Diving... Underwater Photos!

One of my dives was a photography dive, so we got to take some digital cameras down with us... here are some of the things I saw... they aren't superb quality, but they're fun to look at!

Scuba Juction Dive Boat

incredible views...

Anemone and clownfish... remember Nemo?

Blue-spotted stingray's tail, with some spikey urchins!

Lovely bright butterfly and a wrasse

loved all the fish above the coral

being surrounded in a school of little fish is an unforgettable experience

they were incredible, darting everywhere, playing in my bubbles...

the camera took this shot so incredibly well that it looks like a dry coral, even though it is indeed underwater along with everything else... this was about 4m from the surface, incredible colours!

The sides of all of the underwater hills and mountains (pinnacles) looked like this, lots of things to look at and hunt out with the camera

sometimes when I close my eyes I can see the fish all swimming around me again, wrapped in blue

swimming along together into the deep blue...

Wednesday through Friday on Koh Tao

The learning continues, lol... Wednesday was my first aid (Emergency First Responder) course... it was much like any other course I've taken, other than it was taught in a dive school and I was the only student so it was nicer. This course was actually much simpler than the Red Cross and St John's courses that I've done, and it had fewer acronyms to learn and steps to take.

I think I have more experience with first aid than my poor instructor, so we went through everything quite quickly and easily and I had most of the afternoon to myself. She had a lot of questions about different first aid scenarios when we were talking about the 'best' way to handle them, so we spent lots of time talking and problem solving, it was fun! Karin (the instructor) and I went on her bike up the road to a little mom n' pop lunch spot cann KenYa, and I had some amazing Panang Curry Shrimp, omg it was so good... I think I'll have to make the walk back there again before it's time to go home!!


I was fairly happy not to be diving during the day, and once the course was done for the day (yay! I'm now EFR certified!! "My name is Shauna, I'm an Emergency Responder. May I help you?") I went for my first massage of the trip, and then I had a lovely pedicure. The girl who was doing my pedicure has a boyfriend (from Vancouver) who is apparently living in Korea and teaching English at Poly School, so we had a bit of a chat while she did my nails. It's a small, small world when you get right down to it!


I had dinner with my diving pals (one was going home later the same night)... I had these amazing beef kebabs on the BBQ at a resort up the path, they were so nice - almost as good as AB beef!!  :)  We stayed at the resort under cover from the rain storm, hanging out and watching the storm blow in across the water. Many of the restaurants along the beach have tarps they pull down as walls to protect you from the ocean when it starts to come pelting you in the face sideways, so we were warm and dry. By 9:30 I was wiped again (all this sun and surf and studying wears me out!!), and I was passed out in bed by 10pm, lol... I am such a party animal!!  :)

Thursday was a good day, tiring but good. It was the first day of my Diver Stress and Rescue course... we did theory in the morning in the classroom (watched videos, ran over possible panic/rescue scenarios, and the 'best' way to solve them), and then I was free from 1030-1230. I went down to swim at the beach for the first time since I arrived, and spent about an hour in the sun before I decided I should probably go hide in the shade before my upcoming stressful dives... I was really nervous about the in-the-water scenarios, I'm not sure what got into my head but I was nearly panicked myself about it, lol. In the end it was great. My silly instructor was falling off the boat every chance she got, splashing about and 'drowning' so I could rescue her, and before long other instructors were doing the same thing.

We practiced what to do with someone panicking on the surface with their scuba gear, or just out swimming; what to do if I find someone unconsious underwater, as well as a review of how to rescue myself in a variety of situations. Once we were back up on the boat I was afraid to be too far from my mask and fins because it seemed that every time I was about to sit down and drink my tea someone got busy drowning, lol. At the end of the day I got to log one of the dives, and I was Ex.Haus.Ted. The boat got back around 6, we cleaned our gear, logged our dive, talked about the scenarios and I went home to shower some of the sea outta my hair. I noticed that after just one day my pedicure was trashed and made a note that I'd have to go back again before heading home!

For dinner I went to a restaurant up the path that shows movies every night at 7:30. I had a coconut shake (in a coconut no less!) and some great curry, and watched the movie Ghost Writer, which I didn't have high hopes for but really enjoyed. I watched the movie while relaxing on the beachfront with my coconut shake, and by 9:30 I was soooo ready to crawl back into my rock-hard bed and turn on the fan.

