Current IDC: the AI part has been completed

Current IDC: the AI part has been completed

Today Kobi, Antoine and Jonesi completed the Assistant Instructor part of their current IDC. There's a good chance that you can find them down town Chaweng tonight for a little bit of celebration. After the Prep course we're half way down the IDC now.

Knowledge Development has been tackled and they presented their first class room presentations. See the picture above for the Course Director utensils that he needs in order to deal with this part of the course early in the morning.

Rescue practice was needed to get the rust out of their movements and auto mechanisms. They're getting it up to scratch as we're speaking.

As usual, we're enjoying some great lunches at World Resort, once again!

Today we finished at Chaweng Beach with an Open Water dive.

Tomorrow is a well deserved day off, followed by the EFR Instructor course and after that, the OWSI program will kick off.

Stay tuned for more updates!

Camille

The August IDC Prep has been completed

The August IDC Prep has been completed

After a month of without an IDC, today the August prep was completed by Kobi, Jonesi and Antoine. A cool international mix of a South African, an Australian and a French man.

They completed the usual exams and water skills circuit.

Tomorrow it's off for the start of the AI part of this IDC. In the picture from left to right Jonesi, Kobi and Antoine.

Camille

More DSD's on Chaweng Beach

More DSD's on Chaweng Beach

More Discover Scuba Diving was on the menu today for me and the children of my sister. After having completed a day of Discover Scuba Diving with the children of my friend last week, today it was the turn for the children of my sister at Chaweng Beach.

My sister's son Niklas ready to hit the water at Chaweng Beach, all dressed up and ready to rock and roll. To have a more enjoyable experience for all of them, I took them one at a time for their experience dive or DSD.

Here are all three of them, from left to right Niklas, Doreth and Nino, showing off their DSD card they received after the dives. They really enjoyed their experience and they saw some cool fish as well, Niklas and Doreth saw a scorpion fish and Nino got lucky when we encountered a cuttle fish during our dive.

A very enjoyable day was had by all and they are really excited about their dives.

Camille

The Divemaster carousel spins around

The Divemaster carousel spins around

It's been busy on the Divemaster front with Bruno and Antoine just completing their PADI Divemaster course and Grainne about to start her PADI Rescue diver course on Saturday directly followed by the Divemaster course, she completed her EFR course already before coming over from the UK.

Here are Grainne on the left and Bruno on the right hand side of me, Grainne just arrived a few days ago and will participate in the Rescue Diver- and the Divemaster courses here on Samui.
Bruno has been here for more than 6 months now and is completing his Open Water to Instructor (IDC) package.

Antoine, pictured above, is here to complete his Divemaster course and will participate in the IDC starting later this month.

Camille

PADI Open Water diver course, it's been a while!

PADI Open Water diver course

It's been a while since I taught an Open Water diver course but today I completed one with my friend Marc and his wife Myriam who are visiting us on Koh Samui. Under a beautiful blue sky and a flat ocean we cruised by speedboat to Sail Rock and completed Open Water training dives 3 and 4. After yesterdays update about their daughters Discover Scuba Diving experience on this blog, today was the day reserved for the certification dives for their course and a good day it was.

Visibility was 25 to 30 meters and we had a very relaxed day of diving with two fantastic dives where we saw plenty of fish. This picture shows Myriam practicing her underwater compass skills, as part of her dives with Marc looking on in the background.

Beautiful blue water at Sail Rock and here we are, all three of us during the first dive of the day, with thanks to Gav for taking the picture. On the left is Myriam and at the right is Marc.

A shot of Sail Rock on the way out, back to Samui. We reached Samui again by 1.20pm and we ended the diving part of the day with filling out the certification paperwork and making plans for going out for a lovely dinner tonight.

Today was a great days diving and it was good for me to reconnect with Marc, who haven't seen for almost 25 years but also to reconnect with an Open Water diver class again and teach something else besides IDC's and Instructor level Specialties.

Discover Scuba Diving on Koh Samui

Discover Scuba Diving on Koh Samui

You're probably more used to stories about the IDC's that I teach and all kinds of specialty training that I do. Today however, was back to the roots and I was teaching PADI's Discover Scuba Diving to two daughters of a friend that is visiting me currently on Koh Samui. The daughters, Myrea and Laudicia are 11 and 14 and had a great day.
My friend Marc and his wife Myriam are participating in a PADI Open Water diver course, which they should complete tomorrow, so more updates on this to follow soon.

We went to Japanese Garden, a popular and shallow dive site near Koh Tao and they had two great dives. For the occasion they had two really small tanks, so the dives were relatively short, but very enjoyable and lots of coral and fish were spotted.

Here are Myrea and Laudicia listening to my briefing on the way over on the ferry from Koh Samui to Koh Tao.

In resort settings like Koh Samui, the Discover Scuba Diving experiences are very popular and almost every day we have participants of this program on our boats. For me it was a while ago since I taught one of these experiences but it was fun and worthwhile, especially seeing how much Myrea and Laudicia enjoyed their dives.

Camille

Fish ID; Specialty of the month for August 2009

Fish ID; Specialty of the month for August 2009

How many times would you like to know the name of a certain fish that you saw during a dive? I know I have plenty of times. There are a couple of solutions to this problem, one is to buy books with pictures of fish with their names in it but another very good option is to actually take the AWARE Fish Identification specialty course.

During this course you will be introduce to the most common fish families and species found in temperate and tropical waters. You'll also learn basic fish identification and scientific survey techniques as well as how important personal involvement is in aquatic conservation.

Pretty cool stuff, huh?

Another big advantage is also that you may or rather will be able to name a fish, rather than answering some body's question about that 'black fish with the yellow spots' being the yellows potted black fish according to you!

Here are some pictures of some of the fish that I saw during my diving adventures;

A common lionfish during a trip to the Similan islands earlier this year

A seahorse on Chaweng Beach, a much underrated dive site around Samui

Chevron Barracudas at Sail Rock, the best dive site in the Gulf

An Oriental Butterlfy fish (?) around Koh Tao

As with any further education, it won't hurt you and this specialty of the month for August 2009, the Fish ID course will get you a 10% discount if booked this month!

Camille