Dive Log

PADI Open Water Certified
Underwater Sports Inc.

Sept. 23rd and 24th 2013

Dives 1-4: Group Shore Dive for OW Cert.
Washington Park, Green Point, Anacortes, Wa.
The 23rd (Dive 1-2), great visibility. Saw a few large dungenous crab and an octopus.
The 24th (Dive 3-4), poor visibility with strong currents. Almost panicked. Didn't.
Water temp 13c.

June 2017
Dives 5-6: Guided Boat Dive
Bida Nok, Phi Phi Island, Thailand
Guided Dive 7: Boat Dive
Koh Dokma, Thailand
All Dives great visibility. 1st dive huge school of 2 spotted snappers. giant brown marbled grouper. 2nd dive large gorgonian sea fan. 3rd dive to a depth of 30m, ran low on air (50 bar); used guides alternate regulator during safety stop. All okay.
Water temp 30c.

April 20th 2018
Dive 8: Paired Shore Dive
Van Damm, Mendicino, Ca.
Kelp attacked us upon 5 step ready to dive. I saved jay. Good visibility. Saw (possibly) copper rockfish, many many sea urchins, a few nudibrachs, and about half dozen brightly colored starfish.
Water temp 10c.

May 5th, 2018
Dive 9: Group Shore Dive
La Jolla Shores, San Diego, Ca.
Fuck Sake, all my dive logs got deleted to this point... I had multiple, fully detailed paragraphs telling my stories. Ah... long story short; didn't have enough weight and couldn't sink with a full 7mm suit, so had to swim back, add weight, swim out again. We saw a few sea creatures, most notably the horn shark and shovelnose guitarfish.

June 2018
Dive 10: Group Shore Dive
La Jolla Shores, San Diego
Near zero visibility. Got lost for a couple minutes. Navigated myself. No Big Deal. NBD.
Dive 11: La Jolla Cove. Kelp Forest. Saw a big ol' lobster, and some Giribaldi, and then a seal came to play swimming circles around me.

July 2018
Dive 12 and 13: Cove and Marine Room. 1st time lead at Cove... went North up the wall to the point. Saw some amazing Nudi's all migrating up from the depths. Then, at Marine Room saw many Giribaldi and a Shovelnose Guitarfish and lobster and crab. Oh, also a Giant Kelp Fish... looked like a prehistoric eel. Oh, yeah, saw an eel too.

Sept, 2018
Dive 14 & 15: La Jolla Shore and Marine Room. We were stalked by some fish, really really close and interested and followed us around. Pipe fish and nudis.

*Recently found written on note;

Today I swam with the woman I love beneath the breaking waves in a chilly Pacific Ocean off the shores of La Jolla. The visibility wasn’t the greatest, the sealife wasn’t the most abundant, the ill-fitting rental scuba gear not the most comfortable, and yet the dive was somehow extraordinary.

Snorkeling: Leopard Sharks!

Oct, 2018
Dive 16 & 17: NIGHT DIVE! La Jolla Shore. Octopus. Shovelnose guitar fish (sm one). Pipefish, lots of crabs and shrimp. Sleeping Horn Shark! After a break and tank change 2nd night dive. At the wall a school of squid?! More octopus. Then, A large horn shark, maybe 1.5 meters at least. Flashlight died, Ehrick only light, but lots of bio-luminescence! So god damn beautiful.
Dive 18: Noontime Dive to Way North Wall La Jolla Shores. Lots of small sea creatures, skills practice, then on the way in to shore, about 10 meters from the beach in about 1 meter of water we see 3 giant yellowtail, must have been almost a meter length tip to tail.
Dive 19 & 20: La Jolla Shore Night Dive.
Dive 21: Day Dive La Jolla Shore.

Not dive related but worth a mention. I had a near drowning experience while swimming at Marine Room. It was a high (+6 king) tide on a full moon and, well, it was poor judgement.

March 2019
Dive 22: Kata Beach, Phuket, Thailand, Shore Dive. Max Depth 7m, Dive time 73min. Lots of boats overhead although none passed directly over. Low Vis and LOTS OF SCORPION FISH.
Dive 23: Yah Noi, Phuket, Thailand, Shore Dive. Max Depth 8.6m, Dive time 62min. LOTS OF STINGY THINGS. Some butterfly fish, eels, nudis, and some big jellies.
Dive 24: Kata Beach, Trash Hero Ocean Clean. Dive time 85min. Picked up quite a bit of trash, saw a cute mini nudi and a huge giant puffer fish. Only one Scorpion Fish. 4 kilo but I felt slightly positively boyant... it helps when my weights are around my chest, not my waist. Maybe 5kilo from now on (with my shorty suit).

