terry were about to complete their Advanced Open Water course, couple of years ago they got their Open Water Course with me and also 2 Adventure Dives, leaving only 3 more to go in order to complete the Advanced Course, so, the plan for yesterday was:

A Multilevel Dive with a maximum depth of 130 ft follow for a shallow dive to do the Underwater Navigation Dive.

By the time we got all the way to the South end of the island ( Punta Sur ) we had everybody on the same page on the details and dive plan for this dive and once Oceano 4 was on position we all jumped at the same time into the ocean, no air on the bcd…straight descent to 70 to 80 ft!!  no time to wait for nobody since the current could easily take us away from the dive spot!!!  here we goooooooooo!!!  ….

…well, that was the plan.

What happened in real life was a little bit diferent…one of our divers had a little trouble equalizing and the other 3 didn’t  sank as quick as we were expecting…and..of course…the current begun to take us away, but, we were lucky since the current was not as strong as usual and even that we didn’t drop like rocks to the bottom, eventually we made it.

Visibility was awesome and nobody around, the group split in 2 subgroups…Julian with 3 divers and myself with another one, Day and I had to do some serious swimming against the current to finally reach the pinnacle of coral that we call Devil’s Throat, once we made it there, the rest was a walk in the park. That’s nice about this dive, once you are inside the maze of tunnels and chambers of Devil’s Throat, you can enjoy the site and take a tour in several different ways; either going in at the shallow part of 80 ft and come out at 130, 120 ft or the other way around!

Since Day was doing his Multilevel dive we suppose to stick to a plan, well…we always suppose to stick to the diving plan…right?, 130 ft for 10 min, 80 ft for 10 min, 60 ft for 5 and from there to 40 ft until we ran low on air.

We complete the first half of the plan, air went down quick on the swim into the current at the  beginning of the dive, but we have plenty of time to check out  3 or 4 tunnels, encounter a turtle taking a nap at the reef and still catch the view of an Eagle Ray during the safety stop.

When divers ask me if Devil’s Throat is worth the trouble of setting up a dive there… I tell them that it could be an awesome dive or a sort of plain and simple dive. Yesterday we got the bright side of the moon… it was a beautiful dive and now Day and Terry have the perfect excuse to light up a Habano to celebrate…

…we are going out for dinner together tonight…and considering that they have never smoke a cigarette before, leave alone a Habano, I’m facing the possibility to find out that they got sick and don’t feel like dinner at all tonight!!!

Good news: they are now Advanced Open Water Divers!!! woot wootttttt!!

Later…  Alex

www.alexscuba.com

50/50

Time: 0900

Location: Puerto de Abrigo, Cozumel, Mexico

Objective: Search and Watch Eagle Rays Squads

Vessel: Oceano 4

Team members: The Atlanta Pack code name: Pooldoctor

                              Nancy and Craig, aka: Alburquerque’s left turn

Native local contact: Alex…aka: Alex

As Alex is getting the team together to give them a briefing, Monty ask “why there is a need for a briefing for this dive?”

Well…Alex say, it turns out that we are going to dive the North side…and must likely we are going to be alone there..no other boats to help a diver that was fooling around and lost his/her group down there. Currents at the North side can and must of the times are wild plus this is sort of a deep dive,  if its true that there is not a real need to pass 90ft on the dive, also is true that the shallower depth to be found for a while will be 60 or 50 ft.

For sure, Eagle Ray wall , aka Cantarel wall…is no place to make mistakes.

The briefing was intense but totally worth it, the group of 8 and Alex were in perfect synch and prety much all ran as they planned.

They jumped together leaving the boat clear of divers in less that 1 minute, descent without major problems to the meeting depth of 40 ft and from there they went to the wall….ok…sorry… I have to make a corection here : the current flush them down to the wall at about 100 ft!!

