Specialty Instructor in the making

Specialty Instructor in the making

The last couple of days I've been conducting some Instructor level Specialty training with Rob.
We conducted the Navigation and Search & Recovery Specialties off of Chaweng Beach and the Deep dive Specialty at Sail Rock, surrounded by whale sharks, but more to that later.

Believe it or not, but these coat hangers are actually part of the Underwater Navigation Specialty, they will be set out in a pattern and you need to find them back. The coordinates to the next location are written on the blue pvc parts.

An underwater compass is not only a very useful item to have during both the Underwater Navigation and the Search & Recovery specialties but pretty much on every dive. It's utterly worthwhile to know how to use a compass underwater and both these courses address this and you learn how to use an underwater compass.

During the dives on Chaweng we encountered some interesting fish, one of them was this garden eel.

One of the highlights of the Search & Recovery dive was this big octopus who was living in a glass container and even sheltered under the bottom of a can. You can clearly see the eye of the octopus. A lovely sight!

Another beauty was this simple but delightful tune anemone which seemed to be glowing, that's how bright the orange colours were.

During the Deep dives at Sail Rock, Rob had to complete a timed task amongst others. You're asked to complete a task at the surface and than repeat the same task underwater, at depth, to see if you're affected by Nitrogen Narcosis.

A white eyed Murray Eel at Sail Rock.

During our two dives at Sail Rock, we must have almost been surrounded by whale sharks, since everybody else on the same speedboat as we were, saw a whaleshark, most divers saw the whale shark during both dives. Not us though, somehow we managed during both our dives to avoid the whale shark, a feat in itself!

All in all though, some very nice diving was done and we enjoyed ourselves nonetheless.

Camille