When I did my last newsletter, I
was planning on going down to the Gulf of Thailand, more specifically to Ko Tao,
to do some diving. Essentially to get my open water licence and also do the
advanced course. Once done with these courses and a couple of fun dives I was to
head off to Cambodia resuming the travels. That at least was the plan, it's
funny how plans can change.
After getting to Ko Tao, I
started on the open water course which went well enough. Aside from the fact
that I was unfortunate to have with me on the course a couple who would have
been okay if it weren't for the fact that she got hysterical about taking her
mask off under water (a necessary skill) during the confined session and ended
up wasting forty-five minutes of our time under water, as a result we ran low on
air and got cold. It would have been more understandable if it weren't for the
fact that she had been diving several times before.
By the end of the open water
course I was a licensed diver, that meant I was licensed to dive to 18 metres
with another equally or more qualified buddy. I had already signed up for the
advanced course though which would hopefully further improve my diving
capabilities as well as then licensing me to dive to 30 metres. The course
involves two core arts deep dive and navigation dive and then one has the choice
of three electives from a selection. I chose peak performance buoyancy,
photography and night diving. I also decided to do the Nitrox (enriched air)
course at the same time, as it is the cheapest way to do it. On the deep dive
one goes to thirty metres and observes the differences the depth makes on
decision making (due to Nitrogen Narcosis) as well as the physical differences.
These being that white light appears red, whereas red appears as a brown/green.
One can also crack open a fresh egg and the yolk will stay intact, if one then
slices through it with a knife, the two halves just slowly drift apart,
otherwise intact. The final physical difference is the compression of air at
that depth, one litre of air at the surface will be compressed to just 250ml at
30 metres. The navigation dive gives one the basics in underwater navigation,
one has to navigate a square underwater, amongst other things. The peak
performance buoyancy, involves working on achieving neutral buoyancy underwater.
The night dive is quite simply diving at night, when other types of things come
out and the photography dive is also quite self explanatory. The advanced course
went well, but also quickly and by the end of it although I'm sure my
capabilities must have improved a little, it was nothing too dramatic. By the
end of the course and a couple of fun dives I had included in the price I knew I
really enjoyed diving, but I also realised I wasn't yet very good at it.
After a couple of days off from
diving, but with a lot of socialising (one of the good things about Ko Tao is
the community feel to the place, after a little while there one gets to know a
lot of people, although this often means lots of late nights.) , I had the
brainwave to do the DiveMaster course. This is a course that lasts several weeks
and involves a fair quantity of diving as well as theory, and practical testing.
By the end of the course one has a professional diving qualification, that can
be used internationally. In addition to this most dive outfits will give some
reduction, sometimes very substantial ones to divemasters. Another consideration
is that the course and its minimum number of dives is cheaper than just fun
diving. After discussing it with several different people, particularly as to
whether or not it would make me a more competent diver, I decided to do the DM
course. Before one can do this though, one has to do a medic first aid course
and the rescue diver course.
The medic first aid course is
day and a half of land based theory and practical exercises, how to deal with
general first aid emergencies. Ranging from seizures, to shock, to spinal
damage. How to assess the situation and how to try and improve it. It also
involved a lot of practice on Annie a CPR dummy, one could practice chest
compressions and resuscitation on. The most valuable lesson however was never
help anyone in an accident in the States. The chances of being sued are far too
great, a recent example of which was when a first aider was sued as he had given
the statement, "I am medically trained, I am going to help you". When
unfortunately he was unable to do so, the woman successfully sued him as he had
not fulfilled that which he said he would. People like that deserve to be
ignored as they die at the roadside.
From the MFA course I went onto
the Rescue course which involves the necessary skills in both anticipating and
preparing for surface or in water problems as well as how to deal with the
problems if they occur. There is a lot of simulation of unconscious diver on the
surface, how to administer rescue breaths, etc. get them safely to the boat
whilst at the same time stripping off all ones own and their equipment, then
getting them onto the boat and what to do there.
There are also simulations of
unconscious diver underwater, getting them to the surface, then to the boat etc.
There were also recreations of how to deal with panicked people on the surface,
which generally involves getting drowned a bit oneself. When Jess, one of the
DMs was doing a bit of surface panic I went to rescue her, but she was panicking
so enthusiastically, she slapped the snorkel out of its bracket. So as I was not
in scuba gear, I had to skin dive about five or six metres to retrieve it. Going
down was fine, on the way up however I took in some water as I ran out of air,
not very impressive considering the free-diving records are at well over a
hundred metres. The most fun part of the rescue course however is the underwater
scenarios bit, where I as rescue diver had to cope with all the things taking
place to my dive buddies. For this exercise Matt (the instructor) and Gab (at
the time his assistant and DMT) just pile on the underwater problems, such as: -
Passive panic. Someone just freezing mid-water with a blank expression. -
Entrapment, getting stuck under a rock whilst going through a swim-through
(underwater cave). - Accidentally dropping their weight belts.
- Running out of air.
- Their tank strap coming undone.
