We had nine students between three instructors, so not a particularly busy day. Once briefings were done and kit set up, we separated the group between instructors and I took my three into the flat calm shallows. Being fairly early in the day, the visibility was fantastic. I guess, being winter there are a few less swimmers in the water too, so the sand was still nicely settled on the bottom.

So all kitted up, we practiced retrieving our regulators and breathing from them (whilst still stood up on the surface), all good there.. so we leant forward to put our faces in the water to breathe that way. Again all good there. All three of my students appeared quite calm and were breathing nice and slow, getting used to the sensation of bubbles around their faces. Nice one!

So… we knelt down on the bottom (still in water only chest deep). A bit of a floaty moment from one lady, so a couple of extra kilos popped in her pockets helped her out, and all was good. All three peeps were sat appearing nice n chilled out just breathing. So I gave it a couple of minutes to make sure they were good, all clear “ok” signals came back at me.

Next step was to demonstrate the first of a couple of very basic skills that we take our students through before we take them out on their swim with the fishes.

I signalled “all of you watch me” and began to demonstrate how to remove my regulator, pop it back in my mouth and clear it, when one of my students began frantically pointing to the surface. I shot to him, tried to get him to slow his breathing down, but no he wanted to go up, so up we stood and he said “No… it’s not for me” Wow! Where did that come from? All had been looking fine down there, he had shown no indication that he was anything less than perfectly happy. “No I want to get out, I don’t want to do it” Ok, so I explained that breathing slowly could help, and why not just try it one more time, to make sure. He could just sit there, not do any skills “NO.. I hate it, I felt claustrophobic” “no don’t want to do it” with such determination, that there was not a lot much else I could say. I don’t try to force anyone to do something they hate, and in reality scuba diving is not for everyone, but at the same time I do try to get people to give it a fair chance and have a good try. There is nothing worse than feeling that someone bottled out too soon and then regretted it later, but this chap was adamant he wasn’t going to do it. What a shame. So I called Samir our assistant who waits on the beach to help out in just this kind of situation, who came and helped my student to the shore and back to the dive centre.

And then there were two. All went fine, we completed the skills, had a little practice swim around and stood up for a quick chat.

Everyone had plenty of air, so off we went for our dive.

All went well until one of my students started really struggling with her mask.. it just didn’t sit right on her face so had a constant small leak, which she had been coping with fine until this point, so up she wanted to go. Hmm not ideal, we were still in confined water, but at a good three metres depth, so not the best for her ears.

Anyway up we went, and I offered my mask instead. I know I can cope with a leaky mask, and my mask was more likely to fit her small face. Of course by this stage, I had run out of spit, so hardly had anything with which to de-fog my new mask. So the inevitable happened. Once we were down my mask started to steam up.. bugger. So I kept flooding it to clear the steam every few minutes, but literally it would fog up on the breath I was using to clear the mask.. Oh no. I was struggling to see the reef and my students, let alone spot anything of interest in the distance. Hmmmm what to do? I had heard that if you take your mask off, lick the inside of the glass and replace it this works too… so I had nothing to lose. I took the mask off.. Oooh I can see better without my mask than with it!! Well it was a bit of a fumble, removing my reg, getting my mask close enough to my face in order to lick the inside of each lense.. but I did it.. and popped it back on.. cleared it, and yes it was ok… cool! For a few minutes, and then inevitably it began to fog up again.. doh! Anyway, as the remove, lick, replace thingy had worked a bit, I did it again, this time trying to really get a good lick around each bit of glass and this definitely helped a bit better.

Somehow we managed to do a full 45 minute dive like this, well I guess time passes quickly when you are busy hehe. We did get to see plenty of life still, and my students seemed completely unfased by the fact that their instructor had to keep whipping her mask off and licking it! All in a day’s work, I guess hehe.

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