I’ve always been curious about scuba diving but have never had a good opportunity to try it out. Koh Tao is known as one of the best places in the world to dive for the first time. It’s quite cheap compared to other places and there are a good variety of dive sites that are suitable for beginners. Most of the island’s infrastructure is built around scuba. There are dive shops seemingly every third door, and I landed on taking my course through Taco Divers through some recommendations from other folks and the fact that hostel accommodation and lunches were included in the price of the courses.
Expectations
I was both excited and a bit nervous about diving. On one hand, I love water and am very comfortable in it. But the water I’m most comfortable in is a pool, where I can see everything and there are no surprises. I wasn’t sure how I’d respond to what I might see beneath the water.
As much as I love swimming and water, I’ve always had a hard time snorkeling. I like it in theory but breathing through a snorkel is completely different than breathing while swimming, and with choppy water, it inevitably makes it into the snorkel and it’s a salty, unpleasant mess. Clearing it is annoying, and it always feels like I never quite get all of it out. I’ve also had ear issues when swimming in the past, and I was nervous that these might cause me issues and pain while diving.
But now was the time to give it a go. If I didn’t like it, at least I’d know. Or I might really enjoy it and find yet another hobby to add to my collection.
Day 1
My open water certification course was two and a half days. We spent the first morning in a classroom going over safety and equipment and the plan for the remaining two days.
In the afternoon, we did our first skill session. We started on our boat, and our instructor Virgile walked us through all the equipment again, how to set everything up, and the buddy check that we would run through before every dive to make sure all of our gear was in safe, working order before jumping in the water.
We geared up and swam to a spot where the water was about 3 meters deep. That way, as we practiced our skills, if any of us got uncomfortable or something went sideways, it was an easy escape to the surface.
We took a few minutes to just get used to breathing through our regulators. To my pleasant surprise, this was quite natural to me. It was night and day from using a snorkel because there was no way water was sneaking into my mouth unless my regulator got knocked completely out. Which turned out to be the next skill we practiced. I guess it’s a good idea to know how to get your air back when there’s none around you. Another thing that’s far superior to snorkeling is clearing your regulator of water once you get it back in your mouth. There’s a purge valve button built in, so you don’t have to do the big aggressive blow that you do while snorkeling. I haven’t had to play hide and seek with my regulator since this skill drill, but there have been a few times a fin has gotten close to pulling my regulator hose out.
After that we did several drills around clearing water out of our masks. We started easy by filling them just a bit with water and clearing them and worked our way up to taking our masks completely off. Virgile pulled us around for a minute and then we had to put our masks back on and clear them. This one took more time to get used to. There were more than a few breaths where I ended up with a bit of water up my nose and once where I ended up with so much up my nose that I was coughing through my regulator for the next five minutes. Turns out the reg can handle anything you throw at it, from coughing, to sneezing, to even puking (thankfully I only heard stories about this one, and I hope it stays that way). I’ve had to do some level of clearing my mask on over 50% of my dives, so I’m glad we spent time doing it right away.
Day 2
The next morning was spent doing some e-learning and taking an exam. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to pass an exam based on reading, and it did not make me miss my education days.
In the afternoon, we did another skill session focused around what to do if you run out of air. This shouldn’t ever happen as you have a clear indicator of how much air you have left at all times, but obviously important to know. You always swim with a buddy, and each person has a spare regulator hose that allows one person to share their air with another. After you are both breathing air again you slowly ascend to the surface and end your dive.
After our skill session, we did our first fun dive to 12m! We went to a real dive site with the goal of swimming around and seeing what marine life we found. It’s hard to describe everything that went through my brain on this first dive. Marine life is CRAZY. Underwater truly feels like a completely different planet. There are so many vibrant colors. There are so many shapes. There are so many species. And all you do is just float there and watch the world go by.
Day 3
The last morning was spent with our two final fun dives to 18m, our official certification depth for the open water course. The first site was a shipwreck where the bottom was much deeper than 18m. We had to keep a close eye on our dive computers to make sure we didn’t go deeper than 18m. Buuut, all of us failed by a meter or two at some point. Oops. Lesson learned that it’s very easy to go much deeper than you think you are if you aren’t intentional about it. The wreck was cool, but we only got to circle the top and the visibility wasn’t great. The second dive we saw a fun variety of wildlife including a pufferfish, a blue spotted ribbontail ray, a nudibranch, and a huge school of barracudas.
