Diving

The highlight of this week was definitely today’s dive trip. I ended up not going to South Korea with some of the other interns, but diving was my (really awesome) consolation prize.

Okinawa is known for its reefs and water visibility. I’ve been trying to get out snorkeling as much as possible but the good days have become fewer as the winter winds have picked up a bit more. It was gusting 40mph for most of the week so I wasn’t sure about going but I couldn’t have been luckier with the day –calm, sunny—really everything you would want.

I went with Reef Encounters, one of the dive shops around here that supports an English speaking staff, and hoped on a boat for a 1.5 hour trip north. In total we did three boat dives, mostly in the area between Okinawa Honto (the main island of Okinawa, where OIST is) and the Island of Iejima –which is awesome in itself because I would have never made it here snorkeling.

At the first two sites, the corals themselves were amazing.  We swam through the canyons between massive coral walls, watching fish schooling above and around us. I had forgotten how much I love diving, you can float inches above a coral, inspecting the individual polyps (sorry I started at NU as a marine bio major), or you can look out at the whole community, observing how far you actually are under the rippling surface above…50 minutes of awe.

Though we were warned of sea snakes we didn’t see any, but the third site was sandier and certain areas were full of garden eels! Also some overly friendly parrot fish.

Sorry I don’t have pictures, no underwater camera L but here is here's a video of a group of garden eels... because they’re pretty cool.