A day off!!! WOW!

Its been a while, and today Simon worked on UK work, and we just generally tried to chill out, and catch up with things that we had not had time to do recently.

Our plants are going well…

Here is the growth!

Booked on the early morning boat, Si, Thais and I got our dive kit ready and headed down to the boat.  Todays dive sites were ‘White Rock’ and then Twins.

The first dive was good, Simon led.  The visibility was good and we spotted at least half a dozen blue spotted rays and a big Giant Puffer.  The only downside was that there were a lot of Trigger fish which seemed to very unhappy and made both Thais and I a bit uneasy.   Si seemed to be totally oblivious of one which shot past his head and circled around him…. Then just before our safety stop I spotted a trigger feeding in our dive path and signalled Si, but before he had chance to even look down, the trigger had swam up, hit his chest and gone back down.   Si was not too pleased as you can imagine.

At Twins, we dropped down and headed over to the coral nurseries to see how they were doing as the water has been 30/31 degrees as we’re hoping that we’re not going to get any major bleaching.  Fortunately only 3 or 4 had bleached fully, others were looking a bit pale, but all in all, they were all looking pretty healthy. Fingers crossed the water temperature will not rise any further.Oh yes, we did try and find Thais’s ring which she’d dropped a week or so ago, but I think by now, someones either found it or it’s been buried in the sand.  The remainder of our time, we circled the shallow pinnacle, did our safety stop and surfaced.  These were Thais’s last dives as she was leaving the next morning.Back at Crystal we gathered on the decking and completed log books and then presented Thais with her Reef Check & Marine Resource Management certificates. 

Tonight is ECO Film night, so Si’s playing episode 5 of ‘The Human Planet’ after the open water movies.  

Simon and I met Thais and James at Crystal around 9am and gathered our snorkelling gear and rode to New Heaven restaurant at the other end of the island and had breakfast overlooking ‘Shark Bay’  the view was stunning, such a lovely place to start the day.

After eating we grabbed our gear and headed down the never ending steps to the rocks where we put our snorkelling gear on and carefully made our way through the slippery barbed covered rocks to the sea in hope of finding some shark.  In this bay, there are usually black tip shark and a decent size too.  For about  half an hour or so James finally spotted one, the visibility was good but hazy or so after 15m, so pretty hard to spot the shark.  I only saw 2, the first looked massive and I was startled by it’s size, at least 1.5m and fairly chunky, the next wasn’t so big.   I’ve heard of people snorkelling with about 30 or so shark which I don’t think I’d feel comfortable, especially when they become inquisitive.  I think we all got burnt, we were in the water for over an hour  ..I know Simon was glowing by the evening and that was after spending another good couple of hours at the pool to cool off as we were all so hot ;-D
On the way home we stopped to buy some soil.  Rosie had given Simon some seeds for his birthday and we’d been planning to plant them for ages, so finally put time aside to sow some broccoli sprouts and some chilli’s.  We’re pretty excited to see the results ;-D

On the poster board outside the shop, we spotted a poster for Muay Thai boxing and fighting that night was Simons former rescue student, so we had to go.  So after arranging tickets we went home for a shower, met up later with James and Thais for dinner and stopped off at the shop for refreshments before heading to the boxing.    The fights were good, the first started with some very young boys, 12 or so, which I don’t particularly like but the rest were pretty exciting.  Simon and James were betting 100bht per fight and I thing by the end of the night, Simon was 400bht down.   Si’s former student was on last.  He looked really trim but relied on a boxing technique rather than high kicks and knees, so I was hoping the Thai guy would win but at the end of 3 short rounds, the judges decision was for Si’s old student   BOO!!!!
The next day, we returned to Junkyard for some repair work. Joined by a couple of other people, we worked very effectively and completed the small repairs in a timely fashion. While we were doing this we found evidence of fishing… a rod and reel, and also a fish trap…. If I catch the buggers!!
Returning back after 2 dives, we headed home so Simon could concentrate on UK work… ending at 22:30 super tired and going to bed!