But Wait, There’s More!
At this point, I was officially a certified open water diver, but I hadn’t had enough. I opted to take a two day advanced course that included some additional buoyancy and control drills underwater as well as a few specialty dives. The main draw to doing this course for me was that my certification depth would go from 18m to 30m, a sizable difference that makes a much wider range of dive sites accessible.
Advanced Course
The drills in this course were really helpful. I felt okay about my movement and control in the water beforehand, but with the intentional practice I felt like I really nailed down how to be efficient in moving through the water, placing myself exactly where I want to be and being able to stay there as long as I want (very helpful for watching small creatures as you can hover close to them). We had three weights that were placed like dominoes on the sandy bottom. Our goal was to hover as close as we could to the bottom and knock each one over with our regulator in our mouths without letting any of our body touch the ground or using our arms to assist our movement.
I also spent some time talking to Virgile about my air consumption. He said my air consumption was very good from the beginning, but I wanted to keep improving. More efficient air consumption means more time underwater. I made it my goal to try to beat him on all of my dives in how much air I used. As hard as I tried, I got close but never quite there. I guess he has a small advantage having done 400 more dives than I have.
He was telling me I should try Nitrox. It’s a different type of tank you can dive with where the oxygen percentage is higher than regular air. There’s two factors that make up how long you can spend in a dive and those are how much air you have left and how much nitrogen has built up in your body. Most people run out of air before they reach their Nitrogen limit, but with focused air consumption you can end up hitting your nitrogen limit before you run out of air.
The advantage of Nitrox is that a higher oxygen percentage means a lower nitrogen percentage which means the nitrogen build up time is slower and you can spend more time under the water as long as you have the air. It’s something I’d like to try at some point, but didn’t take the time to do it this time around.
For the specialty dives, we did a wreck dive and a night dive, both at 25m-30m. There’s additional certifications you can get for each of these, and this advanced course was more of an intro into the specialties rather than the actual certifications.
The wreck we went to was the same as the first day, but we were able to go all the way to the bottom and circle the whole wreck instead of floating up at the top looking down. We also were allowed to go through any corridors or openings that we could see the exit to, so we got to swim through a narrow corridor in one of the rooms of the ship which was a ton of fun. There were two other people on our boat that were doing their wreck specialty and they got to swim through the whole ship from front to back. So cool.
The night dive was wild. I had no idea how I would feel about this one. We all carried flashlights, and that was our only way of knowing where our group of 5 was and seeing anything in the water. It definitely took a bit of adjustment at first. It took a lot more effort to keep track of where everyone was, especially if I wanted to look at a coral or a fish for a few seconds. There was an element of surprise where you’d move your flashlight around and suddenly find something in front of you. Nothing was ever right in my face, but I did see suddenly spot some huge grouper fish, a pufferfish, and another ribbontail ray. My favorite was watching a big hermit crab crawl along the bottom.
Overall Impressions / Final Thoughts
Safe to say, I’m hooked on diving. There was about 3% of me that considered fully sending it, doing all the courses, getting certified as an instructor, and staying on Koh Tao or somewhere similar just diving and teaching for a year or so.
As cool as it would be, I don’t think that life is for me. I think my desire to go through all the courses is primarily driven by learning a new skill that I want to master. Unfortunately, scuba is an expensive hobby to master, so we’ll see how much further I actually go. If anyone feels like financially supporting my endeavors, I won’t stop you.
I also love that you never really know what you’re going to see on a dive. This means that some might not be that exciting, but it also makes the memorable ones even more special. I’ll remember that hermit crab. I’ll remember the vortex of hundreds of barracudas surrounding me. I know the first time I see a school of manta rays or a whale shark (fingers crossed!) is going to be something that will be a vivid memory for a long time.
So there you go, my first week diving all summed up. I’m sure I missed things. If you’ve got questions, I’d love to answer them and share more. If you dive, tell me about your favorite spots you’ve gone!
Thanks for being here.
P.S. I was looking through a list of different fish from a few sites and stumbled across a hairy frogfish for the first time. It’s right near the top of the ugliest fish I’ve ever seen, and you should go take a look for yourself.