Diving the South Pacific

I finally remembered to pass off my camera before a dive! I volunteer at the aquarium at Moody Gardens in Galveston once or twice a month. It took me a year to get the guts to take the written and in-water tests. It had been so long since I'd been diving that I wanted to have a little refresher beforehand. Courtesy of my dad, Travis got certified to dive last fall and I went along to brush up on everything. That gave me the push I needed to get in the tanks at Moody.

Volunteering means that I get to do the grunt work first, fun stuff second. A usual day at the South Pacific exhibit consists of cleaning the acrylics ("glass" on the front of the tanks that the guests view through), preparing food for the day and then diving the tank. I've only dived twice in this exhibit before: once for my check out dive and to observe a feeding and once to observe then feed a little. Yesterday was my first chance to feed the entire time. I still had to go with a buddy, Robin, so she did the bulk of the feeding. I got to do the herbivore broadcast, where I throw a bunch of herb gel into the water for all the small fish, and then I fed the sting rays. They are my favorite! I've fed them from the surface before, so I already knew what to do. Unfortunately, they were mobbing my dive buddy the whole time, so I had to catch them as the swam by me.

The bulk of the feeding occurs in front of the main viewing acrylic, so that the guests can watch the show. After that, we swam around and searched for the moray eels. Robin used to work at Moody Gardens, but now she teaches at a middle school. She missed the diving so much that she now volunteers every other weekend. Since she knows what she's doing much more than I do, I observed the eel feedings. They are hand-fed strips of salmon filets. We don't feed them when they are swimming in the water column because we don't want them to come to us for the food. That would make broadcast feeding much more difficult!

I was surprised to see that they had moved some Lionfish into this exhibit. They are gorgeous slow swimming animals, but they have poisonous spines, so we constantly have to be aware of our surroundings. Their spines are strong enough to go through our gloves! I learned to pay attention last time when I was trying to move backwards a little and accidentally hit a moray eel. He gave me a warning "bite" that didn't puncture my skin. It felt more like I hit something hard, but when I turned around the eel was floating there with his mouth open. Yikes!

I finished my feed training in the South Pacific exhibit. My next task will be to dive the Caribbean exhibit. I'm nervous about that because they have brown sharks, sand tigers and juvenile blacktip sharks. Before you enter the water you have to learn their swim patterns. That way you know something might be wrong if they stray from their normal path and you can get out of the water before it is too late. I think this is the one thing I can do where I enjoy the adrenaline rush. I cannot stand roller coasters and the idea of jumping out of a plane makes my skin crawl. But throw me in a tank with sharks and I get excited. Thank goodness I still have some reach into the world of marine biology.

My goal in the Caribbean is to become a safety diver. They are the divers who carry a T-bar and watch for oncoming sharks. They warn the feeding diver of any approaching predator and use the T-bar to divert, if it is unavoidable. That is a little ways into the future because I have to first be trained as a cleaning diver, then to feed, then to be a safety diver. And with me only going once or twice a month that may be a while. Plus I think I'd like to be comfortable feeding in South Pac before moving on. Hooray for diving!!