April 2019
Dive 25: Kata Beach. A few box fish, max depth 11 meter, dive time 90min.
Dive 26 & 27: Kata Beach. First dive was skills 70min at 6m max depth; PPB = Chopsticks, WriteStory, Tank Turned Off, Mask Off. Did the skills next to a buried Jenkins Ray. Second dive was fun dive, visibility was poor perhaps a meter. Saw a cuttlefish (really cool), a seahorse... ended up surrounded by huge mosaic jellyfish. Jays air turned sour and we shared air returning to shore. 63min dive time, max depth 7.4m

May 2019
Dive 28 & 29: Kata. Shit vis, sometimes less than a meter. Stayed under for 15 minutes first dive, surfaced when became near zero vis then surface swam further out and went under for 40 minutes. Max depth for both dives was aprox 6 meters. With a spring suit wetsuit my weights seem to be perfect at 3 kilo.
Dive 30: Nai Harn. Stress test. Box jelly.

Advanced Open Water Diver 1906AP7085
Aussie Divers Phuket

June 2019
Dives 31-33: Boat Dive for Advanced Cert. Racha Noi and Racha Yai. Noi was a Deep Dive, I thought I was following instructions but Jay said I wasn't a very good student. Yai was the Navigation Dive and I thought I did quite well making a square, although not perfect. During all three dives I was feeling inadequate and letting those feelings affect my behavior.
Dives 34 & 35: Long tail boat dive at Viking and Pielha Wall at Koh Phi Phi. First dive 52 minutes, max depth 17m. Second dive 50 minutes, max depth 21m. Really big potato grouper, and a beautiful honeycomb grouper, some nudi's and tiny mantis shrimps.

August 2019
Freediving Training Log
cO2 training: constant hold decreasing recovery: 1:30hold/1:30breath 1:30/1:15 1:30/1:00 1:30/0:45... repetition to 1:30/0:06 x2 plus final 2:00hold 

O2 training: constant recovery increasing hold: prepbreath1:30/hold1:30 breath1:30/hold1:45 1:30/2:00 1:30/2:15 1:30/2:30 1:30/2:45

Static Apnea Record 3:03

January 2020 

82 Dives. Rescue and EFR certified 1910AM4442

March 2020

86 Dives: Phuket; Bida Nok, Thalong, Shark Point, Ao Sane

July 2020

87-88: Sail Rock, Koh Tao; Went up the chimney, fun but crowded.

89: Bang Sa Pan, Ao Bo Thong Lang; Went snorkeling on the evening of the 16th. Saw a green turtle, lots of schools of fish, a cuttlefish that changed color and texture to a degree I'd never witnessed before, looked like a big lump of rock.  

90-95: Pattaya; Shark Point, Hardeep wreck (BIG current), Ban Bap Tahan, Hardeep again next day only slight current this time turtle felt narc'd at 28 came up to 20 felt fine, Channel with lots of spikey things, Lak Ben final dive... almost to 100!

August 2020

PADI Freediver Level 1 Depth Record 10m Static Apnea Record 3:47

Ban's Diving Resort; Hin Wong Bay

October 2020

96-100: Chompoon/KohTao; Lan JD, Hin Hgam Lak, Prab Wreck, Hin Ngam Lak, Hin Tae

Nov. 2020

101: Nekked Dive! Shore dive from sunrise beach Koh Lipe. FYI, Scubasex probably one of the best things ever. Arthur C. Clarke once speculated on the future of mankind in space: “Weightlessness will bring new forms of erotica. About time, too.” Well, he should have taken up scuba.

102-106: Koh Lipe. Sarang, Koh Yang (West), Taru, Honeycomb, Stonehenge. First frog fish sighting! Having continuous equalization issues.

Fuck Sake. again. Just wrote down all my notes from my Dive Master training. And... Blogger deleted it. Fuck you Google. Also, life (& death) is taking me away from Scuba, so I sold the BC and, well, there may not be any entries after this. It was a fun run.

