Two days after my 26th birthday I got to go on a great trip to Atlanta for a national counseling conference. To me, this was a big deal because I had never gone to a national counseling conference before, I had never even gone out of town for any type of counseling event.
Now to me Atlanta has always meant one thing, the Georgia Aquarium. It has the 2nd largest tank in the world, 6.3 million gallons, which is beat only by an aquarium in Singapore. It’s the only place that can handle whale sharks. Once 8 years ago I got to visit the Georgia Aquarium with my brother and we said “One day we’re going to scuba dive in that tank with the whale sharks.”
That wasn’t something I thought about often. It was expensive, far away, difficult to coordinate, etc. For me it was just one of those things I would do one day. Despite having gotten my scuba certification I still didn’t consider going to Atlanta to do this. Money and distance was still a factor. It still felt like a universe away. But one day, yeah one day I was totally going to do it.
Then I was offered this business trip to Atlanta which was paid for with a grant I had gotten in school. The thought of swimming in the tank on this trip briefly crossed my mind in the way one might briefly think about cliff diving before laughing and shrugging that thought aside. I didn’t even bring my scuba certification card because I knew I wouldn’t be scuba diving, but I packed a bathing suit so I could potentially swim laps in the hotel pool. You know, since I couldn’t like rock climb while I was on the trip and I had to exercise somehow.
I completely forgot about the Georgia Aquarium until boarding the flight when one of my fellow travelers said “We’re going to the Georgia Aquarium right after we land. You should come with us.” I was down. Heck yeah I wanted to visit the aquarium with them. And then I got on the plane. The boring boring plane. I don’t do well with boredom.
So I started casually looking up information about scuba diving in their tank and whether it’s safe to scuba dive right after getting off of a flight. By the time we got off the plane I was highly considering it, but I was trying to adopt this new approach of “go with the flow” I didn’t want to plan to do it and then get crushed if it didn’t happen.
We got to the hotel, checked in, and registered for the conference. Four people had already gone ahead to the aquarium and the other four that I was with decided not to go. So I took off walking in the rain to the aquarium. I asked at the ticket booth if they had any dive with the whale shark tickets available and she said no. Disappointed I pushed it aside, because I was still going to see them.
I got some food and met up with my friends and I casually said that if I could be diving with the whale sharks I would totally ditch them for that, which is when my friend pointed out that there was a sign at a desk that said they still had spots available. Trying not to get my hopes up again I asked that desk about it and they started signing me up. Thirty minutes before the tour was supposed to start I was signing up. They even had to look up my information on the NAUI database because I didn’t have my dive card with me.
In the span of twenty minutes I was stuffing food in my face, lost my phone, found my phone, and told my friends that they were getting a backstage tour since I was doing the scuba adventure.
With the other four people who were going scuba diving we watched the whale sharks being fed from above and learned more about the aquarium. After the backstage tour we got in our wetsuits and I began to feel that classic anxiety, just like at the Disney aquarium. I got some magnified goggles from the staff and then sat down as they strapped us into the gear.
This time unlike Disney though we had to do a forward roll into the water instead of just sliding in. I’m brand new to scuba diving and other than the day I was trained in a pool I had never done an entry that wasn’t a walk or slide in. I was panicking and when I panic I make mistakes. This time I remembered to put the regulator in my mouth but I couldn’t settle my anxiety. I did the forward roll in and signaled I was okay but I wasn’t. I felt like I couldn’t breathe even though I could. I popped back up to the surface and realized I was breathing really hard and fast.
The dive master popped up with me, put air in my BC so I could float and helped me calm down. It only took about fifteen seconds, but it’s what I needed. She stopped me from going into total spiral mode. Once I was calm I tried again and had no problems. I literally had let my anxiety from the forward roll stop me from being able to descend. This time with calm steady breaths I descended.
Now unlike Disney’s Dive Quest, this was a complete tour with no time to swim off on your own, which was fine with me. Being by the dive master and the other divers gave me a sense of ease, plus they were able to point out where the cool stuff was.
We did two laps of the large tank, swimming under manta rays and whale sharks, passing right next to a sea turtle, swimming over the aquarium’s iconic tunnel and over to the huge glass window, both times with my friends waving excitedly from the other side.
I still had hardships while in the tank, our tanks of air were made out of steel instead of aluminum which I was used to, and that made it heavier. Because of this I had problems maintaining my balance. Anytime we stopped moving I started tipping forward. My dive buddy, a man I had never met before, often had to reach out and grab my hand so that I didn’t face plant. But that was okay. I appreciated his generosity.
Sure once I got out of the tank I was embarrassed about the anxiety episode and about being unable to keep control of my body in the tank. The euphoria from the dive though didn’t let those feelings linger. I could remind myself that I was still a beginner at diving with a long history of anxiety and it was okay if it took some time to really get the hang of things. I had crossed one of the biggest accomplishments off of my bucket list. Plus, how many people could say that they had done what I had done. It’s moments like these that remind me that the counseling skills that I learned over the past three years really do work.
I got some awesome photos thanks to my friends on the outside of the tank.
And here’s a video of the dive if you want to see how wobbly my scuba diving was.
Another One Bites The Dust ☑️ Two days after my 26th birthday I got to go on a great trip to Atlanta for a national counseling conference.