Friday was the last day of my rescue course. We did the theory in the morning again, practiced using the compass in making search patterns on the beach (ones that I would actually do while swimming in the water if someone or something was lost), and then had about 45 minutes before the boat went out. The 'fun' started nearly as soon as we got on the goat, my instructor Karin and her assistant DiveMaster in Training (DMT) Jeremy made sure I got lots of practice saving people from death and drowning. The first dive we practiced the underwater search patterns, and I surprised myself by actually being able to do it (it's so easy to get turned around underwater and go east instead of west, or lose count of kicks/turns!).

In the second dive I was to take my 2 'worst divers in history' out on a fun dive around an area called Japanese Gardens... if this is any indication, my diving buddy Jeremy managed to put almost EVERY piece of equipment on wrong, so that I had to fix it all during our buddy check (more practice is good!), and after I was in the water Karin started her dive standing on the top rung of the ladder in her scuba gear with her mask on her head, her regulator hanging at her side, and a big piece of watermelon in her mouth, shouting down to me, "Can I jump in now?" When she jumped off the boat she hadn't inflated her BC (like a life jacket that you pump air into) so she sank like a rock and I had to go down and get her... the whole dive was like that once we got ourselves under water. One or the other was constantly losing a fin, or missing their mask (both of which I had to go find and put back on for them), dropping their regulators and trying to get at mine (which, at the time, I was actually using the BREATHE underwater, wouldn't you know!!)... at one point when I was sufficiently distracted by seeing a blue-spotted stingray float by, Karin did succeed in yanking my regulator out of my mouth (she had lost hers and couldn't breathe, panicked divers seem to go for the quickest solution when they lose their air, which often means they try to take YOURS!), but it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to grab her straps so she didn't float away, at the same time blowing my little bubbles and calmly reaching for my alternate air source to breathe out of that until I got her calmed down and back on her own air... it didn't even make my heartbeack quicken, I was so impressed with myself, and got many many kudos for it on the surface!  :)

After that we actually got to do a fun dive (a real fun dive where I got to look at the coral and sealife rather than just the 2 crazies I was diving with!) for 30 minutes around Japanese Gardens, and it was so beautiful. I saw so many different fish, and lots of things I didn't notice last time I was there because we were doing training dives and not fun diving. I even got to do a couple of swim-throughs, where there are little holes/tunnels in parts of the rocks, and you can swim through them like an obstacle course, it was great for practicing my buoyancy, I loved it!!  And I was very happy once I reached the surface, as after ONE more panicked diver scenario I actually got to take off and stow my kit, officially an Stress and Rescue Diver - woohoo!!

I laid out on the sundeck for the hour of time we had left (the sky was gray but no more rain fell), visiting with the rest of the divers and my buddies. Once everyone was back on board, we headed home... we couldn't actually come in by longtail like we usually did since the waters were so choppy, so we took the boat back to Mae Head, the nearest big port, and unloaded gear, across the decks of 4 diving boats, oxygen tanks and gear bags from boat to boat, to boat, to boat, and finally to shore and into trucks to take everything back to the shop. My fancy new red diving card was reading and waiting for me when we got back to log our dives, and I have now hit 20 logged dives with rescue certification, woohoo!!!  :)

When the day was done and the gear was packed away I went out for a few drinks with the instructors/DMTs (the first time I've even had a real drink since being on the island because I've been diving every morning!) at one of the local bars, and laughably I was exhausted and back in my bed with my book before 10pm. I went to bed still feeling the world rocking beneath me, uncertain a few times whether I still might be on a boat, and hoping the feeling will go away soon... what a week, what a week, what  week it's been!!  :)

Monday and Tuesday in Thailand

Monday morning was gray and cloudy but still warm with a pleasant breeze. We had to be at our course for 9am to get started on the advanced diving course. On this island, Koh Tao, you hear a whole mix of languages walking around everywhere you go... German, Dutch, Swedish, and French seem to be the most of them, it seems there are Europeans everywhere! In my course this morning I met my first American, Brian from Newport Beach in CA. Luckily he's one of those Americans who breaks typical young-US-traveller stereotypes, and it's been a pleasure diving with him so far...

So we started our course Monday morning with the bookwork and the training on land. We marched around the beach making little squares using our compasses (new skill for me, never used a compass before!!), mimicking the activities we would be doing underwater. The longtail came for us at 12:30, and the water was choooooooooooppy!! I was considering losing my lunch as we were pulling up to the dive boat, but my stomach sorted itself out and all was well again.

Our first dive of the day was the Navigation Specialty... using our compass along with our buddy to make little patterns in the water, hopefully arriving back at the instructor and our course partners (provided we used our compasses and counted our kicks properly!). We managed well, my buddy and I, and the 4 of us all passed the Navigation section of the course.

