Turtles are often a high light of dives. Even though over the years I have seen quite a few turtles, it is always great to see them. Hawksbill turtles always remind me of grumpy old men, the way they look at divers. Its like “oh bother another diver coming over to take a look. Don’t interrupt me, I have my sponges I am eating, you know I have to get my ruffage.” Now usually, I have no problem getting close to a turtle to take a picture, but that is not always true.
Over a decade ago, I was down in Cancun doing my check out dives to get my scuba certification card. I passed so since we were going down to take the ferry over to Cozumel the next day I figured I would go do some dives in Cozumel while the rest of my family was shopping. I rented equipment and got on the dive boat without incident. I even had a small underwater camera that I carried with me in hopes that I might see something interesting. The first dive was the Santa Rosa wall, which at about 100 feet, was only 40 feet deeper than I should have been diving. The dive was a drift dive, which I had never done, so I listened pretty closely to the dive master. I stayed close to my buddy who seemed to know more about diving the wall than I did. At 100 feet the crystal on my watch cracked. I could look over the edge of the wall and all I could see was deep blue water. It scared the heck out of me.
The current was moving but I didn’t notice it was moving very quickly. I was maybe 10 minutes into the dive when I noticed a turtle swimming against the current. He had pulled into what looked like an eddy behind a coral head. I decided I would try to follow him, but quickly discovered that kick as hard as I might I couldn’t get to the coral head. Now I should have realized after a moment or two that there was no way to go back into the current that day, but instead I kept kicking and kicking in hopes of catching the turtle. Well that didn’t work well. So I started to drift again. I checked the air guage and realized, wow, I sure blew through alot of air. I guess I better slow down, which I did and the rest of dive was pretty uneventful.
This year when I was in Roatan I only saw one turtle. And, when I saw him he was swimming fast — like a bat out of Sunday school. I didn’t even have time to bring the camera up to take a shot. I just watched him blast by without ever looking back. Oh well next time…. Sometimes it’s ok to be slower than a turtle.