My favourite topic – Scuba Diving!
Hubby and I were excited to do a couple of dives in Japan and Okinawa was our choice because of its climate and water temperature during this time of the year (last week of Feb). It was not optimal; still a bit too cold, but it was better than the other places we were heading to after Okinawa. We found a couple of dive shops online prior to our trip but while on the island, we soon learned that we had many other options. With that being said, there were still a few shortcomings in finding the right shop, the major one being the language barrier. After a whole day of cycling and dropping by various dive shops, we finally picked one close to our accommodation called Pink Mermaid.
The people at Pink Mermaid were really friendly, more so than people in the other shops we had visited. Dropping by Pink Mermaid even after closing time (unintentionally) did not stifle their welcome. And unlike the other shops we had been to, the only English speaker in this shop was always there and available to make conversation. Pink Mermaid even had a cocker spaniel as a part of the team! You can’t go wrong with lovers of animals from both land and sea!
We only had one day free for diving before heading to Naha, the capital of Okinawa. And as it turned out, strong winds were due to hit the island on that one day. Despite this, Pink Mermaid made our dives happen! They provided us with transport and brought us to one of the few areas on the island that was sheltered from the strong winds. This place was called Gorilla Chop.
We did 2 shore dives at Gorilla Chop. Each dive was about 45 minutes long with at least a 30 minute interval in between the 2 dives. While they were relatively shallow (8 – 10m) dives, the wildlife and underwater landscape were exquisite!
We’re not new to diving and in most cases, dive shops tend to only provide the bear necessities. Like providing rental gear, tanks, the fresh water to rinse the gear and depending on the shop, they could set up your gear for you and provide warm tea. In Japan, we got a bit more and don’t get me wrong, these were in no way negative, just… unexpected. So our gear was set up for us for both dives and we had a free-flow of hot green tea during our time at Gorilla chop. But in addition to these, divers were provided tents for changing, which I must admit, was a bit odd because putting on wetsuits are usually done in the open since you’ll have your swimsuit underneath. After the dives, bottles of hot water were provided to help divers stay warm while waiting to change out of their wetsuits. I love this one! It was absolutely essential especially during those windy conditions. I would really like to see other dive shops take on this practice (except maybe Egypt)!! And this did not seem to be unique to Pink Mermaid as divers from other dive shops were there too with bottles of hot water!!
The other thing that really struck me was the photography service. We never request or pay for this service because it is usually an additional, very expensive service. Also, the photographers usually take pictures of their customers which is not what we want to get out of our dives. So we brought our camera with its underwater housing to do the photography ourselves. Pink Mermaid provided photography as part of the dive experience and indeed, we got a lot of pictures of ourselves in wetsuits…not very pretty sights so I’ll spare you the eyesore. 😛
During our dives, we didn’t see many large fish. The largest creatures were probably the venomous Sea snakes and those are not even fish. But with an observant eye, we found many tiny critters no bigger than a pinkie. Found in a variety of colours, patterns and shapes were soft-bodied mollusks called Nudibranchs. Enjoy the pictures!
Belosophy 