- Dropping their masks
- Dropping their fins
It was all quite good fun,
although it came on thick and fast, whilst I'd be helping Matt putting his tank
back in the strap etc. I'd notice Gab had gone for a swim, leaving his fins
under a rock, by the time I had retrieved them for him, Matt had done something
like drop his weight belt, this went on and on and although exhausting was also
amusing.
Unfortunately it has already
been useful as A couple of weeks later, whilst assisting on an open water
course, I noticed one of the students a big American fellow, in mid-water
displaying the typical signs that panic is about to start, I went over to him
and as I got there and tried to relax him he got very agitated as he thought he
was lower on air than he really was. He then went into a blind panic, almost a
perfect recreation of the videos they show of it. He threw his regulator (the
thing through which one breathes) out of his mouth and considering we were at
twelve metres, there wasn't a lot of air around so I slapped that back in, at
the same time he tried to take the mask off his head, so I had to slap that
down. Meanwhile he is kicking as hard as he can to get to the surface. In diving
it is very important to have a slow ascent rate as otherwise one can suffer
permanent injury. So I was doing my best to slow him down, but all I could do
was hold onto him with one hand whilst the other was slapping the reg back in
his mouth and the mask back on his face as he was repeatedly trying to remove
them. Once we got to the surface, I managed to calm him down, thankfully neither
he nor I were hurt in the ascent. I got him back to the boat we checked him out
for symptoms of DCS (Decompression Sickness) and then an hour later he even came
on the final dive of the course, so an all round success as no-one got hurt and
he got back in the water.
Anyway, getting back to the DM
course, part of the course involves academics, namely eight exams, covering
aspects from physics, environment, physiology to decompression theory. One also
has to prepare an emergency assistance plan, and prepare an underwater map of a
dive site. The practical assessments include:
- fifteen minute tread water,
- being able to display the eighteen primary skills at a demonstration
level,
- assisting the instructor on courses
- leading fun divers
- making sure the boat is prepared and fully kitted out
- leading some programs
- rescue assessment
- underwater stress testing
- eight hundred metre snorkel,
- four hundred metre swim,
- one hundred metre tired diver tow,
The most amusing bit in many
ways is the stress testing which involves swapping all scuba gear underwater,
whilst breathing from only one air source and being harassed by the instructor,
namely by having ones mask taken away and having air blown in ones face to
disorientate you, whilst he also plays about with your equipment e.g. turning
off air, inflating BCD, dropping weight belt, undoing scuba unit. The first time
I did it was not too bad, but the other DMT apart from being a lot smaller than
me (making kit swapping more difficult) did not deal very well with the whole
thing, which made it more difficult for me. The second one I was actually having
a great time and laughing throughout most of it. As Jim (my instructor) pulled
the reg from my mouth and the mask from my face I mouthed some appropriate
obscenities at him and sat there blowing bubbles until he gave me my air back.
The course went as well as I
expected, and did undoubtedly improve my skills. The best bit about diving
however is nothing to do with helping folks out, tests etc. it is the fun of
diving through caves and seeing wonderful marine life as well as generally
having fun. Undoubtedly the greatest thing (every pun intended) I saw whilst
diving was a whale shark, picture below. The largest fish on the planet. It took
Jacques Cousteau twenty years to find one, I saw one on my twenty second dive,
not bad going really. It is a gorgeous great thing, although the one I saw was
only a youngster they can measure up to eighteen metres. It swam within arms
length of me several times and I spent about twenty minutes with it. A bit of a
coup was the fact that we had a videographer there to film some open water
students, so the whole thing is on video as well, what a bonus.
Another great dive I had was
when Gab and I did a map of the Nang Yuan drop-off. It was good to go diving
with someone of equal or greater competence as opposed to always having to look
out for people for one, the other thing was we had a great time trying to find
new swim-throughs and caves and getting nearly stuck several times. At one point
when we were both going opposite ways round an underwater pinnacle, I came
across something worth a look. I tried to make as loud a noise as possible to
get Gabs attention which I eventually did, I then waved him over, initially he
looked like he thought I was in a panic, then I remembered the underwater sign
for turtle as I had just found a gorgeous big turtle, Gab and my first. Both of
us were very excited by the discovery so had a bit of an underwater dance until
the turtle got pissed off with us and decided to leave. We continued to map the
dive site, but it all just got sillier and sillier as we were both in great
spirits.
An interesting dive I had was
when I took some divers on what should have been a Naturalist dive. As it was,
they didn't get to see any fish at all, the closest we got was plankton. The
visibility was bad, but the problem was that the compass I had been using was
getting stuck, so we ended up doing a big loop around the dive site as opposed
to seeing the site itself. The whole dive was "Blue" which means that
there was absolutely no reference point at any time either up down, left or
right. Interesting as it gives one a feeling of just being in the middle of
space.
Around Ko Tao are a number of
sites covered by Trigger pits, where the Titan Triggerfish lays its eggs. These
are very aggressively territorial fish that are also pretty big. On one dive I
was leading I got buzzed by a Trigger Fish as I must have been in its territory.
