Up and out by 6.45am we headed to Deep Down to collect our camera’s and then onto Crystal to collect our dive kit.  The morning boat took us to ‘Chumphon’ where in the last couple of days, Whale sharks have been spotted.  Equipped with camera’s we were eager to get in the water.  We had just under an hours dive saw a few moray eels, lion fish, a massive grouper, huge schools of smaller fish but no whale shark.  We were utterly disappointed.  I bet one’s spotted there tomorrow when we’re helping out with the expansion of Junk Yard (artificial reef) that would be just typical.

Our second dive was a ‘Japanese Gardens’  Within a minute or two of being in the water, an eagle ray appeared and then another.  We couldnt believe our luck.  I got a few nice shots but when all the trainee videographers appeared and decided to swim after them, that put an end to any decent footage.  I just don’t understand why they think they need to chase them (its a learning process for them).  Anyway, Karma got its revenge as one of the videographers, Kat got triggered.  I first saw the Trigger out of the corner of  my eye, it attacked Kats tank a few times before she turned around and spent a couple of minutes backing away from it whilst having her new finns bitten to pieces.  I’m not too sure that I would have been as calm as Kat.  The persistance of this Trigger was incredible.  All n all a very entertaining dive. (Trigger footage to come!)

Back on land we dropped of the camera housings, washed and put away our dive kit and headed home as Simon has a lot of UK work to do.

Later on in the evening we popped down to ‘Vibe’.  Nathan was there with his family and a couple of friends from Qatar & Australia.

Here is the video of my 1st doco course…

I think Andy (the student) did very well..

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.