We were woken by the biggest clap of thunder ever this morning which scared the living daylights out of me.  With the rain lashing down and lightening, it was pretty fantastic to watch.  Apparently our aerial was struck but seeing we dont really watch the cable tv, we didnt notice.

As you can imagine, we stayed in most of the morning, Si was working and I got my bag ready for todays diving.  Around 11am, after it had dried up a bit we rode down to Deep Down to collect Si’s camera, as today Nathan wants him to film some of the bleaching at ‘Twins’.

After Si struggled down to the boat with his enormous camera, we walked to Crystal to collect our dive gear and order breakfast from ‘Zest’

Today, we helped Nathan deploy mooring buoys and roped lines to protect the shallow bay and extend the snorkelling area at ‘Mango Bay’  We had a 100 meter line with numerous small buoys along to add.  The existing line was untied from one end along with a couple of guide ropes underwater and then we tied the extension on, making sure we were far enough away from the main mooring buoy.   After putting down new guide ropes, tied onto rocks 4/5 meters beneath the line, the snorkelling area had almost doubled.

The 2nd dive was at ‘Twins’.  Si was taking his big camera on this dive but once in the water, discovered that he’d not replaced the tape  DOH!!!  So I took Nathans stills camera and took a few photo’s of coral bleaching, and we both recorded some data for Coral Watch. 

Off the boat, Si struggled up to DeepDown equiped with both his camera and dive gear to drop off his camera.  I headed straight back to Crystal to clean my kit and then waited a few minutes for Si to turn up.

This evening, the Open Water video showing has a little of our friend Teresa’s footage in,  so in order not to miss it, we shot home to check Si’s UK work and then returned to Crystal at 7.30ish to watch the video.  The video was cool and all her shots were good.

Today it feels so much cooler and by the look of things, it might well rain again later (fingers crossed)

After yesterdays breakfast disaster, I cycled down into Sairee with our new tuppawear and went to ‘Zest’ and ordered fruit, yoghart & museli and then stopped at 7Eleven for OJ.
I think the tuppawear is a brilliant idea as normally the portions they give wouldnt even fill half the container and they filled it to the top for the same price  Bargain!!!  🙂
Si and I ate a healthy portion and still had some left over, so popped in the fridge for tomorrows breaky.

Around midday, we biked down to Crystal for the afternoon boat for double ‘Champon’.  Every time we dive there we’ve always taken our camera’s for the chance of seeing a whale shark but today we didnt.  Guess what?  No whale sharks in sight but we did find at 33m a very long fishing net with so many dead/stuggling fish in it that it was very upsetting, neither Si or I had our dive knives/scissor on us but still tried freeing some of the them but to no avail.

Our second dive was pretty short and we just swam around the pinnacle for half an hour and surfaced.   I just wish we could have done another deep dive with a cutting implement to free some of the drowning fish.

In the evening, we went to ‘Tattoo Bar’ for food, which was slightly disappointing.  Si’s veggie burger & chips was very greasy and tasteless. My taco was very small and not what I’d imagined but I must say the sunset was lovely.

After eating we then headed to Crystal for a couple of beers whilst watching the Open Water video’s and headed home .

Here is a small snippet of some of the bleaching that has quickly come on.

Fingers crossed that the weather change (rain and wind needed) will help it recover… the next few weeks will be critical, and we shall be monitoring it closely.