EXCITING NEWS - I am now a qualified PADI Dive Master! (All bar some pesky paperwork...) Me, Rach, Holly & Fabrice all completed the course yesterday and are really chuffed to have got this far. We had a bit of a celebration on the beach last night with a hog roast. I ate A LOT of cake too!
So I'll see you all underwater soon!!
xx
Sunday, 20 June 2010
Under the Sea
So I hope that you’ve been keeping up to date with everything that I’m up to by looking at my Fickr photo stream (see the link above). A picture says a thousand words after all. But I thought I was well overdue for a bit of a blog update.
Lots and lots have been going on since I last wrote. One big thing is that Claire, my fellow Science Officer left to go back home about a month ago. This left me to do all of the Science Officer stuff all by myself. It was quite daunting at first especially since Claire was so amazing and I was still learning new stuff from her on her last day. It was a pretty hectic few weeks as I ran the Science Development Program as well as going out on the boat for surveys. But I survived and don’t think I did too badly particularly with help from Rach our Project Scientist. Now we have three Science Officers because Tim and Chris arrived to take over last week. I have just started my last SDP and although it’s great to be showing the boys the ropes it’s also really sad to have to let things go.
I’ve also been busy doing my Dive Master training. PADI Diver Master is the next SCUBA qualification up after the Rescue Diver course which I completed a couple of months ago. It’s a professional qualification which means I can use it to work doing things like guiding divers and helping instructors doing courses. The training programme involves all sorts of things like theory exams, practical tasks (e.g. a rescue scenario & mapping an area), swimming tests and then an internship. I have been helping Instructor Emily (and now also Mark) with things like checkout dives and the dive training vols do. It’s been really good to hone all of my skills. I can even swim along with no mask without any worries!
I have also been doing lots of cool diving too. I arrived with 26 logged dives and hit 100 two weeks ago. It’s tradition to go a bit silly for that and so I went out in just my bikini and got graffitied all over me. Turned out it was mostly permanent marker so it took a while to come off! The water here is now really warm. It’s usually about 29degC which means that even a wimp like me doesn’t need to wear a wet suit. Instead I just wear board shorts and a thin rash vest.
Jollies on Saturdays have been really nice the last couple of weeks. In the morning we often dive the south wall at the edge of site. It’s an amazing place and lonely planet actually named it one of the top dive sites in the Philippines! Week before last I saw a really big turtle. In fact lots have been seen around and they’ve even been nesting on a near by beach. The best spot for me last week was a clown trigger fish which was something I’d been waiting to see for ages. Another really exciting thing in the water is our resident family of black tip reef sharks. These like to hang around in the shallows just outside base. Because they’re really quite small (the biggest is only about 1m long) they get really shallow in about .5m of water and so are perfect to spot when snorkelling. There seems to have been an increase in numbers recently and some people have see 10 at once!
Last month I also went on holiday for a long weekend. I went over to Padre Burgos to a dive resort there. It was nice to live in a bit of luxury for a couple of days – hot running water, flushing toilets and some different food! I did some amazing dives whilst I was there too and saw some really cool, rare stuff. I went on a night dive around the pier which was a new experience. It was really quite spooky but I saw a mandarin fish and a crab jumped on my head! I also dived on their house reef and saw a pygmy seahorse. My favourite thing I saw though was some white ornate ghost pipe fish. Although I had seen a dark one on the house reef the week before.
A couple of weeks ago we also did a Crown of Thorns clean up at Padre Burgos. Crown of Thorns seastars are predators of coral and can get really out of control and decimate a reef. Therefore we always try to keep an eye on them and remove them when numbers start to increase. You have to do it really carefully though as they have poisonous spines and release all of their larvae when stressed!
Last Sunday we went on another Whaleshark watching trip. We had an amazing experience with a female who kept hanging around the boat. She was feeding with her mouth open and we were able to get really close (although not closer than 5m) because she wasn’t really swimming quickly at all but staying in the same place. I was so pleased that my last trip was a great success.
