Scuba Steve

Yesterday I came face to face with a 6ft long eel. Unfortunately that wasn't the scariest thing going on at the time. See when I learned to scuba dive, I learned to hover a foot or two above the ocean floor in order to not accidentally kill the coral or kick up the sand. In Japan, apparently, they like to lay on the bottom. My scuba partner and I were already struggling with the language barrier on the surface...but then it got so much worse under water. He kept swimming up behind me and letting all the air out of my BC so I would sink to the bottom. Then I would try and be sneaky and put a little air back in so I would be neutrally buoyant. This is the game we played at 90 feet deep for about an hour. Finally, he got so frustrated with me that he decided to swim on top of me with one hand holding me down against the ocean floor. He kept dragging me around and pointing out interesting fish until I wanted to scream. Of course I couldn't because then my regulator would fall out and I would die at the bottom of the ocean. Anyway, then he sees the giant eel and we swim right up to him. This thing was nasty and had a mouthful of teeth that it looked like he wanted to eat me with. My partner was so into the eel though that I had a chance to escape. He let go of me and grabbed the eel by his tail. While he was chasing the eel around this little cave area, I quickly put some air in my BC and escaped for the rest of the dive. Oh, did I mention that my dive partner was a 75 year old man? Old people are awesome in Japan!

Fine print: This is not the actual eel that I saw, but it did look like this. Roommate would be very angry if I took her camera under water!