We met John & Andy from’ Deep Down’ at ‘Zest’ this morning for a debrief of the Documentary course, lessons learn etc  I think for the first Doco, it went very well, as you can see in the previous post.

This afternoon, Simon and I are both diving and with our camera’s for a change.  It’s seems like we’ve been out of the water for weeks.  We were both pretty excited especially with not having any fun divers to lead.     Todays first dive was at ‘Twins’.  The visibility was pretty good.  In the water, we decided to search for the sea horses which we knew roughly where they were but have never actually found them as they are away from the main pinnacle. Ten or so minutes into the dive I spotted a Pipe fish, a long stickish looking creature then just a few meters away there was a little Cow fish just bumbling around on his own.  These fish really remind me of the small box fish but with horns  …very cute. Simon will upload the vid.

Time just seems to fly when you’re filming and towards the end of our dive we bumped into Jace, one of the videographers  who pointed out the whereabouts of the sea horse.  On our way over and to my amazement, I found another, just by itself blending in against a small rock.  They were much bigger than I had imagined, although different species do vary a lot.   If all I had seen the sea horse on that dive I would have been happy.

Our second dive was at the wreck just off of ‘Japanese Gardens’.  I dove there a couple of weeks ago with Nathan for the first time but Simon hadn’t. The boat itself, sank probably just under a year ago and the marine life that it’s attracted in such a short time is incredible.  

There were 2 sleeping trigger fish inside, a yellow box fish, a puffer, schools of bat fish and sweetlips to name but a few.  We only spent 15 minutes there as we were close to hitting our no decompression limit and then had a 10 minute swim back towards the boat at ‘Japs’ in hope of seeing the Eagle rays.  Unfortunely we didn’t see them but we weren’t too bothered as the visibility was not that great.

On both dives sadly we both noticed an incredible amount of coral bleaching which is due to the rise in water temperature (32degrees)

This evening Si’s working on UK edits and I’m doing some research into coral bleaching.

Up and dressed we headed out on the bike to Deep Down in Maehaad.  Just as we pulled up, the heavens opened.  It’s strange to see so many people happy to see rain.

After the rain had stopped I left Deep Down and walked down to Crystal as I was going to continue work on the ‘Tower of power’  I’d spoken to Nath and the idea for the tower was just to have it as a coral nursery with no swim throughs.  So with that, I attached netting to most of the structure, trying to make use of all the off cuts that had been left from the previous jobs. I must say it’s taking shape.  Perhaps a few more pieces of netting need to be added but by 4.30pm my fingers were pretty sore and cut up, so I decided to call it a day, bought some water and walked back to Deep Down.

As I arrived, they were just watching the last segment of the documentary to ensure everything was ok, as it premiers tonight at 8.30 at ‘Dirty Nelly’s’.   All looked good and you could tell that Andy was pretty excited.  

The evening went very well.  There must have been well over a hundred people attending. To start with an Open Water video was shown and then a couple of short films made by a couple of trainee videographers which were very good.  Towards the end of the second film, the food came out, a mixture of pizza’s, salad, potato, green thai curry, rice and bbq’d chicken.   Everyone tucked in and it made a refreshing change for Simon to have something to eat apart from Salad, rice and bread at these bbq’s.

Once most people had got there food, Andy’s film was put on.   The dramatic music really captivated the audience and near enough everyone watched. 

He’s done a good job with Simons help.  There were a few bits that Simon would have liked changed but in the time frame that he had and with all the problems with rendering it just wasnt worth taking the risk.  I will hopefully get a copy and put it on the blog for you guys to watch.

A few beers later Si & I retired after a very successful night.

Last night we headed down to Crystal to meet Tina her leaving dinner was off as she was running late and it also clashed with Jonnys (DM) birthday BBQ which most people were going to, so we decided to meet at the BBQ and say our goodbyes there.  We only stayed for an hour or so as Simon wasn’t feeling great, he’d still had his rash and felt and looked pretty drained. 
Today, we woke around 9am, I got dressed, jumped on my bike and cycled down to Sairee to buy some bread & orange juice for breakfast as I thought I’d make boiled eggs & toast as Si was still feeling pretty rough. 

Once we’d eaten breakfast, I washed up and we set off to the clinic to get Simon checked out.   Si showed them the antihistamine he was given yesterday and they advised him to continue taking them but to drink lots of water as he might have a mild strain of Dingue but to come back if he gets any worse.  Si’s not one for complaining or being fussed over, so I think he might find the next few days pretty challenging

As Simons student Andy has a deadline of the 6th for his documentary, Si needed to go to Deep Down to help/advise him.  So we spent the rest of the morning there.  Around lunch time I walked down to Crystal to see if I could do anything with the ‘Tower of Power’ (PVC tower which will be used for a coral nursery) which will be put down at ‘Junk Yard’ but all I could find was some unfinished bits of netting that needed to be tied down, so finished that and went back to see how Andy and Simon were getting on.

After a lot of waiting around, Andy was putting the final touches on his documentary and around 7pm, Si and I headed off for the ‘Save Koh Tao’ meeting where they covered current, up & coming projects, fundraisers, beach clean ups and gave a presentation about the increased water temperature and what we can do to help monitor any changes to the coral.

Once the meeting was over, we headed yet again to Deep Down.  Andy was having various issues with the rendering and in the end, Simon had to bring the students work home as his pc is more powerful.

Its wasnt a great night  …Simon was up for most of it trying to save the student’s project, eventually managing to get a backup working..