This involved this huge thing swimming right into my face and opening its mouth
to show me its nasty teeth. On a subsequent dive I felt a tugging on one of my
fins, and turned round to see a bloody great trigger fish biting into one of
them, the idea is to swim away horizontally as they have a conical territory,
but I swam in a bit of a circle as the fish was not allowing me to kick that
fin.
My final dive in Ko Tao, was
when Gab and I were taking some fun divers around one of the sites. Gab and I
were both looking at each other , wondering what was going to happen to whom
first. He then went for my mask and got it off my face, but I managed to get it
back off him before he swam off. He was then on his guard as he knew I would
want some revenge, which I found in the Sea Caterpillar a bizarre invertebrate
with an odd texture that also feels incredibly limp. I picked one of these off a
rock and swam over Gab then wrapped it around his neck which freaked him out
good and proper, his eyes were so wide they looked like saucers. When we got
back to the boat we sent the fun divers up and then went through the motion of
an underwater fight. He got my mask off m, I got his off him, he got one of my
fins off, I turned his air off, general good fun going on then when we finally
went up, we saw that the fun divers had been spectating on the whole thing and
found it very amusing to boot.
With my diving done for the
while and the DM course completed there was only one further ordeal, the snorkel
test. This is when the DMT is given a mask and snorkel with a funnelling the top
and then a bucket of booze, several shots and beers are poured into it and the
victim has to drink it all. My first one went well enough until Jim decided to
blow into the funnel and I got a gut full of air, I finished the drink, but just
a short time later it came back. Apparently a new record for the rapidity of
ejection. As a result Leo, another instructor kindly decided to take it upon
himself to give me another bucket, this one unfortunately stayed down all night.
Apparently this was another record as no-one had ever previously done two tests
in an evening. as might be expected my co-ordination was more than slightly
impaired and I fell down repeatedly, and then stupidly got up and fell down
again. The next day I had to go around gathering in articles that had been lost
that evening and then I decided to go out for another big night as it was my
last on the island. I then left for Bangkok where I currently am again, shortly
though to be heading to Cambodia, about five weeks later than originally
planned.
Otherwise that is about it from
me except to say I have had a great time here in Thailand, met up with a bunch
of old friends as well as meeting many new ones.
To give a rough list of the
marine life I saw, will not really do justice to the range of things I saw. It
included but was not limited to the following (more details on many of the fish
can be found at
http://www.fishindex.com/phpinfo//26)
:
- Giant barracuda - up to about two metres, extremely quick and extremely
sinister looking.
- Yellow tail barracuda - less than a metre in length
- Margin Snake - extremely deadly but not unattractive
- Honeycomb grouper
- Potato Grouper - some up to two metres in length (n.b. they grow a metre
every fifty years)
- Cobia
- Cuttlefish - large and translucent and easily perturbed
- Porcupine Fish - a type of puffer fish, but with quills when it is
inflated
- Puffer Fish - very big, especially when inflated
- Box fish - similar to puffer
- Yellow Box fish
- Blue spotted rays - attractive stingrays, blue with yellow spots,
particularly common on night dives.
- Remores - a long thin fish that likes to perch itself in the middle of
another e.g. dead centre on a porcupine fish's head, so it looks like it has a
mohican.
- Jellyfish - from very large to tiny, some almost totally invisible, some
with an orange hue
- Sea Caterpillars - strange looking things about a foot long with what
looks like flowers coming out their mouths. Particularly good for freaking
people out.
- Sea cucumbers - lethargic lumps generally black, but sometimes more
interesting colours.
- Yellow moray eel
- Gold edged moray eel
- White eyed moray eel
- Anemone Fish - cute little fish that use the anemone for protection and
actually end up adopting its colour as well as being totally covered by the
stings from the anemone.
- Nudibranchs - little colourful sluggish type things
- Sea Slug - flat slug
- Butterflyfish - lots of types, all colourful
- Long nosed butterflyfish
- Clownfish
- Damselfish
- Scorpionfish - incredible camouflage and very dangerous
- Rabbit fish
- Angel fish - lots of types, all colourful
- Banner Fish - trailing a long dorsal banner
- Batfish - shoaling fish that get lonely if lost so will accompany divers
for the duration.
- Gobifish and shrimp - small fish and shrimp that live in a symbitiotic
relationship as the shrimp is blind
- Cleanerwrasse - sometimes annoying, but ultimately helpful fish that
clean out wounds and bites.
- Sergeant majors
- Red Snapper - favourite of the fishmongers
- White Snapper
- Squirrelfish
- Soldierfish
- Parrotfish - lots of types, all colourful - eat coral, then crap sand -
90% of Ko Tao's sand is parrotfish crap.
- Toms - long thin fish that generally swim near the surface
- Urchins - many with nasty noxious spines
- Anenomes of different colours
- Corals - of a wide range of colours and styles e.g. fan coral and whip
coral
- Christmas tree worms, skittish coral dwellers that look like two tiny
trees, but retreat when scared.
- Phosphorescence - On a night dive if one shuts out all ambient light and
then waves ones hands around small green phosphorescence appears. Swimming in
the black can also do this but it is even more surreal. Another fun thing is to
blow air rings in the darkness that glow green and get larger as they
near the surface.
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