So this is it the last day of the course where we get to go 18 metres below sea level. It was an early start today, 6.45 we had to be at the centre. We had to quickly learn how to use a compass on the beach as we would be doing a bit of self-navigation under the water today. We then all got back on the boat and went to a different dive site called 'Japanese Gardens' it's not far from the site the day before but has different types of coral. On our first dive Shannon taught as a different way to enter the water from the boat, by jumping backwards, it's weird because normally if you jump in like that you would get a big slap on the back but obviously you have a 14kg tank on your back so you don't feel nothing and create quite a big splash. We then descended slowly down to 18 metres, you have to go slowly as you have to equalise every half a metre or so. Equalising is where you have to pop you're ears as the pressure outside your body is more than inside so you have to push some air out of the tubes in your ears. If you don't equalise it is very painful, some people have to do it a lot more than others. Once you are at 18 metres it is so weird, the surface looks so far away, but so beautiful at the same time with the sun's rays beaming through. We then practised some navigation. We set up the compass on our wrists pointing in the direction Shannon told us to go, we then had to swim away from him counting 10 fin kicks, he would move to a different position so that when we turned around 180 degrees and count 10 fin kicks back we would not use him to aim for, we had to use the compass, and we should end up in roughly the same position we started. Shannon then took us for a tour of the dive site, pointing out the more rarer types of coral and fish. He was also showing us some tricks he could do, like turn himself upside down and lower his head into holes in the coral, and turn over with his face to the surface take his regulator out and blow air rings out. It was then the same as yesterday, back on the boat for around an hour to change our tanks over and have our briefings. We asked as it was our final dive could we have a go at blowing air rings, he agreed and taught us the technique on the boat which we would later try under water.

This is it then our last dive of the course, we had pretty much done all of our skills, so this time it was mainly swimming around, we saved the best until last though as we saw a massive puffa fish, it must have been nearly a metre long, obviously we all wanted it to puff out but, after asking Shannon later on, when do they puff, he said that they can only puff a few times in their life time, it comes to a time that if they do it again they will die. Tim was having a few problems with his face mask, it kept filling with water like every few fin kicks, so he had to put one of the skills we had learnt into practise. He signalled 'problem' to Shannon then pointed at his mask which was full of water. Shannon carries a spare mask on him on the dive so gave Tim that, so he had to take his mask off replace it with the spare one then blow all the water out with his nose, after two or three blows it was all clear and we were good to go again. This time when we rose to the surface we had to do a safety stop, this is where you stop at 5 metres deep for three minutes, we have to do this as we had done two 45 minute dives at 18 metres the nitrogen levels are quite high and you have to wait for some of the nitrogen to work its way out of your body before coming to the surface, if you don't do this there is a risk of decompression sickness or 'the Benz'.

When we surfaced and got back on the boat we were a bit gutted that it was all over but also buzzing that we are now fully PADI qualified scuba divers up to 18 metres. This means we can dive to 18 metres with a buddy where ever we want, so theoretically we could both go scuba diving together. Don't think we will though as there is a lot to remember and it could be very dangerous if a small detail is forgotten. The next time we dive will probably be the Great Barrier Reef in Oz so we will get a guide for that to make sure we see the best of it! When we got back to the dive centre we all sat down for a celebratory beer and filled in our log books. We got our picture taken for the portfolio and a group picture for the 'Crystal' Facebook page. We thanked Shannon a lot as he was such a good teacher and made us feel safe and that there was nothing to worry about the whole time. He said that our group made his job easy as we all listened and learnt quickly and didn't muck around. He was saying his last few groups have been terrible.