For those close to me, you know I have been on the dive team at the South Carolina Aquarium for over 10 years. For these 10 years, I have gone into the Aquarium 2 Saturdays a month, and worked on a dive team for 8 hours. Well today, Saturday February 9th, this came to an end. I have been considering this for some time now, but just could not pull the strings, as me and my dive partner Robert Juzups have been diving together all this time. I will miss my dive team, but the hardest thing to leave will be all the animals in the Great Ocean Tank, especially our Loggerhead Sea Turtle Caretta. She has been there since day one.
My dive team typically consists of 5-7 divers, with about 85-90 total divers in the program. On a typical day we would do 4 dives. These would be cleaning the tank, feeding the animals, and interacting with guest during dive shows. I would estimate that I have some 750 dives in the tank at the Aquarium, which has helped improve both my dive skills and confidence in the sport. Since I don’t get offshore much anymore because of time and the enormous costs for dive charters, that will greatly reduce my diving. My running joke has always been that I am still diving in the winter months when others have hung up their gear for the season.
Here some photos from my last day:
Top of the Great Ocean Tank
Top of the Great Ocean Tank
Caretta our 24 year old Loggerhead Sea Turtle
Caretta our 24 year old Loggerhead Sea Turtle
Our Big Cobia
Our 7 foot Sand Tiger Shark
Me doing my final dive show
Me doing my final dive show
Me doing my final dive show
Me doing my final dive show
The last dive
Signing off
