A day of SCUBA diving in Guam

With my trip to the Pacific somewhat rerouted this past weekend I suddenly found myself looking for things to do in Guam. Not being a member of the military my options were pretty limited. With 48 hours on the ground I’d have plenty of time to do some diving and not risk the bends when I boarded my onward flight. And given no other compelling options of things to do I scheduled my day with the folks at Micronesian Divers Association.

I was originally booked for both the morning and afternoon boat trips. Sadly, life got in the way and I ended up working instead of diving in the morning but I made the afternoon boat and got in two pretty mediocre dives.

The first dive, at Barracuda Rock was mostly lacking in coral, sea life and much scenery at all. Still, there were a couple cool swim-through areas and I couldn’t really complain too much. After all, I was diving and that is always a good thing.

The second dive was somewhat lower visibility but better scenery. We followed the captain’s directions in search of a huge anemone but came up empty in finding it (though apparently others on the boat did find it). Instead of that we made friends with a turtle camped out on a coral head.

It is amazing to watch them move underwater. They glide so effortlessly and quickly; keeping up is a challenge and almost certainly means spending more air than you really meant to.

After the turtle experience we headed back towards the boat, cruising along the coral heads and enjoying the scenery.

One of the nice things about this dive is that it maxed out at only 50 feet or so and most of the pretty stuff was up around 15-30 feet. This means more bottom time and better light for actually seeing the stuff down there. Both good things in my book. And we had plenty of time for the dive; the captain wasn’t in much of a hurry to get back. I was down for over an hour on the second dive and had a blast.

I suppose I should confess at this point that there’s no good reason that I should have passed the underwater navigation portion of my certification. The first dive of the day was a drift dive, meaning that navigation didn’t matter much. The second, however, had us returning to the boat. Easier said than done.

It didn’t help that another boat showed up on the mooring line between our boat and where the good stuff was on the dive. Needless to say I was very confused when that boat disappeared a bit later and I thought I was completely lost. Fortunately I was shallow enough that I could easily surface and find the boat, but I was rather embarrassed. Right up to the point that I got back on the boat and several others mentioned that they made the same mistake. At least I was in good company.

Overall it was just mediocre diving. The boat was a bit crowded and the sites aren’t fantastic. That said, it was pretty cheap (~$50 for a two tank boat dive) and certainly beats the heck out of sitting top side. Guam doesn’t offer a lot of options if you’re not looking for a massage parlor. The diving was definitely a welcome alternative.

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