Have you ever been triggered by a triggerfish? I didn’t even know what a triggerfish was until this dive, and I’ve since developed a bit of a fear of their glary eyes.

I was invited to tag along on a staff sunrise dive, and while we didn’t see anything aside from a whole lot of blue, I had a blast watching the crew fool around.

Despite being deer-in-the-headlights terrified and running on pure adrenalin for the entire dive, I also had the most fun of my life when I threw myself into what can only be described as the underwater rollercoaster.

As soon as I hit the water I felt like I was constantly flipping around trying to capture the overwhelming amount of exquisite life that was flooding my vision.

I am constantly surprised by this surreal and exquisite world that I find myself submerged in, and my maiden night dive was no different. It opened up a whole new dimension.

Doing this course has made me a lot more confident in the water, and really deepened my understanding of this sport, and it’s been a whole bunch of fun at the same time.

I’m intrigued by the notion of navigating reefs because it all still seems like such foreign terrain to me and I get too distracted by all the awesome floating by to pay attention to where I am most of the time. But I have proven myself to be compass-worthy.

The second dive of my SSI Advanced diving course was technically the “deep dive”, although it proved to be a great example for the “Tides, Waves & Currents” speciality that I did the following day.

The first dive of my SSI Advanced Adventurer course with Manta Dive on Gili Trawangan was “Perfect Buoyancy”. It was a super chilled and beautiful first dive in the Gilis, complete with octopus, and I totes rocked my zen float.