It was one of those currents that push divers down and away the walls….Alex knows about those currents, he had his share of extreme experience with those and didnt want to deal with that today!! so….emulating the Notre Dame Humpback, he beging to bang on his tank like a maniac asking the divers to swim back and up the wall!!!  no nonsense here…he knows that Capitan Jose and Martin are keeping and eye on their bubbles but he certanly doenst want to drink his next Mojito at Habana.

Divers did a great job and made it back to the wall…and as Alex told them  during the  briefing: they beging to open their eyes and search for eagle rays. He was clear about it when with a deep knowledge of the rays nature and behavor and showing  his extremes capabilities of inductive stadistic and mathematics apply to underwater enviroments he said:

“we have a 50/50 chances to encounter rays”… it cant be a more absolute true beyond those words…any way…..

So… soon after they reached the wall back….Alex spoted 3 Eagle rays, far on the distance and unfortunatly he was sure that nobody else was able to see them…besides Karen that by now had become his dive buddie. Alex was afraid that the 3 rays will be all…and the scarry idea of an eventfull dive came to his brain…not a nice picture. However…the team’s destiny was diferent, and after 10 minutes into the dive , they reached an area where the current slowed down to a point that wasnt so hard to stop if they wanted to do so….and …right there….in from to their eyes….a squad of 5 eagle rays showed up!!! awesome!!

…. but that wasnt all, another group of 4 came from the rigth side and far and behind them Alex could see at the very less 5 more going up and donw searching for some snacks at the  sandy bottom.

At his call, the team stop and just enjoy of 4 minutes of an Spoted Eagle Rays ballet, they were all over!!!

But…all good things come to an end and the current  took care of  pushing the team away from the rays…they end up in a sand and seaweed area that had no to much to offert….the current was  coming across from the wall towards land and it was imposible for them to swim back to the reef area.

40 min later the mission was over, the objetive reached and the whole team had a big smile on their faces…plus, the satisfaction to stick to the plan and defeat the Eagle Ray Wall.

Second Targed: The C-53

And at the end of the day, Alex feels happy to lead another team downthere…and while he is resting at home and recap the day….he wonder:

“WHY  THE HELL  IM WRITING IN THIRD PERSON ???? HMMMMMM “

Until the next mission…. Alex out.

www.alexscuba.com

How we beging 2011.

Hola everybody!!

Of course I have to begin with a FELIZ AÑO NUEVO 2011  to all of you!!  I hope you had  a good 2010 and ready to make 2011 a better year for you life, because after all, its not what the year “will bring for us” but what we are willing to do with our lifes in the 2011.

During almost 19 years living here, I had have the oportunity to share many adventures underwater with divers from all over, divers with many and so diferent points of view, religion ideas, political opinions, skin color, shapes and sizes…but there is a common denominator for all of them….yes… you got it: all of them love to dive!!! and year after year I had being lucky to share that with them, also, and after all those years some of those divers and I have develope great frienships…and I feel so happy about it.

I wish all of you could be here today and star the 2011 with a great day of diving in Cozumel!

Not all the dive shops or dive operator work the first day of the year, and as a matter of fact, we were not planning on working either…but I got this e mail from Kira telling me that she was coming in a cruiship and wanted to go diving the very first day of the year…at the beginin I have the idea to say no….but after think about it twice I told my self: “Myself, dont you think that its an awesome way to star 2011?? diving…? who are you to say no to this great idea?? cut down a little the number of beers that you were planning on drinking the night of the 31th and take this girl and the boyfriend diving!!! “….so….I did!!  ( of course I indulged myself with a couple of extra hours sleep and we took off from El Cid at 11:00 am vs 9:00 am ).

Despite the fact that we couldnt make it all the way south, due some funky winds, we handle to go to Palancar Gardens…it was a good dive of course…even that the current was going south instead of north.

