Happy Birthday Jan
&
Happy Anniversary Rosie & Charles.            Have a fabulous day!

After a slow morning, Simon and I eventually left the house around midday to rendezvous with Nathan and family who are visiting from Oz to dive Junkyard.

At Crystal there was no sign of Nath, so we shot up to Zest for breakfast.  Whilst I ordered, Si raced to the garage to see if they had a footpeg for the bike as the rear passenger side had fallen off but returned minutes later footpegless. 

Back at Crystal, Nathan and co were setting up so we rushed to get our kit and piled everything on the longtail and headed out. After securing coral and adding new signage to the Sydney harbour bridge Si and I went off on our own to do a bit of cleaning and rejoined Nathan & Co back on the longtail Naths sister was amazed by amount of life that had moved in and with all the work that we’ve done.

The afternoon we chilled out with Nathan and his friends and family and Simple Life’s pool, had a few games of catch and then headed to Yoga, which I was pleasantly surprised as to how flexible I was (NOT)  90mins later, we headed home, showered.

Today was also Nathans friends birthday, so we’d arranged to meet up at Vibe for drinks as it was ’80’s night.  All Naths crew had dressed up and had funky shades and were the life and sole of the party, singing, dancing and we just watched in hysterics, they were all so funny.  Too many wine and soda’s i think Si and I were the last to leave.

After the hectic activities yesterday, we though we would have a couple of early fun dives… Just the two of us.

Unfortunately, the dive wasn’t without stress… too many very bad divers got me pretty annoyed. Even when I told someone to think about where his fins were (at the time, he was kicking the crap out of anenomes) he just shrugged his shoulders… steam must have been visible from my ears.!

Returning, I emailed the dive school in question, as they have a good conservation arm and we know the team leader.

Here is their reply, and I admire them for taking a responsible approach

“Hey Simon, Many thanks for the email I received regarding ‘terrible dive practises’ First off I couldn’t agree with you more. This type of behavior from a diving professional is not acceptable. & secondly I am extremely disappointed to read that this was done by one of our staff. I have asked the Manager of our Japanese side of ******* to investigate who did this & to listen to their reasoning behind their actions. Annoyingly the manager is on his way to Japan right now to help out some of the communities affected by the tsunami but he did write to let me know he is looking into this matter & will get back to me shortly. I will keep you posted as to how this pans out but in the meantime want to thank you for bringing this matter to my attention, & will meet with all my staff, Japanese included, to ensure that this sort of behavior doesn’t happen again.”

To be honest, sometimes speaking up isn’t wise here. But I cannot keep letting things slide. Someone has to point out things that shouldn’t and needn’t happen. It may make me unpopular… we shall see… but my intention is purely to educate and stop certain behaviour…

Anyway… on a lighter note… the sprouts are growing!!!

Beach & Dive Site Clean Up
We were at Crystal at 9.30 after stopping at the supermarket to buy some biodegradable bin bags. All of the DMT’s (Divemaster Trainees) were scheduled to help so we had around 31 people helping which was amazing.
I think the best turnout in a long time, which goes to show what a bit of badgering and promotion can do.
After a quick chat, people started cleaning the beach in front of Crystal and all around the dive resort. The amount of plastic, broken flip flops, bottles and junk behind the bar area was incredible. We filled so many bags we had to ask nicely to use the Crystal taxi truck to take all the rubbish down to the pier, and even after that, there was more! I really don’t understand peoples attitude to the disposal of rubbish.

The Dive Site clean up started at 2pm, so all geared up… the clean up crew headed to the boat. On board were bags, baskets, and scissors for cutting nets or other things that may need to be cut free from coral.

Divided into teams, we headed off in our own directions and started the hunt for garbage. The visibility at Mango Bay was stunning, and before long we began to find small bits of net, mesh bags, fishing lines and plastic bags wrapped around some of the smaller corals… which if left would suffocate them and then algae would grown over them, killing them.

It was very time consuming but always rewarding. After a 90 minute dive, we surfaced and handed up our bags of rubbish.

Back on deck, a few photos were taken and then we headed back to the main pier, to get the rubbish we had collected and put with our earlier collection for the bin men to take away.