Underwater tale ...

It was sad to get to the end of the book and read the inevitable

Well the book was called Raising the Dead wasn’t it? Nonetheless it is always a tragic loss when anyone dies. 

The Man and I did a huge number of dives and he was always my dive buddy. My theory was that he would never get me into any situation he couldn’t get me out of.

We spent many a happy hour diving in and around Wellington harbour. A particular favourite sit was Princess Bay; here was the advantage of a public loo. Making a change from getting into and out of our wetsuits on the roadside. Well, we got used to that too. To provide a bit of extra insulation under our wet suit we’d wear thermal long johns. Must have looked a sight struggling out of those all wet and drippy. 

Weighted down with tanks and pound of lead around our waist we were as cumbersome as penguins on our walk down to the water and at the water’s edge we’d either don the find, which meant walking backwards into the wet stuff, or much easier go in with them in our hands and once deep enough to float put them on. 

The waters around Princess Bay weren’t deep, but then  all of our dives were done at less than 100 feet deep. The best dives were usually much shallower. 

Light changes the deeper you go, with the red part of the spectrum disappearing very rapidly, so we were never without out torches. Great go looking into crevices and under outcrops.  

One weekend we dived there with a couple of friends. We entered the water ahead of them and it wasn’t long before The Man had discovered something interesting, 

We usually dived holding hands, making it much easier to communicate a find or to point out something interesting. If weren’t holding hands we would only be a meter or so from each other.

Well on this particular day we had split up to swim around a large rock, keeping an eye on each other’s bubble stream. Well I came around the side only to see The Man, fins flat on the sandy bottom gesturing with one hand for me to come closer. With the other had he was holding several tentacles of what to me looked like a huge octy (octopus). At least I think he was holding onto the octy, it could have been that it was holding onto him. There seemed to be tentacles everywhere, around his arm and around his mask.

Now you get very good at sign language cos you cannot speak under water. And there was him gesturing at me to come closer and me gesturing just as loudly for him to put it down!

Poor octy it had turned a very angry shade of maroon.

After our dive we were chatting to our friends and she said that they had come across an octy on their dive, and like she usually did had taken off her glove to interact with it, but it really didn’t want to have anything to do with her. 

Must have been the same on that The Man had upset earlier