I have on my group the Atlanta pack: Greg, Naomi, my longtime friend and student Michael, Monty and Karen. Kira and Shawn were diving with Jaime. Water was a little chilly and caused that Greg dindt want to go in the second dive at Paso del Cedral…same path Naomi was planning to follow but I convinced her ( with the help of 2 wetsuits ) to come in the dive and I try hard to work the same magic on Greg but it didnt work…funny…right before we jumped in the water I told him : “last chance to come with us…this is the dive where we are going to see all the good stuff…” , I know!! I know!! of course I was bluffing!! how doI know what are we going to see any way???? but… at the end of the dive, where the current was sooooo smoth…just at the right speed to move effortless and enjoy and the water not as cold as in Palancar, the final count was:

In order of apeareance:

1 turtle

1 hugeeee eagle ray ( I got about 8 ft close to it !! )

3 long green eels

1 nurse shark

2 porkypine fish ( in a lovy lovy mode )

so…no bad!! and as we were getting back to the boat and Greg asked me how the dive was… all what I could say was: “hmm…no bad… ” ;-)

See you here later this year!!!

Alex

www.alexscuba.com

Missing fingers:::

And its the end of the day!!

And thats a good thing, today was a little crazy, after having to cancel yesterdays dives due the NORTES and with no sign of better conditions for today, I have to say that it totally took me by surprise to find out tha the Harbor was open this morning.
Here it is how it went down:

I wake up at 6:20 am and listened to the wind going like wwwwwooooo outside my window, therefore, I went back to sleep for another 30 min…. at 7:20 I called the Harbor Master to find out whas the status was  and they told me that the harbor was officially close for the morning…with a good chance to be open around 10:30 or 11:00…so…I take all my sweet time and decide to go back to bed for another 10 min. good thing was that I also decided that it could be a good idea to call the guy at the air station to let him know that I will pick up my tanks later in the morning once the harbor was open… so… I called him and told him that, his answer was:

air guy: “dude…the harbor is open”
Alex: no….its not

air guy: yes it is…

Alex: ??????????????

so… I hang off the phone, called the Harbor Master again, a diferent guy picks the phone this time and said to me: yes…the harbor is open…

Well… as you can imaging that trigger a minipanick attack on me!!! but as I like to say: Its ok to feel that you are going to panick….just dont do it.

Lets say tha the next 40 minutes  of my life were at the very best a caos…but…we managed to be on time ( almost ) and take our divers out.

Ocean was a little bit wavy have to say…but later on the day it was very nice, sure, the wind is still blowing and its fresh but nothing deathly.

Our first dive was San Francisco wall… a nice dive…to be honest it was not an awesome dive but we were lucky to see a turtle the size of a dinner table… after the dive we warmed up for a while at Costa del Sol’s pier and I had enought time to give an introduction to Enriched Air to Marie-Eve and Jordan….oh…by the way… I was right, Mark is an Instructor….any way. After the class, 2 bananas and 2 sweet mexican breads, we were ready for the second dive, that one was at the Ship Wreck Felipe Xicotencatl….for those with minimun foreign lenguajes skills: The C-53

What a great dive!! we went down using Nitrox 36 to have a good 50 minutes max. bottom time at 70 ft after doing a 90 ft multilevel wall dive…in other words…we were down for a while…
yeah…. so… what I like about this dive and it never gets old is that its a place where my imagination goes wild… there is something spooky and misterious about going inside the ship ( no ligths of course ) and looking to all that metal twisted and getting rusted or cover up by sponges and coral….its like diving into a science fiction movie!!!

It was only 3 of us…plenty of room to manouver and keep and eye on my canadians divers… I like to watch how the ship is a sort of huge sample table of all the corals you can find on the reefs…the brigt red of the sponges that cover the outside walls, the funky shapes and colors of the ones that grow in the inside…glassysweapers on the dark rooms and silver side schools swiming in and out of the boat..

I like to stick my head off a hole on the deck to find myself in the midle of hundreds of silver fishes that go here and there in perfect sincrony… and to think that several years ago that boat was out in the ocean doing….what boats do!! right?? and now… is here playing the roll of a fish condominium….awesome!!!

