They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. Although in general I would agree, but in the case of this magnificent picture of a jelly fish and two divers floating above, captured by a very talented photographer and my good dive buddy Yoel de la Paz, there is more behind the picture.
After several months of planning and preparation of the new venture between my dive center Aquasub and the Cuban company Marlin, we were ready and scheduled to sign the contract in the office in the Cienfuegos on June 25, 2021. The contract to create a Canada-based company to represent all scuba diving centres in Cuba.
Of course for us divers, the real office is under the sea. The day before, on June 24, we decided to have a pre-signing celebration of that contract under the water. What we didn’t plan is that our compressor would break down, and we had only a few tanks partially filled with air. We found one tank almost full and a couple more with 1300 PSI of air remaining. The full one we gave to Yoel the photographer of the event, while Flaco and I took the not so full ones.
The dive site we chose for this dive was one of the shallow wrecks called La Patanita, which sits in 50 feet of water. The plan was that Yoel will descend first and will start filming me and Flaco approaching the wreck and continue with filming the rest of the event. Considering the depth and our low air consumption, we should have enough to complete the task with enough air remaining as a reserve in our tanks. Yoel descended, then Flaco and I followed shortly after.
Yoel has an eye for the beauty of marine life, as he descended, this magnificent jelly fish totally captured Yoel’s attention. Having a full tank of air he must have forgotten that Flaco and I were not running on full tanks for the task. To top it off, Flaco’s octopus started free-flowing. It took us a good 10 minutes to get Yoel to leave that jellyfish and continue with the plan. The rest of the dive went as planned, and we returned to the boat with great pictures, video and memories of another great underwater adventure.
Check out the video below of the jellyfish in all its splendor and Flaco ‘s free-flowing octopus.
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