Saturday nights have continued to be lots of fun with plenty of opportunities to dress up. Themes have included circus, the letter ‘D’ and ‘anything but clothes. Photos to follow. We’ve also been up to lots of fun things in the community like planting Mangrove trees, open days and attending the Napantao fiesta :)
I can’t believe I have less then three weeks to go here. Then it’s off on some travels around the rest of the Philippines!
Love
Abi
xxx
Lots and lots have been going on since I last wrote. One big thing is that Claire, my fellow Science Officer left to go back home about a month ago. This left me to do all of the Science Officer stuff all by myself. It was quite daunting at first especially since Claire was so amazing and I was still learning new stuff from her on her last day. It was a pretty hectic few weeks as I ran the Science Development Program as well as going out on the boat for surveys. But I survived and don’t think I did too badly particularly with help from Rach our Project Scientist. Now we have three Science Officers because Tim and Chris arrived to take over last week. I have just started my last SDP and although it’s great to be showing the boys the ropes it’s also really sad to have to let things go.
I’ve also been busy doing my Dive Master training. PADI Diver Master is the next SCUBA qualification up after the Rescue Diver course which I completed a couple of months ago. It’s a professional qualification which means I can use it to work doing things like guiding divers and helping instructors doing courses. The training programme involves all sorts of things like theory exams, practical tasks (e.g. a rescue scenario & mapping an area), swimming tests and then an internship. I have been helping Instructor Emily (and now also Mark) with things like checkout dives and the dive training vols do. It’s been really good to hone all of my skills. I can even swim along with no mask without any worries!
I have also been doing lots of cool diving too. I arrived with 26 logged dives and hit 100 two weeks ago. It’s tradition to go a bit silly for that and so I went out in just my bikini and got graffitied all over me. Turned out it was mostly permanent marker so it took a while to come off! The water here is now really warm. It’s usually about 29degC which means that even a wimp like me doesn’t need to wear a wet suit. Instead I just wear board shorts and a thin rash vest.
Jollies on Saturdays have been really nice the last couple of weeks. In the morning we often dive the south wall at the edge of site. It’s an amazing place and lonely planet actually named it one of the top dive sites in the Philippines! Week before last I saw a really big turtle. In fact lots have been seen around and they’ve even been nesting on a near by beach. The best spot for me last week was a clown trigger fish which was something I’d been waiting to see for ages. Another really exciting thing in the water is our resident family of black tip reef sharks. These like to hang around in the shallows just outside base. Because they’re really quite small (the biggest is only about 1m long) they get really shallow in about .5m of water and so are perfect to spot when snorkelling. There seems to have been an increase in numbers recently and some people have see 10 at once!
Last month I also went on holiday for a long weekend. I went over to Padre Burgos to a dive resort there. It was nice to live in a bit of luxury for a couple of days – hot running water, flushing toilets and some different food! I did some amazing dives whilst I was there too and saw some really cool, rare stuff. I went on a night dive around the pier which was a new experience. It was really quite spooky but I saw a mandarin fish and a crab jumped on my head! I also dived on their house reef and saw a pygmy seahorse. My favourite thing I saw though was some white ornate ghost pipe fish. Although I had seen a dark one on the house reef the week before.
A couple of weeks ago we also did a Crown of Thorns clean up at Padre Burgos. Crown of Thorns seastars are predators of coral and can get really out of control and decimate a reef. Therefore we always try to keep an eye on them and remove them when numbers start to increase. You have to do it really carefully though as they have poisonous spines and release all of their larvae when stressed!
Last Sunday we went on another Whaleshark watching trip. We had an amazing experience with a female who kept hanging around the boat. She was feeding with her mouth open and we were able to get really close (although not closer than 5m) because she wasn’t really swimming quickly at all but staying in the same place. I was so pleased that my last trip was a great success.
Saturday nights have continued to be lots of fun with plenty of opportunities to dress up. Themes have included circus, the letter ‘D’ and ‘anything but clothes. Photos to follow. We’ve also been up to lots of fun things in the community like planting Mangrove trees, open days and attending the Napantao fiesta :)
I can’t believe I have less then three weeks to go here. Then it’s off on some travels around the rest of the Philippines!
Love
Abi
xxx
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