do you even scuba?

The minor heatstroke I was experiencing in Bali had me questioning if I was cutout for dive training at all. I'm thankful I showed up, because the dive time and miraculously colder water temperatures really saved me.

I showed up for my first day of dive training fresh off 7 hours of online courses that had taught me the basics of buoyancy and dive safety. I'd be training for the first level of certification, the PADI Open Water License. This certifies me to dive to a depth of 18 meters (60 ft) and allows me to rent all the necessary equipment from dive shops and such.

My training would be hosted by a dive instructor, Putu, and another student, Cyril, working on his divemaster certification. Putu was a native Indonesian, and Cyril was a dry humored frenchman who had come to the island for his divemaster.

We started my training with a review of the online courses I had completed, with Cyril casually chain-smoking while we worked through the answers. After my open-ended travels of New Zealand, it was nice to be committed to learning something. I passed my course quiz and the swimming test (phew) and we promptly started learning about the equipment and procedures. I assembled and disassembled my own scuba kit four times before getting in the water with it. During my course, I would practice removing the entire kit underwater as well.

Scuba is a study in weight balance and buoyancy. The initial descent on a dive is the longest, and once you reach the bottom of your dive, the goal is to become neutrally buoyant underwater. Divers wear a weight system to help them sink (mine was a weight belt with 10 pounds on it) and an inflation vest connected to the oxygen cylinder. Sixty feet down, a little air into your vest is all you need to become neutrally buoyant. As you slowly ascend during the dive, you release air from the vest, other wise it will expand and simply float you right to the top.

This is a science that divers like Putu and Cyril have mastered. During our open water dives, Putu could elegantly hover inches over the reef we were observing, and control any minor adjustments he needed just with large inhales and exhales. Your lungs are essentially a little air vest for you too, since taking a big inhale will expand their volume, and increase your buoyancy. The best divers are incredibly attuned to making these adjustments. Needless to say, I was not as graceful. I think I did pretty well though, and towards the end of my open water dives I started to achieve better control. The sense of weightlessness is pretty astounding when you're not sinking or floating, and I imagine it's the closest feeling you could achieve to walking without gravity. I started to get the hang of letting my whole body flip upside down to peer into reefs, and could swing my flippers a clean 180 degrees over my head by using my momentum from swimming. It was awesome.

My training included a pool day, and four open water dives. One of the most popular dive sites in Nusa Penida is Manta Point, where you can watch giant manta rays cleaning themself around a complex reef system. Giant mantas are some of the largest fish in the world, and can reach wingspans over 15 feet! Although the surface was pretty crowded with snorkelers, we descended to the bottom of the reef where we could watch the mantas swim gracefully overhead. I have to say, it's way cooler to be on the scuba boat instead of the snorkel boat.

The mantas made huge, lazy loops around divers and their reef, occasionally opening their tent-like mouths to inhale a bunch of phytoplankton. These creatures were truly magnificent. We even saw a female that was pregnant! Tourism in Bali has greatly impacted their privacy and lifestyle, and local organizations have recently been discussing implementing more restrictions on how many people are allowed to visit every day.

I saw lots of creatures during my open water dives. Little cuddle fish scooting along the bottom of the ocean, sea turtles sleeping in soft coral, octopi, lionfish, surgeonfish, and even a perfect triton shell tucked into the reef. My last dive also had an incredibly strong current! At one point, we were all holding onto a sunk anchor line to just wait for the boat, and the current was so strong that we flapped beyond the line like flags in the wind, anchored only by our hand holds. This kind of power makes you feel so puny, and I was thankful to experience these conditions with such knowledgeable divers.

I think there is something to be said for the way this kind of ocean immersion stresses the importance and value of marine conservation. It's easy to see the damage of climate change in the reefs. In many places, huge parts of the ocean are just dying before our eyes. You couldn't dive fast enough to see it all before it's gone. If more people were faced with the magnitude of this, sixty feet under, I'd like to think it would be more front of mind.

I'm planning to use my certification for more conservation efforts. After I was certified, I went out with my volunteer org to help care for the coral 'castles' they have been busy planting over the last few years. In the face of so much ruin, sea life remains resilient. The actions and commitment of a small local org have made it possible to rehabilitate hundreds of meter of reef. I think it's important to remember that these everyday footholds for the natural world do matter, that it's often through the combined work of many many hands that we can help repair and support crucial ecosystems. While scrubbing away invasive algae, I was dutifully followed by curious parrotfish and surgeon fish, bent on closely monitoring me. They enthusiastically nibbled through all the sediment clouds I was sending up, and inspected every branch of reef after I had finished with it. It felt like we were working together.

me on the bali aqua dive boat, our second dive day!