I was still reeling from the achievement of having completed the Open Water Diver Course. It was a clear day in Havelock and I woke up with a mixed feeling of excitement and anxiety. I’m sure you all know that feeling I’m talking about. The entire week preceding this day, I kept hearing the names ‘Johnny-Jackson-Dickson’ in every second conversation I had with the divers on the island. These are Havelock’s famous deep dive sites, Johnny’s Gorge, Jackson’s Bar and Dickson’s Pinnacle, known for their stunning reefs, regular shark sightings and a plethora of other marine life. One of my friends started hyping Johnny’s Gorge to me long before I finished my Open Water course. He told me about the sharks and I was already sold. I mean what’s more exciting than sharks?! It served as a much needed motivation to push myself and complete the course. Since these are deep sites, I could only dive there after my Open Water course, as part of my Advanced Open Water course
The day had finally come for my first deep dive. We were going to do two dives, a deep dive at Johnny’s Gorge and a drift dive at Minerva’s Ledge. We started early since the deep sites are far and it would be an understatement to say it was a bumpy ride to Johnny’s. I could feel my gut plunge as the boat sped through the choppy waters. If you are ever on a boat with me, we will probably never talk because of how quiet I get before dives. The nervousness coupled with the sea sickness does not help.
We reached Johnny’s a good forty minutes later (the longest forty minutes of my life). We go through our usual drill and make our way to the bottom. My instructor went down first and I followed him. As soon as he reached the end of the mooring line, he looked up at me with full excitement and signaled ‘shark’ with his hands. Any nervousness I felt on the boat immediately vanished. My mind thought “this is the moment I am here for”. He was there, a beautiful white tip shark, chilling near the reef.
We spent some time admiring him and moved ahead only to find more sharks! Johnny’s Gorge is one the best places I have dived at so far. The reef is full of healthy corals and is also one of the busiest in terms of marine life. Countless fish, schools of barracuda and blue-spotted stingrays crowded around the reef. There was so much to see, our eyes could not keep up and grasp everything there was. At the end of the dive, we spotted close to 14 white tip sharks!
Johnny’s being my first deep dive, I was consuming the air in my tank a lot faster so we had less time at the bottom. We made our way to the top and our excitement knew no bounds. We all heard of Johnny’s but we were seeing it for ourselves for the first time and it exceeded all our expectations. People who were on that dive with me tell me that till date that was their best dive at Johnny’s.
I was left speechless. Literally. Everyone around me was screaming with joy and discussing their sightings while I just sat there and tried to let what I had just seen sink in. I kept recollecting the dive, hoping I could freeze everything I saw in my memory. I barely recovered from what I had witnessed and we already arrived at Minerva’s Ledge. This was going to be a drift dive which meant we just drift with the current over the dive site.
I was quite exhausted from Johnny’s and had half a mind to sit it out. But my curiosity pushed me forward and into the ocean for the second dive. Now remember how I said Johnny’s is one of the best places I have dived at so far? Minerva’s is the other. I was a bit nervous about the drift dive but it was the most relaxing dive ever. There was a mild current that took us with it over Minerva’s Ledge without us having to kick our way around. In a way, it almost felt like I was flying.
We had drifted quite a distance away from the boat. My instructor shot up the Surface Marker Buoy (SMB), which is a bright coloured balloon-like thing that helps boats spot us after we have drifted away. We then slowly ascended to the surface and waited for the boat to come pick us up while we cherished the soothing dive we just completed. It was a long way back to the island and I remained quiet for most of it, brimming with joy and gratitude, for there was no better way to spend my last day on the islands.
