Yesterday I went to Cozumel to dive for my second time there. I decided to bring my new GoPro along to try it out. I had tested out the waterproof casing on my cenote dive last week and it passed (by putting a piece of a napkin, not the actual camera, in the casing). Because of how dark it was in the cenote, I couldn’t actually take pictures with it. But I did learn how to attach it to my BC (buoyancy control) device. I got confirmation today before my first dive that the way I attached was correct. Or at least so we thought.
So off we dove into a place called Santa Rosa. It was an insanely beautiful coral reef. The first shot below is my dive instructor, Jose, and I going through a small pass-through.
The second shot is us checking out a sea turtle.
After going through a second pass-through I went to reach for the camera. It was gone. It wasn’t there anymore! I immediately got Jose’s attention and let him know. I signaled that because it was attached to a floatation handle it probably drifted upward. I also thought it might have come off on the second pass-through and maybe it was stuck on the roof. I signaled that to Jose as well. He had me stay where I was and raced off to try to find it there. No luck. He went up near the surface and looked around. Nothing.
We were only about 10 minutes into the dive. I was momentarily devasted. Then I decided right there that I wasn’t going to let this ruin the dive. I would just get home after the two dives, sleep on it, and then figure out if I wanted to replace it. That was it. We finished a wonderful dive and even saw another sea turtle hanging out and eating a fish it killed. It was really cool.
Apparently the original knot in what GoPro sent me failed, and it drifted off. Two different dive instructors had missed this defect. It just wasn’t that obvious to any of us.
Then we surfaced, got to the boat, got up to the observation deck and started looking around. The captain circled back to where we were for a bit, then we had to pick up a couple of other diving groups. A handful of people came up and helped look. One guy felt sorry for me and brought food up from the main section of the boat below. I was resigned to it being gone and reconfirmed that I wasn’t going to let it ruin my second dive.
We circled some more and started heading closer to shore where we were going for the second dive. Suddenly Jose shouted. He saw it! He handed me his sunglasses and immediately dived from the 10 foot high second deck into the water. Superman! He found the damn thing! Counting the remaining 30 minutes of our dive and our time on the boat it had been over an hour, and who knows how far away, since I lost it. Divine intervention. Good karma. Being teased by the gods. Whatever it was, it was an epic recovery.
Needless to say, Jose got a huge tip when we got back to the dive shop. It’s funny, one of the owners of the dive shop told me he’s found lost GoPros for 3-4 clients and no one ever tipped him. He said Jose has as well and he didn’t think he ever got anything extra. That’s just nuts. Giving Jose an extra 800 pesos (over the standard 20% split tip I had already given the owner for Jose and the boat crew) was nothing compared to what replacing the GoPro would have cost me. But it was considered a huge, and definitely well deserved, tip by the owner.
For the second dive, Jose let me borrow a carabiner to attach the camera to the BC and we were off. The second dive was at a place called Punta Turich. It wasn’t nearly as spectacular as Santa Rosa, but was still a great, shallow drift dive that was incredibly enjoyable. And, as you can see below, I got some nice videos out of it, even with my inexperience at using the GoPro.
Later at the shop, I bought the attachment unit they use. Jose showed me how to double attach it with both a clip and a crossover knot. He and the owner said that’s how they set theirs up when they rent GoPros to clients. They said they’ve never had one lost with that configuration.
