Instructor Specialties for this August have been completed
On top of that Mark and me had some great dives and lots of fun! Mark, who was quickly dubbed 'Talaat' by my children (the Thai word for 'market', which remotely sounds like Mark, according to my kids!) took up Specialty Instructor training after successfully completing the recent PADI IE.
Anemone and pink anemone fish at Shark Point, Koh Tao
We had Multilevel, Digital Underwater Photography, Deep, Underwater Naturalist, Search & Recovery and Night diving on the menu, besides his additional Nitrox diver and Instructor rating.
During the second Search and Recovery dive we found cazillion of original copy sunglasses, half a dozen of old dive masks, a wallet from an Aussie with drivers license (see picture above), money was gone, a waterproof Pentax camera in the water for 3 weeks, full battery and full functionality, a fishing rod in great shape, shoes, bottles, hats in all varieties and lots of plastic. There are still two beach chairs out there! An excellent day diving at the beach! One of the best dives for finding goodies out of many I've done there. Visibility also went up to 5 meters, almost heaven for us at that moment!
The third day of diving took us to Sail Rock for the Deep dive specialty. This picture shows Mark at around 26 meters, pondering about the physics of diving and wondering what ever happened to his bottle of water.
One of the exciting things I saw during the 2nd dive at Sail Rock was this Conus Textile or textile cone shell, a poisonous species of sea snail and one of the three most dangerous cones to handle (!), a marine gastropod mollusk in the family Conidae, the cone snails, cone shells or cones. Luckily for me I spotted it's squatter before I got anywhere close and the hermit crab inside, visible at the lower right of the shell with it's yellow feet and feelers made it harmless but still a very interesting and unusual sight.
The first days diving we tackled the Multilevel and DUP specialties around Koh Tao which saw some good diving conditions! Interesting to see was that the coral bleaching was slowing down and actually seems to be on the mend.
Old masks found at Chaweng Beach during S&R
The second day saw us arrive at Chaweng Beach for some Underwater Navigation and Search & Recovery action. This day turned into a fantastic days diving. Starting out near the beach the visibility was around 50 centimetres and we lost each other within moments. After surfacing we were less than two meters apart from each other and we decided to try again a few 100 meters further away from the beach. Viz improved to 3 meters and we completed the Nav and first Search & Recovery dive. You can't ask for better conditions for these kind of specialties, can you?
Wallet and Pentax camera found during the Search & Recovery dive
During the second Search and Recovery dive we found cazillion of original copy sunglasses, half a dozen of old dive masks, a wallet from an Aussie with drivers license (see picture above), money was gone, a waterproof Pentax camera in the water for 3 weeks, full battery and full functionality, a fishing rod in great shape, shoes, bottles, hats in all varieties and lots of plastic. There are still two beach chairs out there! An excellent day diving at the beach! One of the best dives for finding goodies out of many I've done there. Visibility also went up to 5 meters, almost heaven for us at that moment!
The third day of diving took us to Sail Rock for the Deep dive specialty. This picture shows Mark at around 26 meters, pondering about the physics of diving and wondering what ever happened to his bottle of water.Visibility was great here and we enjoyed up to 2- to 25 meters viz. Wonderful diving once more.
One of the exciting things I saw during the 2nd dive at Sail Rock was this Conus Textile or textile cone shell, a poisonous species of sea snail and one of the three most dangerous cones to handle (!), a marine gastropod mollusk in the family Conidae, the cone snails, cone shells or cones. Luckily for me I spotted it's squatter before I got anywhere close and the hermit crab inside, visible at the lower right of the shell with it's yellow feet and feelers made it harmless but still a very interesting and unusual sight.We managed also a night dive at Chaweng Beach again and this dive wasn't asd exciting as the previous day time dive in the same area. We still found plenty of stuff but in the dark it's a lot more difficult to find and/or spot things. I still managed to find an empty Nautilus shell the third within a year or two.
Watch out for more news updates on my next IDC, starting 5th September on Koh Phangan.
Camille