After 30 min at the ship wreck we went down current and cross to Chankanab reef, once again…we follow Jordan that by now is a Compas Master!!! and as we were swiming away and crossing the sand areas we saw sooooooo many Garden eels that we were missing fingers to keep count!! when I see those eels…I dont know.. I wonder that they muts have a pretty boring life you know… they live on their holes… with I will guess more that 50% of their bodies inside and the rest out and doing this cobra movements….kind of just chilling and checking out whats going on you know… I mean… the only thing we are missing here is a 50 cents song and the picture will be complete and perfect!!

Yeah…it must be boring to be a eel.

So… today the word has a new Advanced Open Water diver…congratulations Jordan!!

Im happy to see how my divers keep learning and growing and getting more and more confident and independent underwater…as much as I like to see the new ones discovering all the colors, textures and all those funnny things that takes place underwater….like today at San Francisco when we saw an angle fish trying to eat bubbles!!

My canadians friends will finish tomorrow but I have all ready this Alabama family diving with Alex scuba….they are great…fun… and Jon…well…Jon Short is no short!!! thats for sure!!

Tomorrow…Palancar Gardens or Horseshoe…and more adventures for us.

Have a great day…and be safe.

Alex

www.alexscuba.com

Warm up dive…

December is here and of course all the smart people from “Up North” are running away from the cold, nothing to blame, and Canadians, people from Minnesota, Chicago, NY are basking on the sun…sure…the wind is a little fresh but nothing compare with the blizards back home.
Two of those winter birds are back to dive with Alex scuba, all the way from Quebec and after a little more that 2 years Marie-Eve and Jordan are here… last time I saw them Jordan took his Open Water Course with me and many dives had pass under his fins since then, Spain, Cuba and some spots in Canada are part of their dive history now, still, they consider Cozumel one of the best.
Jordan had decided that its about time to catch up with Marie-Eve and he is ready to complete his Advanced Open Water course….so… today we went to Dalila for a warm up dive and San Francisco Wall for the Underwater Navigation dive. We were a small group , as usual, besides the two of them we had Maury and Zach ( father and son that came for a day diving in a cruiship, of course I pointed to all the beauty of staying here for a week  vs a cruiship ) and Mark, a great diver with great skills…. he showed me his Nitrox Certification card as prove that he is a diver and I suspect that he may be a Divemaster or Instructor that just wants to dive and keep a low profile while here…for sure I will unvail the mistery tomorrow…

Any way… yeah… warm up dive…Dalila, an easy 40 to 60 ft dive with a nice current and great visibility today, a long reef that easily allow us to be down the for a lot of time. I chose this dive because I know that its almost warranty to encounter some cool creatures, but today was like… the whole repertory!!!
I know that you guys have more important things to do that reading about diving, for instance…clear your driveway off snow…or…watching the reruns of friends because honestly you dont feel like getting out of home, so… I will keep it simple and just give you the list of what we saw:

3 nurse shark
3 turtles
1 hugeeeee eagle ray
3 stingrays
2 good size groupers
0 divers from any other dive shop

well…. no bad for a warm up dive right?? in fact, how do you beat that dive?? I mean… is like having a poker hand with a Five of a Kind and hope that the next hand will be better!!!

On the second dive we split the group, Julian took Maury, Zach and Mark and I took Jordan and Marie-Eve for the Underwater Navigation dive, good job on that one Jordan!! its not an easy task to handle the compass and try to keep a straight course with the current we have here!!!
Tomorrow: Deep Dive and Search and Recovery, after that we only need to do Enriched Air and still on the air are Night dive , Wreck or Multilevel diving.

Ok.. i let you go now, I hope each one of you will have a wonderfull x-mas …in Mexico we celebrate and have the dinner the 24th kind of late…around 10:00 or 11:00 pm…of course we drink before, during and after the dinner and that may explain why no body had ever see Santa Claus coming down to deliver the presents…hmmm…so…yes! You have a great X-mas and be smart and treath yourselfs with an airplane ticket to Mexico for the 2011 and I will be happy to take you in a warm up dive.

Feliz Navidad!!!

Alex

www.alexscuba.com