Training: Hye Sook did the skills for dive #2 (mask clear, reg recovery, alternate air source breathing practice and later, ascent). She did flex skills tired diver tow and cramp removal at surface. I cut slack on fin pivot oral inflate due to current; her buoyancy has always been fine.

Advanced students Russell Bowen, Robin Lunden and Ed Chaffin were doing a boat dive.

Comments: The current was really bad, just barely able to fin into it. Everyone did pretty well, but we had to hang on to coral for stability, which is a shame. A heck of a way to treat coral. I was even delegated to tie off the bouy line, and had to fasten that to a coral head. I was not happy at my choice of tie-offs, but had to do something with the rope I'd been handed considering I had 4 students in tow.

We all swam up-current in 330 degree heading (seemed that was the obvious way to go with coral being visible that way). We were all amazed at the amount of fish there were considering we were inside the channel (which was of course the reason for the current).

I was looking for sand and protection from the current so Hye Sook could do her exercises. There didn't seem much of either but I eventually got us wedged in a place where Hye Sook could get her mask off and put it back on. Ed helped hold her down. She did great. She threw her reg away and recovered it fine. There was no way she was going to do a fin pivot, but her buoyancy was spot on, so I waived that. She and Ed practiced alt air source breathing and we had a swim around. Saw a huge grouper on that portion, and a few bat fish.

As we headed back to the boat we encountered Ed and Robin which was encouraging. The current was slacking but we were floating lazily in it nevertheless. I kept us on the reciprocal of 330 degrees. Ed was concerned about Hye Souk's being low on air so I let Russell and Robin drift off as we kept on for the boat. We didn't see the anchor but surfaced in about the right place, just far enough from the boat for Hye Sook to tow Ed in. It was a fine dive.

Surface interval duration: about half an hour 

 Training: Russell and Ed, Advanced Underwater Naturalist dive

Invertibrates included different corals, hermit crabs, sea urchins

Vertibrates included the range of reef fishes: angels, butterflies, groupers, the dominant fish with the gray spot, bat fish, grunts

Sea plants? Not sure about this one ...

Russell was keen on navigating this one and Ed took on a bit of the lead himself. I just kind of hung back, suggesting ways to go, keeping a schematic of the route on my slate, and letting the guys take the lead.

We headed west into coral and eventually came on a coral head draped with rope, which I pointed out. We used this as our pivot point. We headed South from there but after a stretch of sand returned on a northerly heading to the coral area. It took a while to find the head with the rope, but Russell persisted and I'm sure he was proud when he eventually found it. From there we went to the north, but we increased depth and got into the channel, sand bottom, so we returned again to our roped coral head, coming out on it pretty square this time. Ed then led us to the east to get back to the boat. When we got over sand I thought we should stop, but Ed looked back at me in a way I thought might mean he'd seen the anchor, but turned out he was just asking if he should go ahead, so I banged my clacker and he pulled up. We surfaced about 15 meters from the boat, not bad.

It was a good day diving, exceeding expectations after a week of high wind. The fish life in the channel was a surprise.