Melissa's New Blog: Diving in Ft. Pierce

Anytime someone invites me out for a day on the boat, I am in! My roommate, Tommy, and his dad invited me and my friend Carmen down to Ft. Pierce with them for some lobstering. We weren't sure how the diving conditions would be, since we've had a few big storms come through, but the weather was great so we headed out. Tommy's dad, Dusty, and I were the first two to go down and I have to say, it was the shortest, scariest dive of my life. The only dives I've ever been on were in fairly shallow water, decent visibility and usually on a reef. While this dive was only about 55 feet, by the time I made my way down to the anchor, it was pitch black with ZERO visibility. I'm kind of a pansy about being in the ocean anyways - as much as I love it, I have a tremendous respect for the amount of danger lurking below. All I could think of was to stay calm, breath normal and try to get that dang flashlight turned on without letting go of the anchor rope, so Dusty and I could find each other (rule #1 in diving - don't leave your buddy, even if you both know you're not staying down). We both finally managed to get our flashlights on around the same time (thank goodness, because even though he was only a few feet away, that was the only way we were going to find each other down there), and he had to put his flashlight directly on his hand and put his hand around 1 inch away from my face to give me the hand signal to go up. Once we had found each other and confirmed that we were going back to the boat, I couldn't get out of there faster! Needless to say, we spent the rest of the day fishing (the boys) and napping/dolphin watching (the girls). I didn't really care though, I'm always up for a day napping on bows :)