Welcome Back. #119

2x Coral Propagation; Koh Yawasam

2x Fun Dives; Phi Phi

1st Liveaboard. Racha Noi. Banana Bay. Such good vizWater like rippled glass. 1st Dive: The only boat in sight. 7am wake up, such beauty, quietness wrapped all around. A morning like that will make any man seriously consider a life on the water. A sailors existence is living on a space so tiny there is no choice but to accept the whole blue world and every island on it… the whole expanse, horizon to horizon to horizon… Earth (ironically), the whole big ball of it, is your home. Only a morning like that will make a person… make a person wax so poetic. These moments are made of a time woven into a memory that can never fade. If the horizon ever peaks from brushstroke clouds, or is a backdrop for a sunrise, that morning can be seen. I’ve been trying to practice my Thai with BaasBaas, Forge, & Faarh, Mean. Everyone is good company. Now boats begin to arrive from that scuba mill of an island, Phuket. I can wax cynical too. I see them on the horizon, chugging away straight toward us. We are all relaxing, just about to get ready for our 2nd Dive.

Laughter and Playfulness. 2nd Dive: It’s strange to me to be a client, to be on the side of service being received. It’s where I belong… ½ the time at least. Sunburnt from snorkeling Meua-Wan. Teaching Duck Dives. But today before I awoke, I started the day by dreaming I was a flying squirrel belly flopping into the ocean. Waa-aaaah!! Attack Squirrel!! On the second dive a Baby Featherstar was spotted. A strange looking fish, unique, alien in appearance. The featherstar has fins on top it’s head like ears, or more like a single fin that was doubled as ears.

There aren’t enough Proper Dive Map posters. I would like to make some but Nice has the artistic skills in the maps abilities. Racha Garden. Night Dive.

Moonless. 4th Dive of Day 1: A dozen of us. Moon wasn’t out so everything above and below was pitch black. I shut off my light. Took in my surroundings. It is the closest I’ve felt to being an astronaut. Every direction had a small group of humans in their lifesupport suits hovering above a silent alien landscape. They existed as only a faint outline, a shadow in front of their illuminated beam of divelight, the rest of space an empty darkness in every direction. Although two things of these descriptions stand out as contradictory; Firstly, it was anything but silent underwater with the clicks and snaps and tiny roar of the crustacean and finny tribe communicating every possible exclamation of existence possible. Secondly, direction is not adequate to explain the triple axis of being held weightless in space. 3 dimensions don’t really exist on terra-firma. The visibility was excellent, 40/50 plus so the night had minimal distortion. Amazing.

Day 2: Dive 1: Octopus. I enjoy watching it. Until Nice swims up with her camera and places the lens a couple inches from the creature. It begins changing color and texture and flashes from camouflage to iridescent, to the darkest iridescent blue, nearly black… and then flashes back, the textures changing with the colors, hypnotic almost. It is clearly agitated. Nice alerts all the human hunters of photoshots over. They queue up to take a photo. I hover around, at a distance, letting everyone get their shots and then I swim off as the last two are still shooting; the octopus still changing colors, working its way backwards into the rock crevices. I prefer knowing the creatures are there but not feeling the need to collect them. When I’m underwater, it feels so good just to exist there, the sensory perception of weightlessness and… I dunno, fucking zen. There is no mission to ‘see things’. I, of course, enjoy spotting creatures too… but I don’t think it is fair that the weaker species are harassed more. A buffalo can spear a human and we all think, well, of course, its a wild animal… as if the attack was justified, implying the harassment wasn’t. However, if the animal has no weaponized protection, just an evolved hiding technique that fails to make it disappear to humans, well, we all say, “Well, I don’t use the lights on it”. I say to Nice, “Well, whatever makes you sleep at night”. Sometimes we get into arguments. No real harm was done, some stress to the octopus, but ultimately not a big deal. Let the argument go. Except, you can’t. “About the same idea as catch and release, just a line a person needs to draw between harmful and not a big deal”. Nice has always been so adamant and critical of other humans same silly actions. Maybe everyone is a little bit a savior of the world, a little bit a sinner. More or less. Remember to let the little things go.

