libertus

Today was fairly relaxing - an English couple doing the theory part of the AOW course. I sat in for most of the theory presentations and Markus let me help them through a couple of the knowledge reviews (Naturalist and PPB) which was fun and, I hope for them, useful and informative. Even though I haven’t been diving for all that long I have some interesting experiences to draw from when presenting dive theory.

During the day I took my final two final exams, scoring 90% for Divemaster Conducted Programs and 90% for Skills and the Environment. I’m getting very close to completing the course now.

There are presistent reports that a whale shark was sighted the previous day near Clement’s Reef. While we were diving there. And we didn’t see it. Damn!

Guiding certified divers today and most of them are repeat customers - very good. My group were again the trio of British oldies whom I had misdirected twice the last time. And boy did I get a day full of ribbing about that!

We dived first at the Edgell Patches and then at Clement’s Reef. Both very good dives with fine visibility and plenty of marine life about. I was in that same strange position where my divers are so vastly more experienced than me that I’m not entirely sure what I’m doing there! So I just did my job; presence, guidance, control and entertainment. And we all enjoyed the dives.

No diving today. Laundry, some paperwork, some self-study. Relax.

Another beautiful day of diving. Same crew as yesterday (with the addition of Angie - a friend of Janne) and the same mission (survey anemonefish) but at two different sites. Two new learning experiences for me as both a diver and a DM.

First dive was at the Edgell Patches - a new site for everyone. These underwater hills pop out of the sandy bottom starting at around 30m and flatten out into coral-covered plateauxs at 12m. We spent most of the dive at 12m being impressed. Visibility was good with marine life abundant and diverse.

At the end of the dive I ran out of air and was faced with an interesting scenario - my buddy’s octopus wouldn’t deliver air either! Since I was at 5m I decided to make a controlled emergency swimming ascent - under control. I even planned the oral BCD inflation while I was on the way up.

Second dive was at Sulug specifically because Markus and I had found saddleback anemonefish there before. In fact, we descended pretty much directly on top of a saddleback-hosting anemone.

A fun time had by all.

Wow… what a great day of diving. Markus and I had three guests; two fun divers and a marine scientist interested in taking samples from anemonefish, giant clams and seastars.

The weather was great and the reef was in a good mood granting us unusually high visibility and fish diversity.

Assisting someone taking samples of fish is quite a challenge as it involves (like other DM tasks) a level of multitasking - at times two people have to maintain neutral buoyancy while one holds the fish in a net and the other takes a snip out of the tail. Good overall practice for diving.

The fun divers were also interested in watching a scientist at work as it matched their style of diving - slow!

So we all had fun and learned something about anemonefish too.

Today and tomorrow are public holidays in celebration of the Harvest Festival. That means two days off for me.

Today Markus and I were looking after a group of 7 fun divers. There were 4 young ones and 3 elders. Markus offered me the choice of group so I took the elders.

We made two dives, one on each side of Police Bay. I quite enjoyed guiding even though I managed to go the wrong direction on both dives! And I couldn’t get away with it because my divers were too bloody experienced! Not that they minded, of course. They had a good time and will hopefully come back for more. I promised to get a sense of direction. What I will actually do is remember to wear my bloody compass!

Drank far too much at Jeffrey’s barbecue. Got home later. Woke up with a hangover. But that’s OK - I’m on two days off!

Today I assisted Markus while he taught an Underwater Naturalist course. As I had already done the course myself I knew roughly what to expect. My job was to be an extra pair of eyes for spotting interesting things.

Our first dive was at Clement’s Reef, a new site for me and it was lovely. Visibility was good. The reef itself is more vibrant and less damaged than the others I have seen around the marine park. I managed to spot a couple of nudibranchs (chromodoris sp.) and a large crocodile fish that was sitting on a rock being cleaned - ideal for illusrating the symbiosis aspect of the naturalist course. By the end of the dive we had clocked up 44 different species.
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Scuba Review today with Marlein (mum) and Chris (son). They were joined on the boat by Harry (dad) who was only snorkelling. Their last diving was done in 2000.
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A fairly easy classroom day covering equipment theory and maintenance. Got to see the insides of a tank, first stage and second stage.

Took two more final exams; equipment (100%) and decompression theory (95% - one wrong because I can’t add up!)

Tomorrow, a Dutch family are taking scuba tune-up followed by a couple of dives.