Scuba Dive

Hey baby, what's your sign?

I recently started asking around for new blog ideas, and got an earful of weird dive experiences from my fellow recreational divers.  It was an unusual accumulation of aquatic encounters that I just had to put together into a post.

Subway Cars – “Early in 2009 I dove the Atlantic City Reef to see the NYC subway cars that they put there the year before.  It was really strange to see some of them sitting upright, looking like they were waiting to pull out of the station.  Some sediment had built up on the seats, looking like somebody stuck more gum on them.  I love diving wrecks, but I’ve never seen anything manmade look so bizarre underwater. At least boats were meant for the ocean!” -Rick T.

Divemaster Feeding a Moray from his Mouth – “I just got back from a trip to Moorea in French Polynesia, where I went on a shark feed dive.  After most of the fish pieces had been fed to the sharks, one of the divemasters started feeding pieces of tuna to a moray eel who had stuck his head out of the nearby reef.  Apparently unsatisfied with his hand-feeding technique, the divemaster took out his regulator, put a piece of tuna in his mouth, and then swam over to give the moray a mouth-to-mouth feeding experience.  I guess he thought the move was funny or clever, but I just thought: What a dumbass!” -Tony A.

Wall of Jellyfish – “Diving Jellyfish Lake in Palau was definitely the strangest dive ever.  Actually I was freediving because you can’t scuba in the lake.  When I first got in the water I didn’t see anything.  But then as I swam out into the middle of the lake where the sun was hitting the water, I ran into a wall of jellyfish so thick I couldn’t see through it.  They were everywhere; it was like swimming in jell-o.” –Amanda B.

Squid Sex – “In Bonaire my dive group came across a pod of squid during one early morning dive.  The squid kept circling each other and would occasionally flash different colors or make their skin look striped.  Back onshore I asked our divemaster about it because I had never seen squid do that before.  Usually they just hang out in a line and get spooked if you get too close.  Turns out the behavior was “cephalopod mating rituals,” a.k.a. squid sex.”  Michael R