You can see that diving here is pretty local, the sites are close to the shore..lousy reef, dead for years and poorly managed.

this is a map of the local divesites ..we dived miniwall, larimar etc

great divemaster, I forget his name

we had a novice diver who should not have been diving, kept running into trouble

here is our divemaster ..he was very pro, I had chewed down on my mouthpiece as my ear had given out and I was trying to eq..lost use of my regulator at about 40 feet ..and had to go for the backup ..all that training with swapping etc came in handy, I had signalled him , but let him know that I was ok and would continue..but he was watching carefully all along and made sure I was ok

and this was the other one, she led a good clean dive

back on the surface , drifting and waiting for pick up

back on the boat..this was when I had bummed my ear out ..and was bleeding from my nose...was this my last dive ..? I wonder, my ear has been giving me a lot of trouble on the surface since then..wonder how bad it will be underwater..

Joel Kung fu fighting with dog on beach- Sosua - april 2001

matthew