Hey guys..

Well, on the night of the 12th… Jen was asked to start an open water course.. so the last 2 days have be full paced with Jen taking the lead and me assisting.

In light of the intensity of the course, plus dance rehearsals… we have had no time to do anything else… but expect more stuff tomorrow when the students go for their 1st dives in the ocean.

x

SD

Yesterday, while we were diving Mae Haad reef, one of Crystals dive boats went to Chumphon Pinnacle, and saw 2 whalesharks!!!

So this morning, in the hope that they were still hanging around, the boat returned there fully packed with 60 divers including us.

The conditions were not too calm, the sea was rolling well… and after a 45 minute choppy journey, we arrived at the dive site.

Needless to say, no whalesharks appeared, but we saw a decent size school of big boy barracudas.. cool! Once everyone had returned from the dive, we went to White Rock. The journey to White Rock was even choppier! Jen struggled, not quite having her sea legs yet…. but made it.

White Rock was uneventful, some nudibranchs, angelfish, and a sting ray… but Jens camera leaked a little so we spent most of the time worrying about that.. Once back on the boat, we removed the camera and dried everything out… luckily its all okay..

Speaking of things breaking, the throttle cable on the bike snapped last night… so I had to take that to a mechanic in the afternoon… so we are without vehicle at the mo..

We spent the afternoon swimming and relaxing, then at 7pm, Jen went to a clothes swap party with Tracy, and I chatted to Carsten at the Crystal Bar.

Tomorrow, Jen starts an Open Water Course! It was a bit of a surprise to get one so quickly… but great…

x

SD

After a terrible nights sleep for some reason or another, we headed down to Crystal around 8.30am, ordered breakfast and met up with Nathan and some Marine Biology students over from Koh Phangan.

This morning, we dove Mae Haad reef, off the longtail and assisted in putting down some 5metre cross transects. This didn’t take long at all so, Simon, Nathan and I left the group and swam over to Junk Yard to see what additions had been made and to see the Sea Hares (really large Nudi branchs/sea slugs) which have appeared in the last couple of months due to the abundance of algae growing on the sea bed. It didn’t take long before I spotted one ..oh my goodness, I wasn’t expecting them to be so big. It was about the size of my fist.

Apparently the numbers have declined in the last month but I think we saw at least half a dozen of them on the dive. Apart from the new sea life, puffa’s , batfish to name but a few, the coral nurseries we’d put down before we left, are doing extremely well. I think we’ll soon be doing some transplanting!!

After a 65 minute dive, we headed back in to shore, washed out kit and went home for a shower. I had intentions of mailing people but promptly fell asleep for a couple of hours while Si did some UK work.

Around 7pm, we met the Crystal crew and started dance rehearsals which went pretty well seeing we’ve missed 3 sessions ..as I think we’ve mentioned it’s a medley of the Village People tracks ..really annoying when you’re humming them whilst diving ;-D

Rehearsal over and done with, we headed out for food and beer to the ‘soft’ opening (I suppose that means, not quite finished) of ‘Vibe Lounge” …which used to be Dirty Nellys but is now under new ownership. ‘VIBE’ used to be a cool beach bar down in Sairee but had to close do to landlord issues .. anyway.. a few drinks later it was bed for an early nite..

x