I swam with Sea Turtles

I went on two dives today, and they were awesome. We anchored the boats to and got all our gear ready. This was my first boat dive and I had to fall out of the boat backwards while wearing 50 lbs. of dive gear. That was an awkward experience. Once I made it through that and everybody was in the water we began our dive. The dive plan was for a depth of 60 ft and how ever long our air lasted. I think I was the one who ran out of air first. It is clear to me now that it helps to be in shape for that sort of thing. We swam to the southeast of the the boats along a moutain of coral abundant with sea life. I came to realize that I was swimming with fish that people pay hundreds of dollars for in the states. There were all sorts of life that were all sorts of colors. There were hundreds of little blue fish that were swimming in schools that formed a long blue strip under the water. About half way through the first dive I looked at my buddy and he was pointing at something below me. I looked and there sat two sea turtles. They must have been less than ten feet from me. One of them swam off and the other just sat there looking at each diver that passed. It was kind of funny to see. When I turned around to continue swimming I saw the other turtle that swam away. It was just right there swimming along side me. It worked it's way back along the other divers. Later that day I was eating dinner with the instructor and he told me that the turtles don't usually stay that close to people. He also told me that he was close enough to reach out and grab that turtle. That was about all the excitment on that dive other than a few small sharks, and some other sealife that I have no idea what it was and I was told to stay away from them. No problem.
The other dive was not as exciting but I did get the chance to see a very large shark. It was either an overgrown reef shark or a silver tip. Either way this thing had to be no less than 8 ft in length. It was massive! It never did come close thank goodness. It would have been intresting to see a big shark up close but not on my first dive. I'll pass on that. The instructor took an empty water bottle down with him to make noise with. The noise from the bottle really caught the intrest of a small reef shark. I did not get to see this happen but the instructor said that the little shark was swimming circles around him and going thru his legs. I wish I had seen it, but I was busy trying to keep up with the the instructors assistant. There are two types of divers, those that swim casually and poke around at things and those that just swim hard and look at things for only a short period of time. The guy I was following was the latter. It was very hard to walk around tonight.
I am still working on a way to take pictures so that I can visually share these experiences with all of you. I can't wait for you to see the mountains of coral that sustain the vast sea life out here. Let me know what you think. Hope to talk to you all soon.