Today, I finished dives three and four in my open water certification.
Highlight of dive 1: chasing an octopus. They’re really impressively fast. But then, apparently, they get lazy, and decide to smoosh themselves into gaps in the coral. They’re pretty well disguised until you float by, they get all pissy, and turn bright white. Bingo, cue further harrassment of the eight-armed freak.
Highlight of dive 2: sea turtles! These guys are seriously laid back. They don’t care in the least how long you spend floating mere feet from them, watching them munch away on sea anemones and, apparently, coral. Also, they have HUUUUGE eyes. The other badass thing I saw on dive two was a lionfish! Black and white, and very, very fancy. But don’t make fun of his ostentatious display, because he’s quite toxic. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lionfish
The final step was to take my SSI written test. This is 40 questions, most of them ridiculously simple. For example: the Time To Flight function on your dive computer indicates how long the diver must wait before: A) flying, B) diving, or C) taking a hot shower.
(incidentally, it turns out that answer C isn’t as ridiculous as you might think. A long, hot shower can cause nitrogen to seep out of the body at an accelerated rate, causing all sorts of un-fun problems. But that’s really only a consideration for divers going considerably deeper)
Of course, I spent too much time studying dive tables (and I’m pretty sure the instructor was wrong about one facet of using them), and not enough studying how to treat potential, horrendous conditions like the bends or oxygen embolisms in the brain. Out of 40 total, I missed four questions. 