Jo Squire Writes

Action Fiction Africa Female

Diving

Diving with Pete

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I’m incredibly grateful to Pete, my reliable and fantastic dive buddy for 15 years. He can be militant at times, as I can be, especially when we’re keen to get into the water.

“Get a move on, it’s not as if we have all day,” one of us will say, knowing perfectly well that we do. That’s one of many upsides of diving holidays, you do usually have all day to dive, and if, you’re really keen there’s the option of a night dive as well. Neither Pete nor I are keen on night dives, which would make many categorise us as not hard-core. Even when the water temperature is 29 degrees centigrade, it still seems cold and dark, and therefore a horribly miserable idea to struggle into wet gear at night.

Five weeks before a dive trip to Bali, Pete broke his leg. Not one to be discouraged, he insisted it was business as usual. Each morning he took his crutches right to the water’s edge where the rustic Indonesian boat waited for us. Despite my concerns, all went well. Pete and his wife, Merilyn, visited me just before this trip, and he managed to trip up my steps, landing with arms, legs and crutches sticking out at strange angles ahead of us.

“I did ask him how I’m supposed to help when the waves smash against the boat at the dive-site,” I say to Merilyn as Pete struggles to right himself.

“Just put your hand on his head and hold him under for a very long time!” replies Merilyn, her sharp wit instantly in play.

I wouldn’t have made nearly as many dive trips without the familiar phone calls that start off along the lines of: Have you read such and such an article on a dive destination; google it and I’ll call you tonight to discuss. The best piece was about diving with whale sharks in Irian Jaya. The magazine made it look amazing, and the reality was even better. Which makes me eternally grateful to have an instigator for such trips.

We can both be grumpy, but because we’re not a couple, we sort of respect each other and don’t argue as partners are inclined to do. So, the trips generally go smoothly and without drama and upset. It works really well, and we’re able to squabble like an old married couple without either one taking it too personally.

Pete saved my skin when I ran out of air at 30 metres, my own fault for failing to check my gauge. The Indonesian boatmen had forgotten to fill my tank for the dive. I exhausted the reserve twenty minutes into the dive, and as I took the next breath was alarmed to find my supposedly new tank empty. Luckily, Pete was close as we were converged on a leafy scorpionfish pointed out to us by another diver. I grabbed Pete’s arm, gave him an out-of-air signal and indicated I’d do an emergency ascent. My main thought should have been – my god I could die. It was in fact – my god, my sinuses will explode on the way up.

Pete expressed complete disbelief until I showed him air gauge with the needle at the bottom of the red. No need for panic – like a well-trained dive-master, Pete grabbed his mouthpiece and shoved it at me, and then retrieved his octopus-piece for himself. We completed the dive, arm in arm to keep close so I could breathe his air supply, and because we’re both economical on air, had almost as long a dive as everyone else.  When we surfaced, he told me that If I wanted to hold hands, I only had to ask!

Alex’s Gobies

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Alex has a predilection for fish identification and likes to scout out the rarer species. This gives other dive club members ample opportunity to rib him mercilessly. Early on our Papua New Guinea dive trip, Akiko told him about a rare goby she saw on a night dive that he’d uncharacteristically missed. A look of disbelief crossed his face.

“Really,” he said, “And what was this goby doing.”

“It was just hopping along on the sand, near its burrow.”

“Sorry Akiko, Gobies sleep at night!” retorted Alex, his disbelief justified.

“No, no, this one was dancing. It’s a disco goby and it comes out at night.” Akiko replied, almost a step ahead of him.

“No use trying to patch it up now, Akiko, Gobies only come out in the day,” said Alex, determined to have the last word.

“No this is a special one, it’s Alex’s disco goby!” said Akiko.

The ghost of Alex’s disco goby haunts conversations over the next few days. Then in the not-so-good weather on our last day, when the boat is sheltered behind Nuakata Island, we discover that a rare shrimp goby is found in this bay. Alex, of course, is determined to see it. He’s first out on dive deck in the morning. Any buddy will do, but it’s 6 am and no-one else is close to ready, so he drops down into the water alone beside the MV Chertan. And, needless to say, he finds it. By midday, he’s taken some fantastic goby photos.

Shrimp gobies are usually found in pairs which live in burrows that their accompanying shrimps kept clean of rubble. His photo shows the pair, hovering over the sand, their long bodies partly inside their burrow. They are pretty with a row of bright orange dots along their pale streamlined sides, and iridescent blue markings on their faces. Alex tells Morris, the chef, not to wait for him to serve lunch. He’s persuaded Aran into bringing his huge camera with multiple attachments back down under for another photoshoot of the rare Nanna Shrimp Gobies.

Alex is not the only one taking advantage of this location. Yesterday three of us took a walk past a couple of villages on Nuakata Island, and today our boat has a few reciprocal visitors. A local girl paddles over, and lets Helen use her outrigger canoe for a jaunt around the bay. Helen has done this before and manoeuvres the craft adeptly, a huge grin on her face. She returns with stories of how the locals know this island as Octopus Island because it has 8 points, and how the young girl walks for an hour and a half along the bay and over a mountain to school and then later returns the same way.  When I tell a PNG crew member about this and ask if Nuakata means octopus, he giggles and says that someone must have seen a map of the island and made up a story about it being called Octopus Island.