Given how much I have to write about Miyakojima, I’m splitting it into 2 posts: Diving and then the rest.

So I was pretty keen to do some diving having heard stories from my expat friends of the vast marine life in the southern islands of Japan. I opted to go to Miyakojima rather than the bigger main island of Okinawa as Miyako was 300km further south and this time of year was still going to be a bit of lottery with the weather and wanted to give myself every chance possible of some sun.

The journey there was interesting. I had to head back to Fukuoka and catch a plane to Naha, Okinawa airport and then a connecting flight to Miyakojima. Sky Mark had decided to cancel my connecting flight to Miyako, but had put me on a later JTB flight. More sitting around at the airport.

There didn’t appear to be that many diving centres that had English speaking staff. It wasn’t so important in the diving itself as its pretty much hand signals anyway. However given it had been 10 years since I did my Open Water PADI qualification I thought I had better find one that spoke English to do a bit of a refresher on the gear. Given the budget and time constraints I was under previously, I couldn’t do the Advanced Open Water (AOW) Qualification so restricted from the deeper or night dives.   I thought I would kill two birds with one stone and do the AOW course and hopefully a few fun dives.

The diving centre I had booked with had sorted me out some accommodation which would be covered any day I dived and cost me $30 if i didn’t. There were a few options but the first was a studio apartment not far from the town centre. Its own bathroom, a little kitchen, TV, air con and most importantly wifi! Wouldn’t meet many people this way but given I planned to be diving most days it didn’t really matter too much.

The first morning it had been raining a little so the dive company took us to a dive spot accessible from the shore. I was surprised how beautifully turquoise the water was. The beach itself looked fairly unused and we had it to ourselves.

I thought I would just do some drills and tick the boxes required to get the qualification. However I was astounded by the free time to see the vast quantity of colourful marine life that was so close to shore. I saw more clown fish than ever before just on a short dive. I think I had only seen one before on a dive in Thailand and that wasn’t such great visibility. I floated over various anemone coral where the Disney famed Nemo fish lived. As you swam over they would often pop their head out and give you some eye to eye contact as if to say what are you looking at keep out of my yard. A vast collection of other fish with some insanely vivid colours, from blacks and yellows moorish idol and angel fish and neon like blues sparrow fish, some seductive red snappers to rainbow coloured parrot and wrasse fish.

I had managed to tick off both the Fish Identification and the Underwater Photography modules in 2 dives and get reacquainted with all the dive gear. Pretty spectacular day. It had been colder than I had expected and manage to catch a bit of a cold which for those that don’t know is a problem when diving. Not so for the sneezing which I had managed to accomplish without any issues. But having the equalise the pressure in your ears when getting to depths where the water pressure increases similar to that when you take off and land on a plane. Being slightly bunged up may cause problems equalising a cause a halt to the dive. Decided to play safe and not dive the next day.

On day 3 we headed out to finish off my AOW course and had been told to study the course book on Deep water diving, Navigation and Buoyancy control which I did. I was hoping to leave the Deep water part until last to give me a bit more time to get used to diving again, but I was in a manner of speaking dropped in the deep end with that up first. Previously I had only ever been qualified to dive to 18m so this was potentially going to be interesting. We only dived to 25m, but the AOW qualification will allow me to dive to 40m. I was kind of relieved but also wondered what would happen if I wanted to dive deeper another time. Anyway we observed the power of the pressure at that dept with a sealed empty coffee can. Koyoshi San, my instructor pulled it out from behind me (he had attached it to me without me knowing). Shocking to see it pretty much crushed with all the air inside appeared to be sucked out. In fact all that did happen was the air inside was compressed to a much small volume causing the can to invert. Was also interesting to see how reds became much more like browns at such depths.

Next dive covered the navigation element where I had to count kick cycles for a set 30m distance. Then navigate a triangle with my kick cycle count and compass.   The third dive that day was to do the buoyancy control module which was pretty easy deeper down as the waves and currents didn’t have much affect. Using your lungs as the main variable to you floating or sinking and the your breathing pattern just to hover is pretty cool.

I did another three fun dives on my 5th day in Miyakojima which were basically exploring and observing without the exercises so more time to play.   On each of those dives Koyoshi San took me to such cool areas to explore be it tunnels under huge rocks/reefs, overhangs which marine life hiding under, areas of reef where only a few holes let the light in so as the waves moved the light refracted differently as if to make the sun dance on the sea bed, hidden underwater cave air pockets that spray a mist due pressure in them. I had forgotten how beautiful the underwater world was. From one point where I was floating effortless over a reef observing the various marine life to reaching its edge and seeing a 50m drop, but still floating over it as if I was superman flying in the sky. Absolutely accelerating.

Ironically Koyoshi San took me to 34m after the navigation exercise to see some cool stuff. His spoken English was better than he let on. I think because he was shy more than anything. Anyway didn’t matter much as we were underwater and he took me to a small hole under a reef. He started writing on his board “White Tip Reef…” and showed it to me. I was like. Oh cool thats what type of reef this is. Then he finished writing his sentence “….Shark” SHARK? WTF! I assumed as he was taking his time writing they weren’t much of a danger. Turns out they are nocturnal and are no harm to humans. Though how was I suppose to know! Pretty daunting at the time, but cool at the same time. Guess they probably didn’t like Koyoshi San and I shining our torches in there too much.

I saw blowflow, lion fish, a turtle, sleeping white tip reef sharks and so many other species of fish I’m still desperately trying to find out the names for. At one point I had a face to face with a fish as big as my torso. It was pretty risk adverse though and swam off pretty soon after the encounter. Often seeing fish swim in isolation or in small groups, but seeing a big school of them is pretty special.

For those that have sky dived and loved it, or those that would love to see marine life close up you need to try diving!