Lionfish City

Contributed by Scuba Stu

As an Open Water SCUBA Instructor you have courses where you have entire classes of struggler's where your students struggle with even the most basic skills (no, that's your snorkel not your reg...), and courses of fish (well, we seem to have finished a little early today...). I'm lucky enough that I've been blessed with several weeks of 'fish'. The beauty of teaching fish is that invariably they want to continue with some adventure stuff and we all get to do some cool diving. Naturally, as a instructor, you want everyone to have a great adventure dive and go out of your way to show off some really cool underwater stuff.

My group for the deep dive module consisted of 4 fish and 1 instructor along for the ride. I took them down to around 22 meter to see a little place called 'Lionfish City'. I had counted around 6 lionfish and had got a little closer to the small bommie to look for some more, I signaled for my group to gather closer to have a better look. As I ventured closer and still closer into a rather cramped crevice and managed to count another 6- that makes 12!- that's when I started to think: ' Hmmm, this little bommie is a little crowded! It might not be a great idea to be so close!". Then I saw a small one swim casually past on my right, then the BIGGEST lion fish I have ever seen come out from the bottom of the crevice: about 20cm long! He spread out his array of deadly plumage and swam straight for me !

It occured to me that I may have been a bit rude and that he might be a bit territorial! Definitely time to make my regards and exit as soon as possible. The only problem was the exit was directly behind me, so with oh-so-casual and gracefull finesse, I reversed like a puffer - using my hands only with this angry lionfish bearing down on me about 10cm from my face! I finally cleared the crevice, but the lionfish was still bearing down on me, so I continued backwards trying to straighten out my old cressi master frogs to allow me max reverse speed.

The old lionfish must have decided that I had been 'served' and casually turned and swam back to the Bommie. I turned around, my heart pounding so hard I could hear it. I saw the other instructor laughing so hard she had flooded her mask! The students were all practicing my reverse swimming technique and laughing.

Well, they all seemed to get the knack of my reverse technique- practicing it even at the 5 meter safety stop. And even some more later on the boat. Oh, the joy of live-aboards!

Keep wet!