Stop, Look and Listen

Tyll's Dive- where I spend most of my day

All successful gossip queens are good at one thing; listening.   Another good tool is to shut your trap, don’t give away information unless you can trust the source it’s going to.  On a small island and an even smaller town, I’m learning to not to add to the gossip train… at least not too much.  Being a good ear is better than having a big trap.  My dad always said a closed mouth gathers no foot, which I’m trying harder to do here then I do at home.  Thanks for the lesson Dad!  I’ve always loved history, reading and the social sciences which are totally related to gossip, at least in my mind.  I love justification too J

I’ve been learning a lot lately.  Reading, reading, reading.  Listening, listening, listening.  We finished two certifications recently… I’m now a DAN O2 provider along with an EMF.  “My name is your name, I’m a emergency first responder… may I help you?”  Massimo, Chase and I had fun with the “role playing” for EMF, well maybe I had a bit more fun then them!  A good gossip queen is also pretty dramatic and I have a flair for being dramatic at times.  For checking for breath on a unresponsive victim you stop, look and listen for their breath.  The three manuals I’ve been reading say the same thing when faced with a  potential crisis… Stop, Think, Act.  Kinda like stop, drop and roll, right?  Sometimes they throw in breathe too, just incase you forget.  Breathing is probably the most important, but a lot of the time we simply forget.  Not breathing under water is very bad.  #1 rule of  SCUBA diving “don’t hold your breath”.   It seems easy enough, but sometimes the hardest things to get are the simplest.

Today we had cruise shippers come to the shop.  7 of them!  Two were from Colorado, one was actually from Boulder.  And what do you know, he knows the same people I know.  His little sister used to be best friends with a little girl who used to live on my best friends growing up and also good friend with my best friend’s brother… see I’m such a gossip queen, could it get anymore detailed?  Since I’m still on the rescue course we figured that I’d get more in the way in the morning than help.  I went again to snorkel at half moon bay.  This morning the water visibility was pretty clear.  I saw a few hogfish, tons of blue tang, angelfish and the most majestic thing I’ve seen in the water so far.  It took my breath away, luckily I was just snorkeling.  A 6-foot in width eagle ray swam right underneath me.  It was gone as soon as I could catch my breath, off flying off to another part of the bay.  Later when I was looking at 4ft hogfish near the coral the eagle ray found me and swam around for a few minutes.  Being underwater is completely a foreign world and like Lindey, one of the dive masters at the shop who is our resident lionfish finder, has said to me, “sometimes you just sit and wait and the life comes to you.”  Looking up at the waves from below has also become a vision to see, it’s pretty mystical looking.  After the cruise shippers left we; Lindey, Gabriel and Monique (Mo who is the daughter in law of the blue marlin owners and also a dive instructor) and I went diving at Melissa’s reef.  We saw 4 turtles, about 5 huge groupers… almost the size of me and a 4 ft crab.  The cruise shippers had a great time, but I’m sure they would have loved to see 4 turtles in one dive!

Roatan has a huge problem with the lionfish and it’s only going to get worse.  Matt from the Marine Park who is also working for NOAA came by the other day to ask how many lionfish we had seen.  The Marine Park has been asking diver shops to keep track of the lionfish; where we see them, how many and at what depth.  Every time Lindey dives he seems to find some.  He says because he knows what to look for, but I think he’s a lionfish hunter.  Lionfish are not native to this area, they are extremely poisonous, they devour the coral and multiply quickly.  They have no natural predators in this environment and since the water is much warmer here than in their natural habitat they multiply at an accelerated rate.   Matt said that if we can catch them or kill them we can, but the Marine Park doesn’t have nets or spear guns that we can use.  It’s a bit of a catch22, but I’m going to do a little bit of investigating and if anyone in the US wants to help… let me know!

Today was the first time I was in the water for a few days.  I woke up one day with a  mosquito bite on my left eye and the next morning I woke up with a bite on the other.  I barely survived J but my eyes were so swollen.  It looked like I had been in a fight the nite before and eventho I gossip, I’m a lover not a hater.  No fighting.   I might have been able to dive, but I figured not to chance it.  The next two days were followed by course work and some gin rummy.

On Sunday nite I watched a little bit of the Broncos game at the Dive, we had a guy who came in who was a Cincinnati fan so we had to switch between the two games.  Almost the whole shop came to watch a bit of the game which was pretty fun hanging out away from the shop and work.  I met a guy who has been here for years named Jim, well he introduced himself as Jim Beam.  I told him I was Jack Daniels, so we were a pair.  He’d been skiing in Colorado back in the 70s and had a few stories to tell.  He’s a pretty cool guy and lives down the way from me.  He’s got the best laugh.   I met another guy who has lived in the mountains of Colorado but has been here for 18 years.  He calls himself Captain Ron or Caveman Ron because he used to do a lot of cave diving in Colorado.  He’s writing a book for his daughter of everything he can remember, he’s only up till high school so he’ll be writing for a while.  I love listening to peoples stories, just sitting back and watching it all happen.

Tomorrow I’m snorkeling again, more reading, the 11 o’clock dive and then Noelle and I are going to Coxen Hole to try and find ingredients to make pumpkin pie.  We are having a Thanksgiving Dinner at Noelle and Chase’s on Thursday for the whole shop!  If you can’t be with family for the holidays it’s good to be with new friends!

Molly