Unfortunately the weather wasn't great while I was in Chatan, so we were restricted to beach dives almost every day. It usually didn't rain, but the wind made the water too choppy for the boat captains' comfort. One memorable day we went out to a pier where American navy boats dock; there wasn't a boat in port (otherwise it would've been closed for diving), but the nudibranch on and around the pier poasts were very cool. It was a mostly silty bottom, which presented an additional challenge; you couldn't kick too hard or all the silt would get stirred up in the water and decrease visibility to a few feet.
...I hate to complain about it, but the subject came up a few times and it's worth mentioning if only for my future reference. Doug, the divemaster with whom I dived most days, said that a significant portion of the people who come to Chatan to dive aren't certified scuba divers, were never trained properly in the first place, or haven't dived in so long that they have forgotten their training. The non-certified divers are looking for a guided beginner's dive, with the divemaster doing all their bouyancy control for them. The divers who were trained but not very well or haven't dived in years and forgot how also need the same kind of assistant. I think this is a rather unsafe way to dive because you're putting your life in the divemaster's hands. If it's a good, safe divemaster, then you'll most likely be fine, but the good, safe divemasters generally don't like taking untrained people underwater. Also, bringing someone underwater for the first time when they don't know what they're doing is a good way to induce panic, the worst thing that can happen underwater (because just like when you're driving a car or doing anything else, it leads to people doing stupid things). Since I went through the process of getting certified, I know all the risks and dangers associated with diving and how to avoid them; if you know what you're doing it's okay, but if you don't it can be a disaster waiting to happen.
I didn't share any dives with non-trained divers (thankfully there were few enough divers that having two teams, certified and non-certified, were enough to separate us), but during my week of diving I did share some dives with people who had never been properly trained or hadn't dived in years and either didn't have full mastery of bouyancy control and/or went through their air very quickly.
A simple explanation of bouyancy control: when you're wearing a wetsuit (which is most of the time except in the most temperate climates in summer), the same air/nitrogen bubbles in the wetsuit that are designed to keep you warm also make you float. Even the weight of your air tank generally isn't enough to compensate for this and help you to sink, so you need to wear a belt with lead weights on it. This helps you to get underwater. Once you start going down, though, the pressure of the water pushes on the wetsuit, decompresses those air bubbles that were making you float, and decreases the bouyancy, or float-abillity, of the wetsuit. So the same wetsuit and amount of lead that at the surface helped you to get underwater is now making you plummet to the bottom, metaphorically speaking. Since ideally you want to be perfectly bouyant, floating up when you inhale and sinking slightly when you exhale but otherwise maintaining the same depth position, you wear a bouyancy compensator (BC). This is basically an inflatable life vest that you have full control over inflating and deflating (small or large amounts). When you reach your desired depth, you add enough air to the BC so that you can 'float' at that depth underwater and not continue plummeting to the bottom/dragging yourself across coral but also not too much so that you start to float up.
People who aren't good at bouyancy control sometimes go all the way to the bottom and stomp on coral before they get themselves under control. I saw this happen a few times, and it's horrible. The person's fine, but the coral you and everyone in your group went down to see is damaged. Not good or ethical diving.
Of course, when you start to go back to the surface, the pressure on your wetsuit decreases, the air bubbles in it expand, its float-ability increases, and of course you've still got the air in your BC that you put in at the bottom, which makes you super-floatable. It can be really dangerous to rush to the surface, though, so someone with good bouyancy control will release the air as they ascend. (Usually there is a planned "Safety Stop" close to the surface for 3-5 minutes to allow the body to adjust to the decreased pressure and reduce the likelihood of 'the bends' or other pressure-differential related disorders). People with bad bouyancy control won't release the air out of their BCs as they ascend, though, and this is one of the most dangerous things that can happen underwater. I saw it happen a few times during my week of diving. Everyone's ascending in a group, most people letting air out of their BCs, and suddenly, whoosh! There goes Person X, rushing to the surface uncontrollably because they weren't letting air out of their BC and now they're super-bouyant. If the divemaster is good (and all of mine were), they'll be watching everyone carefully for this and catch the fin of whoever is rushing to the surface or otherwise stop them and then deflate their BCs for them. This is also not good diving.
While bad BC compensation can be bad for the local flora, fauna, and/or the diver in question's health, bad air management on a group tour is just bad manners. Slow, controlled breathing underwater means that everyone gets to stay underwater longer and enjoy more. If even one person in the group is constantly racing about, whipping through their air, or isn't completely comfortable underwater and hyperventilates, then whenever they run out of air, usually everyone else also has to go back to the boat, even if you've still got half a tank of air left. Of course, air mangement improves with experience, so I wouldn't expect a newbie diver to have as good air management as a divemaster. But it is irritating when someone who has dived longer than you and with more frequency still has bad air management and because of them you can only have 30-minute dives when y ou're able to conserve your air for 50-60 minute dives at the same depth. There are many other factors that go into air management, of course-- age, fitness, smoking, etc-- which is why it's hard to find a good scuba buddy suited to your diving ability. I definetely missed my Key Largo scuba buddies when I was in Okinawa.
From Chatan, I went south to the remote and western-most point of Japan, Yonaguni Island. I thought Tsushima was really inaccessible, but you've really got to try hard to get to Yonaguni.
