14 July 2019

It's been a really busy time.

We've had Nathan over from Oz with his whole family.   He was over for a little holiday and then we assisted him out with 10 students teaching a 'Reef Restoration Masterclass' showing different methods of coral propagation, observational dives, coral reef ecology etc   it's all a bit awkward as we are still not allowed law to touch coral, living or dead until the Department of Marine & Coastal Resources have approved dive school proposals and been out to assess individuals.  All a pain in the butt but it's good that it's stopping every tom dick & harry doing their own thing without a clue.
So that was a 4 day course which I could only attend 2 days as had a Greenfins training session to attend.  Poor ole Si, had to the whole session with a very inexperienced group of kids.  He loved it!!

This one is all to do with good diving/snorkeling practices and how to do a reef survey, nothing new for me but compulsory.  Then after that, both Simon and I had to attend the first 'Dive Controller Training Course for Tourism and Coral Reef Ecosystem Sustainability'   which every dive leader or dive pro has to attend and pass an examination which I think isn't a bad thing but they're going to be charging for later down the line.  So lots of new laws coming in and I just wonder whether anyone will be around to enforce them.

Simon is awake in this picture :-D  ...just!!!

Group shot  YAY!

Then finally after all of that pa-lava we we back to our normal office schedule but I volunteer to go out to check all the moorings around Koh Tao to see what state they were in and whether any need replacing, so that was a nice day out, a lot of dives but something different which I enjoyed.  There are over 101 mooring lines that need to be maintained and I think with 15 of us, we managed to check out just over 40.  It's a huge job.  Photo's, depth, state of lines, whether they're missing buoys, condition of buoys, pick up lines, position blah blah blah

Checking mooring lines around the island

Then straight after all of that that we've just come back from doing a visa run/bounce to Burma.  We left yesterday at 10 am and got back this morning at 3.15am   ..so I caught up with sleep and now catching up with mails etc, Simon's down at the office, mails, social media and also trying to replace the propeller on the boat, as Crystal's longtail had broken it in the rough weather that we had a week or so ago   GGRRRRRRR

Hope all is well, have to go and pref for a Reef Check course that I'm teaching tomorrow ;-D

LOVE TO ALL