Anne B. and I finished the required Shannon Point Scientific diver training this week. We have been working on AAUS course work including sections such “Procedures for Scientific Diving”, “Dive planning” and “Diving under special conditions”. We have also been working on the DAN oxygen, first aid, and neurological exam courses, as well as the PADI rescue diver and nitrox courses. The cumulative written scientific diving final exam was twenty three pages. My favorite part of training has the pool rescue diver sessions and the NITROX coursework.
Now that we have gone through the material and done the in water training dives, Anne B. and I are good to go diving on our own! This week we did two more surveys on the same to sites as last week. I was a little nervous at first, but I realized that Anne and I are both good about keeping tabs on each other and we knew the sites pretty well from our surveys last week. Highlights from diving this week include, running into Big Joe (The 150+mm abalone named by Anne B.), seeing a dogfish (a small shark native to Washington), and finishing up both surveys. Our 1st week solo was a success!
This week Nate hosted a Discover SCUBA class for the summer interns. Anne and I were able to help out with skills during the pool session. It was very cool to see my friends get excited about diving and see a few of them breath underwater for the first time!
