Confessions of a newbie diver

It happened at Cape Barbakovac, a very small cape in Istria (Adriatic) that extends into the sea to a depth of almost 40 meters. It's quite rich with life and hence interesting for us, divers. Anyway, it all began as a normal dive. It was a sunny day and we were on a small diving barge, preparing to get in the water. It was also my second dive that day and my tank had to be re-filled. So, after gearing up we splashed in. I went down head-first after the leader. During the descent I checked the pressure gauge and it was showing only 120 bars instead of 200! I was like, "WOAH, this isn't right"! I immediately tapped the leader on the shoulder and signaled 120 bars twice to make sure he got it, there were a lot of bubbles between us and he was a little bit deeper than me. We continued the dive until I reached 70 bars and decided to signal again. As I did that the leader got that look of sheer surprise! He actually thought that I already used up all my air and didn't get my earlier 120 bars warning. Naturally he aborted the dive. Thanks to my mistake we only had about 15 minutes of dive-time. The moral of this story is: Always check your pressure gauge before entering the water! Embarassing!
[Napisano včeraj za DIVERNET diver magazine]