Scuba Sunday

I finally got to get my feet wet here in Okinawa. The biggest sport on the island is scuba diving and Noa and I were fortunate enough to get certified while we were living in Florida. For my birthday this past year, Noa got me a ton of gear and I was anxious to try it out. Today I finally got to try out the China Sea.

We joined our friend Joe after church for an easy 40-foot dive off the Tsunami Sea Wall, which you will see in the photos, is colorfully decorated in graffiti. Here's a photo of us getting our gear together along the wall:

We entered the water through a set of man-made concrete stairs, which made it easy to get in and out. The area is full of people scuba diving, snorkeling, swimming, and fishing. And, we couldn't have asked for a better day - 84 degrees and sunny!
Here's a photo of the stairs near the sea wall:

Unfortunately, I don't have an underwater camera, so I can't share the sights from the actual dive. But I have to say that for an area that gets a lot of "traffic" from divers and snorkelers, it was very lush. There was a lot of soft coral in beautiful hues of pink and orange. I always feel like I'm diving in some kind of exotic fish tank because there were fish of all colors and sizes - I liked the angel fish. The strangest thing we saw was the sea cucumber, which looks like a big sea slug without a head. I stayed far away from those in case it felt like sucking me up. The coolest thing, in my opinion, was the black sea anemone that was huge (like the size of a basketball) - it was stunning.

Regarding the diving conditions; they were okay. Visibility decreased as the dive went on. My new gear was great and worked beautifully - I love it all. I was having trouble clearing my ears and now feel like I'm going deaf since they are still clogged! Hopefully, they'll get used to being in the water because I've got diving fever. I'm already pushing to go next weekend!

Here's two more photos from the day of me in my gear. We tried to get it so that you could see our apartment building across the sea, but it's pretty hard to make out. I circled it in red, but I don't think it helps very much. Anyway, you could see it, so I guess in a way I could stretch the truth by saying we went diving in our "back yard" today. Oki is so very cool.