Don’t worry I didn’t hurt myself again! This was taken before christmas when I was pretty useless with one hand and wasn’t allowed on the boat so I became queen of seal watch.

Seal watch is required before every dive we do. It means standing on the shoreline if the dives are done around base or sitting on the boat at the dive site on the islands for 30 minutes and looking for either lepoard seals or orcas. Sitings of either mean that diving is cancelled and no diving can occur in the next four hours. The only exception is if it is a lep sitting on an ice floe. If it is on an iceberg diving can happen somewhere a distance away but someone has to stay and watch the lep and if it goes into the water the divers have to get out.

More on leps later…

However, seal watch can be a relaxing way to spend an hour or so sitting on the side of the runway watching the planes take off and land about 50 feet from you. When there is no flying you sit there listening to the ice move or to music on your ipod with one earphone in so you can hear the vhf. On the beautiful sunny days there isn’t a better job on base in my mind!