Second dive of the day was the Peak Performance Buoyancy... in the water you float, right? Add a neoprene wetsuit and you float some more... add a steel tank full of oxygen and you sink... put on a vest that fills itself with air, you float, add about 7kgs of weight around your waist, you sink... breathe in... you float, breathe out, you sink... get the picture??  :)  Yes, lots of floating and sinking that goes on while you're under water, but the key is to control where you're at in the water using your breath... the best way to learn how to do this is by taking this special course, and I was so happy we did... I can now float mid-water in the cross-legged lotus position, standing on my head, I can get myself through narrow passes and take photos with my head looking under rocks and my feet up in the air, I *love* it!!  :)  I am now officially buoyant!!  :)

At the end of the day we arrived back on the island around 5:30, logged our dives, cleaned our equipment, and then did the review/bookwork for the next day's dives... we finished that all up around 7 and decided it was time for some grub - all that mucking about underwater sure does make a girl hungry!!  We went for dinner, the 4 of us who are diving together, at this amazing (really really amazing Indian place up the road...

Tuesday was much the same, met at the shop in the morning but this time at 7am, the boat left at 7:30. Dives of the day were the deep dive, the digital photography dive, and the night dive. The ride out at 7:30 was fine, but once we got to the dive site visibility was less than a metre... this means that you couldn't even see a full metre in front of you as you were descending... to 30 metres... ugh! The first part of the descent was along a mooring line, so we held on to the rope and stayed really close together. At about 20m our instructor led us to the sandy bottom, though I can tell you that I wouldn't have known it was sandy but for actually setting my fins down on it!! We did our few exercises (including navigating a there-and-back course, pretty much blind, with only our compasses) and then slowly made our way up. When you do deeper dives like that you can't just rush your way to the surface or you might end up hurting your lungs, so we kinda meandered our way up blindly behind the instructor. Part of the way up I bumped my leg on some anemone (I thought it was moss at the time, but 5 minutes later I could tell by the burning feeling on my leg that it wasn't so friendly)... we made it back to the boat safe and in one piece, with 4 tired, fairly unhappy but relieved divers... Oh, and Mom, the burn is fine, you almost can't see it anymore, so don't worry!  :)

Back up to the surface (well, to the boat deck) for an hour to relax and get ready for our photography dive... that dive was pretty cool, though I have to say it was difficult to monitor my depth, and my air, and my buddy, and my divemaster, all while taking pictures of pretty sea creatures!!  :)  It was a pretty good dive, much clearer and less stressful than the first dive, and with that 4 of the 5 certification dives were out of the way!

We arrived back on shore around 5:30, cleaned our equipment, logged our dives, grabbed a quick bite to eat and met back at the dive shop for the night boat that went out at 6:30. The night dive, in my opinion, was pretty awful... we were all 4 very nervous on the surface, and while it was beautiful descending in twilight, I am NOT (not even a LITTLE bit) a fan of diving when I cannot tell what is around/beneath me! While we each had a torch (i.e. little underwater flashlight) to shine around so we could see all of the sea life, it didn't make enough light so that I could actually see coral shelves and things before I practically ran into them, so I really didn't enjoy the dive. Top that with the fact that the instructor forgot to pack an extra torch, and of course her light burned out at the bottom, so we had to cut our dive short and come up early (it's not safe to dive if everyone doesn't have a light).

It was neat to see how some creatures behave quite differently at night than during the day (e.g. I saw a huge minefield of the spiky sea urchins, as they leave their rocky hidey-holes and actually sit out on the bare sand - so don't hit bottom on night dives!!). We also saw some giant baracudas out hunting (though we didn't see them catch anything) - they were huge! One the DMs torch burned out we couldn't all see her any longer, and I didn't see any hand signals, I just noticed by checking my dive computer that we were making our safety stop and final ascent (early)... she denied at the surface that she'd forgotten the torch, though I was first up on the boat and saw it sitting dry in the lock box... so yes, even DMs can make mistakes (even if they won't admit it)!!

All-in-all I thought it was a pretty stressful diving day, and I was happy when the boat finally brought us back at 8:30!! We 4 divers went out for dinner together and then they went drinking, and I went back to relax with a drink on my patio before calling it an early night... what a day, what a day!

However, I now have a new diving certification, I am an SSI Advanced Adventurer now (same as PADI's Advanced Open Water), and on my way to doing more in the morning!!