Korea 2018 – Jeju Island

At that time, the name of the diving center was Sea Story.

Today, it changed to Cozy Dive

ShinMi contacted it and arranged a first day of diving for both of us.

We arrive there by taxi, and as usual, I have all my equipment with me.

We are welcomed at the diving center and the dive master holds the usual briefing, in Korean and my friend translates for me.

He asks then if we have questions. I do have one as he has mentioned that the dive would last about 20 minutes, so my question is « Why the dive is so short? ». He says that because of the strong currents, the air consumption is usually quite high, but of course the actual length will depend on our air consumption and I cool down.

So, we .load the equipment, we take the transport and we go to the haven where we board a motorboat with other diving centers.

He will dive with us, so we’ll have a dedicated dive master. We navigate, maybe 15-20 minutes and then we stop. We assemble the equipment and we jump in the water following the dive master. I have a little bit of overweight and a bit of concern as it is the first time I dive in this part of the world.

When we reach the bottom, I feel the strong currents mentioned in the briefing and I understand better the comments of the DM. The current would swipe the divers away, that’s why they fixed ropes and chains to be rocky bottom, fur us to hold tight to them and thus move against the current (remember the rule: when there is current, you start the diving swimming against it). Basically, we are in a kind of small canyon that is mainstreaming the current and we move against it. I’m quite happy to realise that I don’t have particular troubles underwater in those conditions. Other than that, the water is crystal clear and as it is the first time I dive in that part of the world I’m charmed by the marine biology there as it is totally different than the one I’m used to. It’s in Jeju waters that I see my first boxfish, for example. Also the soft corals have different shapes and colors than the ones I normally see.

As the DM notices that I’m fascinated by the small creatures, he starts looking for them. And the best places to look for them are the anemones. Finally, he finds what he’s looking for: he lifts the brim of an anemones and we intrude in that shelter to disrupt for a moment the quite life of a family of cleaner shrimps . It’s a nice family picture: the small shrimps are hidden behind a bigger one, who is shielding them: that’s what my mum would do if she would sense any threat for her children. I stare at them for a while, I apologize for the intrusion, thank the mum shrimp for her time and attention and we continue our dive.

Very unusual for me was also the surface interval. In fact, we spend it on a rock. I can’t even say it’s a small island, it’s really a big rock thrown in the middle of the sea. The one you see in the video. From time to time, as the tie is slowly raising, we need to move the cylinders out of the water on a dry place and it’s on that rock that we have to assemble the equipment for the second dive. And to be honest, that moment, with the slight difficulties, on a ground that is not even and the water that is gradually raising is one of my best memories of that diving experience.