So we get on the dive boat the other morning and our divemaster tells us that we are going to be doing something she’s never done  before; the boat captain is going to drop us off a little ways away from the dive sight known as Pottery, and we are going to swim to pottery. Gotta admit, after our dive spent swimming over the barren sandy patch the previous day this did not sound too promising.

At some point I lost by dive buddy, Fletch, as well as the rest of the group. I’m an experienced enough diver to not get freaked out, but still, it was a slightly embarrassing moment, that one minute I was admiring something as mundane as the neon blue pin prick spots on a sea urchin, and next moment I looked up and everyone was gone. I pivoted around in a circle. No one. We have the one minute rule in scuba diving, loose your dive buddy or your group and you look around for a full 60 seconds before surfacing and reuniting there. I’ve never had to use the one minute rule before. So I looked at my watch, started swimming around in circles, and finally at 57 seconds, something maybe every so vaguely orange appeared in the distance. I swam closer to make sure it wasn’t a trick of my imagination and saw bubbles. Thank goodness. Surfacing was just not in my game plan for that moment.

I caught up with the group and they were all looking at me and pointing excitedly at a rock. Cool. There’s a lot of rocks around here. This was a nice one, sure, I swam closer though and realized the rock was shimmering and morphing, and oh shit, it was not a rock, but a ginormous school of solid fish. It was one of those schools of thousands and thousands of fish that you see in those nature documentaries. Like the school in Finding Nemo that all swim synchronized into shapes of ponies and giraffes, ok not that extreme, although I couldn’t really say, the school was too darn big to see the entire thing at once. And looking at it, all you could see was solid fish, no break. Swim directly at it and they would part and regroup around you, completely surrounding you in a world of nothing but fish, fish, as far as the eye could see. So many fish!

We swam mesmerized with this school of fish for ages. Swim under them, turn around, relax on the bottom and stare up… Our divemaster finally had to come find us to tell us that she was taking the rest of the group back on the boat, and were we going to say longer? Silly question. If there is air left in your tank and an option to stay in the water, you take full advantage of it. We ended up having an 85 minute dive. Unfortunately my GoPro battery was dead and so I have no photographic evidence of said awesomeness.