March 08, 2020
This morning we jumped in the water to complete our last certification dive. This particular dive was fairly simple as we only had three skills to do. When we first splashed, we headed out over the reef and Mr. Johnson set up the CESA line. CESA is a controlled emergency swimming ascent. This skill would be used if you run out of air and don’t know where your buddy is. While we all know to never lose sight of our buddy, it is still important for us to know what to do if we do. The other two skills were simple things which are used for readjusting our BCDs and to stay safe during our three-minute safety stops at 15 feet. Personally, I was mildly worried about doing the swimming ascent because it entails we swim up 25 feet with only one breath, but I was able to get through it.
Once we had all completed our final dive we were all officially certified. This means we can adventure off Buddy Dive grounds onto the rest of the island. I am personally super excited to see the rest of the island because while Buddy’s reef is super pretty, we have been diving there for three days already, and there are so many other reefs around the island.
At night, Mondo gave us a lecture about the fish in the coral reefs here in Bonaire. I found this super interesting because by this point we had done a few dives down into the reef, and I wanted to know what type of fish I was seeing. So far, I have seen about half the fish he showed us, and I can’t wait to see more. Mondo taught us about how the ocean ecosystem works and what fish hang out together. He also told us which fish were safe to approach and which ones we should stay away from either for their safety or ours. Now during our dives we know what kind of fish we are looking at and whether they are safe to approach or not.
Click here to view all of the 2020 ECS blogs.
