Sunday, February 14, 2016

Scuba Fun for Chris, Richard, Steve and Kannika

 And here he is..Mr Chris Vince....in action and at the end of my bit of rope to make sure he doesn't buggar off into the unknown on his own. It's amazing how naughty the chaps are...never doing what they're told...dashing off here, there and everywhere. Buddy System?? Stay togther??? Ha ha ha....you're 'aving a laff.
 Here are two temporarily well behaved divers....on the right is the newly qualified PADI Open Water, Kannika from Nong Khai in eastern Thailand, and on the right is the master of buoyancy control, Mr Steven Gilbank from Andover. You can see the viz is not too good but this is exellent training for the UK. Are we planning to go diving there?? Are we cobblers........!!!

 And, bright as Ever, Mr Chris Vince leaps back into the frame. attaching him to a rope was definitely the way to sort Chris out...his diving has come on great and he absolutely loves it....I can see his little face lit up behind his mask as the underwater wonders reveal themselves to him.

This dive was from the shore. There have been attempts at encouraging fish life and coral growth with large concrete frames placed in the sea. It's working! They are draped in fishing nets (because they are in no-go fishing zones) and teaming with fish life. Here is a moray eel and if you expand the photo you can see the shrimps alongside it.
 Steve and Chris are having a great time...lots of fishing and plenty of diving. We are off to Krabi to fish the famous Gillhams Fishery tomorrow for four days and on our return we will be able to get one more dive in before the lads have to return to UK next weekend.
 Richard Spraklen and Kannika Chokchai are now both fully qualiied PADI Open Water Divers. Here they are on a PADI Fun Diving trip. We were bound for the offshore Islands of Racha Yai and Racha Noi, a two hour steam to the South of Phuket. Here they are featured with our guide for the day, Lars from Sweden.
 I kindly allowed Kannika to use my pointy stick on her first PADI Dive day....here she is bravely pointing at things.
 Give a gal a stick.....she's found a little crab and wants to prise it out for dinner. she ain't quite got the hang of the PADI approach yet...just look, don't touch, don't take home to eat....bit different from us lot back home in Weymouth where anything underwater is destined for the pot.
 There are many different varieties of moray eels...here's another one hiding amonst some wreckage.
 Kannika has discovered an underwater artifact....placed at 23 metres to excite Thai divers.

 So excited with a bit of Thai mythology.....yup, it's time to break into a bit of Thai Dancing.

A sea slug sort of thing...apparantly the Chinese like to eat them??
 The infamous Mantis Shrimp....the angriest little buggar on the seabed...guaranteed to punch yer lights out if you get too close to it.
 Varicose sea slug....lovely colourful little things...about an inch long.
 Two small marble moray eels twisted around each other.
 And another of their bigger cousins...the giant moray eel.
 Plenty of colourful little fish set against the black backdrop of long spined sea urchins.
 And the much loved nudibrac...some divers devote their whole dives to looking for these little critters. apparantly there are 2,500 different species of nudibranc in Asiatic waters.
 Everywhere you go in Thailand there's motor bikes.........
 The graceful batfish loves to hang around man made obstructions....
 ...here it is coming to make friends with Kannika.
..and here's a tiny marble moray eel to finish off the dive.


Our PADI Fun Day consisted of leaving harbour about 0830 and returning at about 1730. Inbetween we did three x 50 minute dives in three different locations with a depth set at 18 metres to meet the Open Water Certification level. We were very well looked after on the boat with stacks of food between the dives and soft drinks available throughout the day with beer available afer the final dive and on the way home. The whole day is carefully planned out and we diving customers are looked after throughout. We are not even allowed to carry our own gear or help load or unload the boat...apparantly if any of us do and we do not have a work permit then we could be arrested by the Thai Police. Yep...the world is insane......!!

And lastly, a big thankyou to Lars our young Swedish Instructor/Guide. As well as being a charming and helpful companion throughout the day, his underwater navigation was impeccable!!

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