Rain comes in. Wind. 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Dive, Day 2: Watched the M. reaching out for camera from boatboy before he was ready, so while mid giant-stride she looks back and just barely hooks her fingers around the cord, then proceeds to pull it all, boatboy and all right to the edge, but he pushes it toward her, over the stern just in time and she floats there sorting that out as the current grabs her. I am right behind her, soon as the camera is clear. Her son is with Nice, everyone descends and into the drift and we are swimming. No gentle flutter kick kind of conditions. I am okay, but the youth, perhaps 12 years old, is having a time of it. We end up @ 30 meters depth, kid is having equalization issues, but I believe its more fear issues. Drifting fast, Nice is helping him, pulling him gently, as gently as a brisk current allows. Mom is taking pictures of the whole fiasco… perhaps the situation was not as severe as I feel it is… but then I see that Nice is looking a little tired. Maybe this is a situation. But, it all turns out all right, physically, if not psychologically. Upon surfacing the storm is fully upon us. We power out from Noi to Yai. Turbulent seas slapping the dingy towed behind us like a toddler biting a drunken stepfather. It bobbed and the waves slapped the inflated risers of the wedge bow, each crest a jump of airborne anxiety with fountains of seawater jettisoned to each side on every landing. I was watching this while Nice was vomiting off the stern and I was holding her to make sure she didn’t go overboard. The Tapana was properly rolling, the gear and equipment trying to work itself loose of the containment straps and nearly succeeding. 

Day 3: Dive 1: Cancelled. Dive 2: เกรดแกว wreck. Dive 3: Before the dive all the ‘photographers’ had their picture taken holding their cameras. Maybe it isn’t fair to put photographers in ‘’. They probably take decent pictures, and if they share I will probably use them and post them, they are better photographers than I imagine I am with the same equipment… but something is lacking, some deficiency in the situation, that I don’t quite understand. The only requirement to be in that group seemed to be having the expensive camera equipment (and hence the expensive hobby)... so, as a hobby group, I shouldn’t be so judgemental. I guess. Begrudgingly I have chosen not to write my two page tirade that digress into how humanity ignoring ancient prophecies will cost our souls, how our own self-perception imprisons us to continue to reinforce others to see us the same way, in order to avoid the cognitive dissonance of conflicting perspectives, and other funloving scuba-vacation conversation starters. I avoid most human interaction for the remainder of the trip. Watching everyone gamble was fun. I really did have an enjoyable adventure. Total 10x Liveaboard Dives. Both Night Dives were spectacular. 50% of the other dives ranked pretty high on the best dives ever scale. So, yeah, I highly recommend a liveaboard if you can do it. Nice, thanks for letting me borrow your Dive Computer.

July 2022

107: Took Brooke and Mikey out to La Jolla Shores, the usual wall heading north saw a brief glimpse of a shovelnose guitar fish... Mikey had a small panic at about 12m and mask came off and he surfaced. Hesitated for a moment deciding if I should leave him alone or Brooke alone. Decided I should take Brooke up to the surface with me as chances of DCS were minimal because we had only been diving for 30 minutes at that point and the last 10 minutes had been a gradual slope up to 12m. At the surface we all checked in with each other physical/psychological conditions and I decided we should descend back to 10m and continue a full safety stop while swimming in to shore.

Renewed Freediving Training Log:
cO2 training: constant hold decreasing recovery: 1:30hold/1:30breath 1:30/1:15 1:30/1:00 1:30/0:45... repetition to 1:30/0:06 x2 plus final 2:00hold 

O2 training: constant recovery increasing hold: prepbreath1:30/hold1:30 breath1:30/hold1:45 1:30/2:00 1:30/2:15 1:30/2:30 1:30/2:4

Went to La Jolla shores with Kero. I completely lost my abilities. I was a little stoned from a coconut/peanut butter brownie that I had made myself, it was an edible but I wouldn't call it delicious... but anyway, that's just an excuse because I really only had a small nibble; 2.5m 29sec dive.

August & September 2022

Dive 108: Shores. 20ft max, 40min, 11Celcius, thats 50 degress F... F for Fucking cold.

Dive 109: F for Fuck I Killed My Dive Computer. What a day. The waves were intense. I was initially severely over-weighted because using a new BC, my mask strap broke, and my dive computer leaked. I returned to shore and then scuba swam back out under the waves to meet Brooke and Mikey who were waiting. We were reviewing some skills and then a short 20 minute surge-y dive back to shore where I rinsed my computer and then let it air out. I had expected the computer to be fine because it only had a small spot of condensation but after opening it later that day and letting it completely air out... well, it never turned back on.

Dive 120: TBD