Scuba Diving: The Good and the Bad

On January 1st, 2014 I went on a New Years day dive with my dad and it was a huge success, we went to a small beach called Three Tree Point in Burien.

My dad and I getting in the water at Three Tree Point.

It was a great dive with lots to see and great visibility. We saw a wolf eel and lots of different crab and fish, we were swimming along enjoying the view and my dad points to the left of me and there I see a pretty big sea lion! It was around 5 feet long and probably 125 pounds. Keeping in mind that I hadn't seen anything bigger than that before I was pretty scared but also fascinated. It stopped to examine us then swam away quickly. Awesome dive, lots to see!

This past new years, my dad and I had the idea of diving into the new year... Literally. We start getting changed and it's probably around 11:15 pm and 28 degrees. Getting ready isn't very fun when its that cold and you have to make sure you're in the water at a certain time so you don't miss the year changing. We get in the water around 11:45 pm, the water is warmer than the air but it still isn't very warm. We get our fins on and start swimming out to drop down and we get around 6 feet and my ears won't clear (you know when you swim to the bottom of a swimming pool and it hurts your ears? That's exactly what it is, "clearing" your ears is just popping them) "Your ear and the sinus air spaces connect to your throat allowing you to use the air from your lungs to equalize them. You equalize the air space in your mask through your nose." (Padi 20). Not being able to clear makes it so you can't go deeper because your ear drums could rupture. So we decided to come back up and by then the fireworks were going off at the space needle across the water. So we floated around 200 feet of shore and watched the fire works.

What intrigues you about the underwater world that would make you want to see for yourself?