Seems it's been abundant big animal week for us here at PRD.  We have enjoyed ray and small shark sightings nearly every day.   The water temperature is still hovering around 77.   I'm hoping 79 shows up soon.  It's a bit unusual for us to be still holding on to the cooler water temps.  It's August after all.  Our fishing friends are all frustrated with the slow change in H2O temps too.  Best fishing will start when the currents bring in the warmer water from the southern Pacific and with it nutrients and larger schools of bait fish.  Following closely behind will be the summer run of ahi and marlin.  

We have had several students and brand new divers these past few weeks, a sure sign that summer is finally here.   It's always nice to have the energy and enthusiasm of a diver just discovering how great this sport is.....remember your first times underwater?  I do.  Somehow I managed to find band-aids and various other swimming pool debris utterly fascinating.  I was completely in love with this sport from the very start.   It wasn't hard but it was wonderfully challenging and VERY exciting for a small town country girl from wheat field Washington.  We nearly froze trudging our gear thru the snow to the Gonzaga pool for our 4 weeks of training.  OK, here's a story for you.  Our open water dives were scheduled for Shelton Washington in February.  That meant a 5 hour drive across the frozen state and a 5200 ft. mountain pass in the dead of winter.  We had 3 divers in our car which was loaded with scuba gear and tanks.   We all worked on Friday so got a bit of a late start.  Had things gone well, we were looking at a 10 or 11pm arrival at the hotel...had things gone well....   There were about 12 divers in our class and several had gone earlier in the day.  This proved to be a good decision on their part.   No such luck for us.  Unfortunately at the top of the pass, an avalanche had closed the road ahead of us.  Opting to go around and take a more southern route didn't help either.  That pass was closed as well and at one point we were trapped between two avalanches.  We watched as a car in front of us was cleared out of a HUGE wave of snow that had buried it earlier in the afternoon.  Finally, passes opened back up and we were on our way.  We had spent the entire night waiting for snow removal and had to go directly to the 8:00am dive that had already started without us.    Water temp was somewhere around 42.  Air temp must have been around 32 because rain turned to snow before we were finished with our two dives that day.  I actually don't remember much about those dives.  We spent the next two days in a sudafed induced caffeinated haze.  Just remember that it was incredibly COLD and somewhere in the sequence of 4 dives over the next two days we did see a wolf eel.  Gary our instructor had taken hot water and filled a large soda dispenser so that we could fill our wet suits with warm water after each dive.  That saved us.  After the dives on Sunday, we had to travel back over those passes to return to Eastern Washington.  We stopped for the usual pizza party and then began the long drive home.  Of course, fingers and toes began to thaw and tingle about at the top of the pass.  We were all certain that we had "the bends".  What we really had was the result of near frost bite to the extremities.  I can look back at it now and laugh.  That story is why I tease my California friends when they complain about cold water diving in California!  We considered Cali to be warm water!

There you have it!  See...I have not always been a cold water wimp.  I used to be tough!  Not so much anymore huh???  As I don my 7mm semi dry suit, hood and gloves (and consider 77 to be chilly).   I'd love to hear your certification stories!  Don't tell me any nonsense about riding whale sharks on your first dive.  I wanna hear the good stuff!