Diving-Club@Billabong

Diving Group 4 – Dhafeena, Zaain and Shafra.

Although it wasn´t planned to be that way, March 8^th seemed to be the perfect date for the first group of female students to celebrate their day and go on a diving trip. The past 24 hours had been so rainy, that there was the possibility of having to cancel this trip for the third time in a row, but fortunately that Friday morning looked like a sunny and nice day for diving.

After all three Grade 11 students arrived to Hulhumale´s terminal, we took the speed boat and then a taxi to Into Scuba Diving Centre where Haisham and his group of divers were already waiting for us. This time two foreigners were also taking the Discover Scuba Diving course and joined us in watching the introductory video and later on in the dive.

At first, it looked like there weren´t going to be any strong currents, but once we arrived to MaaGiri the water was swelling and we could see how it was raining again in Male´ and Thilafushi. Before jumping into the water, one divemaster was assigned to every student, which meant that there were five divers (including Haisham and me) keeping an eye on the three students and making sure that there wouldn´t be any problems.

Once we were underwater, the current made it difficult to conduct the shallow water exercises; however all the students practiced removing their regulators underwater, clearing their masks from leaking water and equalizing. After around fifteen minutes we started heading towards the deeper area.

The total dive time was of 46 minutes and the maximum depth of 11.6 meters, we managed to see a stone fish, many yellow margin trigger fish, two clark´s anemone fish and a school of blue stripe snappers, all of which were enough to make the students replace some of their old fears with excitement about their upcoming dives.