Scuba dooba do!

Photo Left: Me posing in the water.
Photo Right: Can you spot the fish? (Hint, look for the patch of orange. That's its eye). This is a stonefish. Stonefish are dangerous. Stonefish are so dangerous, they make dangerous things look... not dangerous. Stonefish (there are other fish like this one, called scorpionfish) blend into their environment quite well, as you can see. They lay on the bottom. But they have strong poison in their fins. It's a serious problem even if you get passively nicked by one. In fact, you can die. Antivenom is available, but it's hard to come by. This is why you don't touch the bottom of the sea. They live on rocks too. If you do touch the bottom of the sea, you look very carefully and you sweep your hand over a spot you want to touch before you touch. Stonefish don't attack. Stonefish let you do the work of getting stung by touching them.

So my latest passion is scuba diving. I've loved snorkeling, so decided finally to throw in my cards and go for the ultimate. I got my Open Water C-Card in the Philippines in May, and I just studied Advanced Open Water in Okinawa.

Advanced Open Water is a lot more fun. It's basically a course of "choose your own adventure", where you get to try different things underwater. I did Deep Dive (to 25 meters), Peak Performance Buoyancy, Underwater Navigation, Search and Recovery, and Night Dive.

Search and Recovery was a lot of fun, actually. You use a compass, and you learn how to methodically search an area for a missing object. I had to find a weight belt that my instructor hid underwater. Peak Performance Buoyancy was also quite useful, as it's a study to learn how to best weight yourself and streamline to get good buoyancy underwater. Deep diving's okay--it was no different than diving more shallow. Navigation is also useful. And the Night Dive might have been better had there been more to look at.

So I love diving. I love looking at beautiful things under the sea, and it's great fun to swim along and have fish take interest in you. On my last dive this Monday, I had a green moon wrasse (think of a colorful fish that looks like a parrot, with its bright colors) that took great interest in following me around. Probably because of my bright suit!

But I'm back to work. I'm taking 2 online summer courses, and I'm hella busy with those. I think I'll read probably 2-300 pages a week. Which isn't much if you're full-time undergraduate. But if you're graduate, that's only 2 courses. But I love librarianship and want to be a good librarian. Or at least try to, anyway.