We were off to the dive shop early once again so we could get a two-tank dive in again today. This was Lisa’s first duo-tanker, and I was glad to have her along. There’s just something comforting about having your spouse and life-long partner as your dive partner. On yesterday’s dive I accidently banged tanks with one of the guys on the trip. I felt funny every time I gave him the “okay” sign and then followed that up with a reassuring squeeze of his thigh or shoulder. I never felt that way with Lisa. Okay, I just can’t write this with a straight face. That didn’t really happen.

Today’s dives were “The Chimney” and “Eel Garden,” both off the northwest point. The chimney is a beautiful coral formation where two separate reefs had grown together leaving a large hole that dropped down into the darkness below and opened up again some ways down the wall over “the deep,” as Nemo would call it. I peered down into the opening as I floated over it. It was kind of creepy, but only later did I find out that you could swim down through it. No thanks, I thought. I had seen the size of the spiny crabs that dwell in this area. I followed our guide, Sarah to a crag where one such crab hung out, and thought for sure that I was seeing at least two crabs curled up in there. Surely no one crustacean could take up that much space. She assured me that it was only one. I’ll have to add that gigantic guy to my list of huge fish stories from this trip.

We were also treated to a large turtle slowly grazing the reef below us. Just when we thought he was fleeing from our group he turned and paid us no heed as he perused his underwater home. Once again a large solo barracuda loitered under the boat and kept us at bay during our safety stop. Guide, Ben pulled a smallish knife and playfully taunted him when he came too close. He was a good-sized specimen, and each creature we saw today was larger than the one before, but we were in for a much larger treat.

We were on the surface for a matter of minutes when someone on board spotted a small pod of humpback whales very nearby. We got our gear stored and headed their way. They treated us with several breaches and a full tail fin. Nice. To think that we had come within minutes of being in the water with these magnificent creatures made me mad with desire to see them up close. I didn’t really realize the magnitude of it until I later saw this video of a humpback whale just off of Provo:

That would have been bloody awesome. Great, now I’m using English colloquialisms as well as developing a perfect English accent. After my 5th dive today with the very English Josie and the other blokes, I found myself speaking with a nearly perfect English articulation and tone. Lisa found herself wondering if we sound like we have an accent to them. Josie, in her perfect Brit intonation, made efforts to talk me into a night dive, enticing me with the possibility of seeing the glow-worms.

Glow-worms are an insect larvae, which glow through bioluminescence. They are very common in this area, and are usually visible right after the full moon. Would they still come out if there were an eclipse just a few nights ago? I prodded Lisa just a bit to go on the night dive with me and she answered me mid-sentence with a curt, “NO!”

I later sat at dinner just yards from where my fellow divers departed for their dark expedition, and momentarily wished I could join them. Someday I will do a night dive. That’s one I really want to check off of my list, but today I couldn’t deny that I was at dinner (again at Schooners) with the greatest group of people having a blast. Besides, if you walked on the beach just after sunset, you could frequently see glow-worms there too. We didn’t.

Instead, we took group photos with our sunburned faces. On the beach, we posed in every configuration including Mike and Robert holding Les in a cradle formed by their locked hands. We laughed while doing it, and then later said, “What the heck were we doing?” We didn’t purchase a copy, but it might have been fun to just to laugh at the fact that we took the corny photo in the first place.

At night we found our way to the bizarrely named “Soon Come Back Beach Party.” It was probably a decent recreation of the Hawaiian luaus that I’ve attended, but we were all just too tired to care. We made an effort to stay and enjoy the night, but faded one by one. The highlight of the night, was to watch Patrick on stage in a musical chairs-style game where players take turn putting a hat on the person next to them and then sit out if they have the hat on when the music stops. Patrick started with nearly 40 kids, most of them several years older, and ended up on stage with the last 4. We died laughing as he nervously ran off stage after each turn only to be scolded by dad: “You can’t just quit,” I’d say. “You have to get back up there!” And he would.

Emily reminded me that the highlight of her day was the small white starfish we snagged in a bucket. She’d never seen one in nature. Nearly all of the creatures we find in the ocean near the beach are white it seems. It’s a perfect camouflage on this fine white sand. Patrick has chimed in too: His favorite? The jacuzzi and the beach!

Click the photo(s) here to see a larger version. And don’t forget to see the rest of our pic’s from the day on our Picasa page.