Another reef

Almost lost in the Great Manatee Adventure was the fact that we dove the reef in downtown Aguadilla on Saturday.

We've been on this reef before but not very often. It starts off at about 35-40 feet and then drops to about 80 feet on the outside. It's also a big long reef. We''re not really sure where it ends.

There is a lot to see on this reef. Unlike most of the places we dive, almost nobody dives there so it's not kicked and stomped on. The bad thing is visibility has never been good when we've been there. We think it's at least partly because the reef is in Aguadilla bay. Rio Culebrinas empties into the south side of the bay. We think a lot of the stuff that gets washed out from the river kind of gets trapped over this reef. We're hoping the visibility gets better after the rainy season.

I think I got my first nitrogen "hit" - a bit of decompression sickness - after this dive. Because of the nature of most of our dive profiles, we usually come to the surface slowly as part of the dive. We rarely do free ascents from depth in open water. One of the divers on this dive used a lot of air and we were forced to surface earlier than planned. I got myself a little messed up and surfaced much faster than I planned - or was good. Later Saturday evening I had some pretty uncomfortable vertigo, which is caused by a disturbance in the inner ear. We can't conclusively say it was decompression sickness but everything points to it.

Interestingly, we'd planned to dive at Crashboat  the next morning - the dive that turned into the Great Manatee Adventure. I almost didn't go because I was still feeling a little weird. As soon as I got down in the water, all the symptoms went away. Hmmm.

So, something learned and something to practice. Once in a while, just for the hell of it, I need to do a free ascent 'cause I don't want to feel like that again.