Okinawa – The dives
After a few minutes dive, my buddy reaches me. He tries to tell me something, but I don’t get what. He then calls the dive master, who crushes me on the sand bottom, while doing something to my tank and BCD and I understand that one of the strips holding the tank is lose. Once this is fixed, I continue the dive, grateful to the buddy that kept an eye on me.
The reef around Okinawa is beautiful. What surprises me is the quantity of fish. It is a shame that the day is not sunny, because with the sun light it would be even better, but even in these conditions, with a cloudy sky, the visibility is great.
The water is transparent and clean, the sea is flat and peaceful. Once in a while, Pedro stops to show us something: nudibranchs of every color and sizes, different species of crabs hiding in the corals.
A beautiful sea snake is swimming in the water and we watch it mesmerized for a while. We see a lot of clown-fishes and of course Dory is also there (Blue-tang fish). To be honest, the variety of the anemones attracts me more than the clown-fish itself. At a certain point, Pedro goes down by a few meters, so we are around a depth of 20-22 meters. He points at a pink huge gorgonia and it is clear he wants us to see. He brings me closer to the Gorgonia and points with his finger. I can’t see anything. Then, he makes the hand-sign referring to the animal, and I understand what I have to look for. And finally I see.
It’s a pigmey sea-horse which not only is smaller than a phalanx of my finger, but has a livery that blends with the background of the gorgonia. It is the first time I see one! It was worth to come all the way to Okinawa just for this moment. But no, the dives have still a nice surprise for us.
While we slowly move upwards, we bump into a turtle who is placidly swimming and is not scared of us. This allows us to admire it from a closer distance and we spend quite a good time swimming around the turtle.
Good dives, good service. Definitely you can try it. And I’ll go back next time I’m in this part of the world. Pedro promises that if I come during the right season, he’ll be able to show me sharks, so just wait for me.
