Marine Resource Management – Day 2!

More classroom theory in the morning, with me being quite grumpy since I hadn’t slept enough or eaten properly! Once we were done with that, it was time to grab the afternoon boat for a coral nursery observatory dive.

We dived at Aow Leuk on the other side of the island, and met up with New Heaven dive school to plant coral mushrooms.

Two weeks ago, they dive during a coral spawning (happens once or twice a year) and caught eggs in nets to grow on land (in aquariums) and transplant onto little concrete mushrooms, to see if we can assist in the growth of coral reefs.

Today it was time to put them in the water and hope they grow.

It was a good dive, and due to the highly experimental nature of this project, I don’t predict a high success rate, but trial and error can only improve it.

In the evening, after an exploratory night dive, we went to Muay Thai to see a few boxing matches, and then to bed…. super tired…

Today, we had a lay in, of sorts…

8am we got up to sort stuff out, go back to the clinic, have breakfast, washing etc. All the domestic chores that we have been too busy to do recently.

Then at 11.30 we left home to meet the afternoon boat. Jen was still taking antibiotics for her ear and today was the first time it felt slightly unblocked.!! So she joined me on the boat to do some snorkelling while I joined Nathan to film him on the reef check.

We had a long 77 minute dive studying the coral, and returned to the boat to head to the next dive site.

Since everyone else was too tired to dive again (I was the only one who wanted to go in!), I joined Jen for a snorkel and we hunted for the Eagle ray, but did not find it this time…

Upon our return, we zoomed home to get changed for Tina’s birthday! We went to the bowling alley in the evening and spent the whole night drinking and bowling… it was a good turn out of about 30 people… Much fun was had.. (I shall post pics, if I can find some!)

In bed at midnight ish….

Today, Jen and I woke up to head to Deep Down Productions, to continue teaching Andy about Documentaries..

After having takeaway brekkie, Jen went to Crystal, while I taxied Andy around to various points of the island so he could take some land based shots for his doco.

After a couple of hours of sweltering heat. Andy and I went to Crystal, to catch a longtail out to Mae Haad reef. Andy needed a shot of Collector Urchins… a pretty rare sight in Koh Tao… but luckily we had some inside information, and got the required shots..

After the dive, Jen and I went back to Deep Down Productions to pick up the laptop, and returned home, stopping back at Crystal for a couple of San Miguel lites..

Takeaway pizza, and a episode of Lost was our evening entertainment…! NICE!

SD