It was definetely worth it, though. I spent 4 days diving there with a generally big group of people (8-12)--it was getting towards New Year's and everyone was on holiday. My favorite fellow divers were a couple and a single woman, all three from Tokyo. The couple was elderly, maybe mid-60's, and while their air management was horrible their company made up for it. The wife insisted that I call her "Kitty," and her husband, "Giri-giri-san," which is like "Mr. Close Call," a nickname earned for his ability to nearly empty his air tank with each dive. You're supposed to surface with a certain amount of air left, but his age combined with other factors means that he always speeds through his air; even with what I considered really short dives, he was near empty every time we surfaced. The middle-aged woman from Tokyo I really admired because like me, she came out to Yonaguni by herself and does it every New Year's. I haven't met many truly independent Japanese women, but she sure was.
We spent a bunch of dives trying to see hammerhead sharks with generally bad luck. The hammerhead-shark diving sites are really deep; the group descends to around 30 meters and swims straight, maintaining that depth, while looking for sharks. The ocean's bottom is far below, at least 30 more meters and sometimes too far down to even see, so there's not much to look at while you're searching for the sharks. The water was a gorgeous blue that surrounded us--I've never seen that color blue while diving before, it was like floating in a brilliant blue light. Cool for the first dive or so but it got old fast, especially after two 30-minute dives of not finding sharks. I did catch a distant glimpse of one hammerhead, though, and it was worth all the other dives of looking and not finding. Unfortunately the shark reversed direction and swam away immediately after I spotted it, but as it twisted its body to reverse, its head was outlined in the brilliant blue water. There's no mistake, it was definetely a hammerhead.
I also got the chance to dive at the ruins off the southern edge of Yonaguni. They were discovered in the 1970's by the man who runs the dive company that I went with, and no one really knows how old they are. I twas really cool, though, to see underwater steps and terraces and an arch and holes where building posts used to go. There was a rock that the dive guides said was theorized to represent a turtle (part of what they think was a religious gathering area because turtles had a celestial connection), but I think that was a bit of a stretch.
Ironically, single hammerhead aside, I think my favorite Yonaguni dives were the plain old coral ones that everyone else seemed to be disappointed by (because there were no ruins or large sea life). One day we gave up what seemed to be the fruitless search for hammerheads and went to an area with natural underwater arches and passageways that was just gorgeous. We saw turtles--possibly my favorite underwater critter although it's a close race with stingrays--and many clownfish playing in anemones and other micro life. Underwater geology is just fascinating, to. One of the arches, more of a long tunnel, that we went through was very porous, and after we came out our air bubbles filtered up through small holes in teh rock. It looked like the ocean bottom was breathing.
Unfortunately I haven't invested hundreds of dollars into underwater camera equipment, so I don't have any pictures to share from my diving. I was able to take some decent pictures at the famous aquarium in northern mainland Okinawa, however, so let these stand in for things I saw while scuba diving (or, in the case of the manta ray, would like to see someday).
In the Scorpionfish category, possibly a lionfish.
up close
The underwater love of my life, a nudibranch!
(i.e. gorgeous sea slug)
The wingspan of this manta is bigger than me.
This is before I got on the scooter. Once seated and in motion, I was sure that I was going to crash and die, even though I never went over 30 km/hour. It was wicked fun, though.
Yonaguni's most famous claim to fame is the Westernmost Point of Japan.
This is one of those official signs.
"The Country of Japan
The Westernmost Point
Yonaguni Island"
Looking west from the westernmost point of Japan.
...as you would expect, not much to see.
Although I did hear that you can see Taiwan on a really clear day.
Distance from Yonaguni's Westernmost Point to other places.Tokyo 2112 km
I thought the wild horses were cooler than the Westernmost Point, though. They live on the southernmost part of the island. Yonaguni is tiny, tiny-- see visual comparison with Tsushima below-- and there are very few people who live there year-round, maybe around 1,000. Since there is no high school on the island, all the high-schoolers to go boarding-high school on Ishigaki, the next island over (about a 30-minute flight).
A visual comparison of Tsushima and Yonaguni (with my foot for reference).......
Tsushima. Slightly bigger than foot-size.
Yonaguni (directly north from the foot).... maybe 3 toes.Anyway, even with the island being tiny there's plenty of room for the horses to roam free.
There's also room for goats to hang out nonchalantly on the wrong side of their fence.
I think every place in Japan is required to have at least one wacky tourist attraction, really out there. Yonaguni's is the "Standing God Rock," pictured below. It supposedly looks like a god. Standing. Like they do.
Yonaguni is also famous in the world of Really Dangerous Alcoholic Beverages for having a type of awamori/saki that is 60% alcohol. You drink it straight or on the rocks. The factory where they make it is kind of out of the way, but one day after diving I climbed up the hill to check it out. I taste-tested a few of their offerings, and I think it's truly a skill to make something that strong taste good.
Oh, did I forget to mention that the food in Yonaguni was fabulous?? ..there were more places to stay that I would have imagined for such a small place but very few restaurants, so most of the inns are more like Japanese-style B&Bs that also serve dinner. Here are some of the delicious and sometimes surprising meals I got:
My first meal of 2010. Not pictured: rice and Osaka-style New Year's soup with mochi.
Close-up of the fish head.
Last meal of 2009. Not pictured: rice and soup.
1 comment:
More Foodshima escapades!
I've actually seen a lot of the critters that you have pictures of while skin diving in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Remarkably beautiful--and easy travel to other planets.
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