Our first dive of the day was a wall dive out at San Clemente. The term wall means various things when diving. At this site it meant a huge reef at a slope of about 45 degrees.

San Clemente Wall

 

Scrawled Filefish

It's fun to float through a school to get a close up of so many fish. They won't even scatter, if you approach them slowly and calmly. You just become another fish in the school. It's particularly easy when they're preoccupied by fighting the current.

Schools of French Grunts

About half way through our planned amount of bottom time, one of the divers started to give the low air signal. Low air here means that he had enough air to ascend at a cautious pace, do a 3 minute safety stop, and still get back on board the boat with a fair amount.

However, according to our dive plan that shouldn't have happened so quickly. People use air at different rates but no one else was even close to being low air. I figured the dive was over and we would ascend together when the dive master handed the low-on-air diver his octopus (2nd regulator). 

I had never actually seen this be necessary before but it made perfect sense. Dive masters typically use a fraction of the air others do because of their experience over thousands of dives. Buddy breathing with the low-on-air diver allowed us to continue on as a group and it probably barely put a dent in the dive master's air.

Buddy Breathing

We ascended on time as planned without incident, began our surface interval, and made our way to the next dive site.

Location: Cozumel, Quintana Roo, Mexico

Dive Number:   91 Bottom Time: 50m Time In: 9:22 a.m. Tank In: Max Depth: 84.00 ft Table Used:

Mix:   Air Safety Stop: 3m Time Out: 10:12 a.m. Tank Out: Average Depth: 43.00 ft Start Pressure Group:

Surface Interval:   End Pressure Group:

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