For our first day of diving the morning was spent watching DVDs and being told about Scuba diving along with 3 quizzes. It looked pretty fun, but also quite serious at the same time as we had to learn about things that can go wrong such as decompression sickness (DCS) and other serious injuries from exceeding safety levels. After a good sandwich which was delivered we learnt how to setup our equipment and proved we could swim 12 lengths and tread water for 10 minutes. This was then followed by some basic skills such as clearing your mask underwater, recovering your respirator, using a buddy’s emergency respirator and what it’s like to be out of oxygen. By the end of this I wasn’t 100% sure I was going to be able to apply these skills in the open water as I had problems equalising pressure on the descent.

After we’d done learning these skills we went to Reef Teach which is a AU$15 talk on what to expect on the reef. The talk covered things like how the different animals behave and which ones are venomous. At the talk we were told there was about a 10% chance we would be going out on the boat due to an inbound cyclone. As we were pretty pushed for time we decided the best option for dinner was the nearby Subway. That was the first time I’d ever eaten at one so I went for a footlong steak sandwich.