Woooooo Hooooo! What a blast it was to do my first guided dive as a PADI Divemaster! I had the privilege of taking a really fun and up-beat couple out to see the caves at Makena Landing. Almost immediately, as we approach the wire coral rock, bammm!!!! Here they are, FIVE spotted eagle rays! So we HAD to stop and watch them for a bit and then we continued to the first cave. As we approached the entrance, who should show up for an encore, but the five eagle rays again. They came up within 15 feet of us (on a day with 70 feet of vis) and just displayed their underwater acrobatics for all of us once again, how amazing.
After the majesty of the eagle rays, we preceded into the first cave. Stephanie wasn’t sure she wanted to go in, so I stayed at the mouth of the cave where I could see her and Cary went on in. While looking around at the entry, I saw that Stephanie had spotted a medium-sized male turtle who had surfaced for air just above us – sweet. There was a six foot white tip shark resting near the right side of the cave as well as a nice big female turtle towards the back on the left. Excellent action in the first cave, so we proceeded and saw a couple eels on the way to the bubble cave. When we approached the bubble cave we were greeted by a four foot white tip reef shark at the entrance. At that point we had reached our set turn around time so we headed back.
Before the second dive I had thought to myself, “how are we going to top that last dive?” Well, the ocean being the gift that keeps on giving did just that!!! We had the eagle rays come back and say hi. We also saw two white margin nudibranches, a nice big yellow frogfish, a big flounder, and lots of turtle action. What an amazing way to start a profession. Such an awesome community the dive world, all the way from one end of the spectrum to the other. Divers just have more fun!!!
