A quiet day. Went into the shop in the morning to maintain the BCDs, did so and left around lunchtime. In the evening I visited with Markus and Sascha where I started off my dive site mapping project.
Another day mostly off. I went into the shop and did some basic maintenance on the regulators.
Last night was strange. Jeffrey invited me out for a few beers but when I got back to the lodge I had a short think and realised that, in a few days, I’ll be a real divemaster. Oh shit - I’d better get prepared to deal with an entire day’s diving. So out came the notepad and I started to write. After a while it became clear to me that I do understand what my role is but that in order to perform it well I need control. I have arranged for that to happen within the next few days - it’ll be my show. Eek!
A non-diving day. Collected my laundry, finally! Logged some dives. Now I’m going to have a long relax, perhaps ending the day with some swimming and a sauna.
Three dives again today, two of which were the final AOW course dives for Mo and Claire. We were also joined by Juroen, a fun diver from Holland.
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An interesting day of diving consisting of 3 out of the 5 Advanced Open Water course dives with English couple Mo and Claire. I was wearing my new wetsuit for the first time. It’s a Seapro full-length 3mm in black with a silvery chest patch and powder blue stitching. Fits like it was made for me. I love it.
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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.