Happy Newyear everybody!
Door: Evert
Blijf op de hoogte en volg Evert
09 Januari 2011 | Trinidad en Tobago, Charlotteville
Day 21, January 1st, my bed, CoralCay Cottage, Charlotteville, TT, 11.20am local time.
Hmmm, I only woke up 30 minutes ago. It’s extremely nice to be able to sleep longer than 8 hrs!
Yesterday, we did the first AOW-dives, in -again- the silty waters of Charlotteville Bay. To become an Advanced Openwater Diver, you have to do at least 4 ‘specialty’ dives, related to a very specific topic. The choice you make, out of about 9 specialties, is mostly determined by the skills, needed for the surveys, in which you count the species-richness of the reefs. Here, Deep diving, boat diving, species identification, peek performance buoyancy (how you float in the water) and navigator-skills are chosen. The first dive was all about orientation and compass skills, for which these poor visibilities were quite ideal. Yet, we had to abort the dive (8mtrs depth) after 35 minutes because we lost the other buddy pairs. When we surfaced, they were at no less than 5 meters away from us….!
Anyways, the compass dive went fine. However, the Peak Performance Buoyancy, in which you dive through a circuit of hula-hoops at different heights, had to be stopped because we could not see the hula-hoops any more. At this dive, four pieces of weight were lost by some people here, and I lost my diving-knife. Maybe next week, we will do some recovery dives because we were alreeds short in lead. In fact, not everyone can dive now due to the shortage of lead.
Yesterday was also new-year’s-eve, so we made a good meal (roasted chicken: first meat in 6 days!) and enjoyed the bon-fire (apparently some kind of British tradition) with a look over the beach and sea, the view of the stars (Cassiopeia inverted! Orion-Nebula! Milky Way! The view of the sky, at bon-fire and with lots of local rum, was better than ever in the Benelux) and good company was one of the best new-years-eves I’ve had so far!
Today is a bit of resting, housekeeping-chores, movies and a lot of Sciences and studying. Yesterday, my SDP (Survey Development Program) started. In this 11-day period, literally EVERY minute of your -alreeds little- spare time is filled with lectures, studying and tests. The diving frequency (2 per day) continues, but the underwater sessions are devoted to showing and testing the knowledge about species of fish, corals, invertebrates (shrips, crabs, lobsters,...), marine algae and plants. A really tough exercise, but afterwards, I will be able to do the surveys. In these surveys, you monitor which species are to be found in a certain surface-interval. This means that you have to be able to identify basically every living creature underwater. People here tell you that it is very nice to know every creature you encounter...
Well that is about it for now, the next thing to do is cleaning the rooms, hallways, Science-room and living-room, also called the ’inside’-chore. Later today, we will watch the second 'Pirates of the Caribbean' (that's how we feel about ourselves a bit too, looking for underwater treasures as we are...) and there are some lectures planned about coral species and, maybe tonight, we go to the Beach Bar, a very small bar downtown Charlotteville.
Hmmm, I only woke up 30 minutes ago. It’s extremely nice to be able to sleep longer than 8 hrs!
Yesterday, we did the first AOW-dives, in -again- the silty waters of Charlotteville Bay. To become an Advanced Openwater Diver, you have to do at least 4 ‘specialty’ dives, related to a very specific topic. The choice you make, out of about 9 specialties, is mostly determined by the skills, needed for the surveys, in which you count the species-richness of the reefs. Here, Deep diving, boat diving, species identification, peek performance buoyancy (how you float in the water) and navigator-skills are chosen. The first dive was all about orientation and compass skills, for which these poor visibilities were quite ideal. Yet, we had to abort the dive (8mtrs depth) after 35 minutes because we lost the other buddy pairs. When we surfaced, they were at no less than 5 meters away from us….!
Anyways, the compass dive went fine. However, the Peak Performance Buoyancy, in which you dive through a circuit of hula-hoops at different heights, had to be stopped because we could not see the hula-hoops any more. At this dive, four pieces of weight were lost by some people here, and I lost my diving-knife. Maybe next week, we will do some recovery dives because we were alreeds short in lead. In fact, not everyone can dive now due to the shortage of lead.
Yesterday was also new-year’s-eve, so we made a good meal (roasted chicken: first meat in 6 days!) and enjoyed the bon-fire (apparently some kind of British tradition) with a look over the beach and sea, the view of the stars (Cassiopeia inverted! Orion-Nebula! Milky Way! The view of the sky, at bon-fire and with lots of local rum, was better than ever in the Benelux) and good company was one of the best new-years-eves I’ve had so far!
Today is a bit of resting, housekeeping-chores, movies and a lot of Sciences and studying. Yesterday, my SDP (Survey Development Program) started. In this 11-day period, literally EVERY minute of your -alreeds little- spare time is filled with lectures, studying and tests. The diving frequency (2 per day) continues, but the underwater sessions are devoted to showing and testing the knowledge about species of fish, corals, invertebrates (shrips, crabs, lobsters,...), marine algae and plants. A really tough exercise, but afterwards, I will be able to do the surveys. In these surveys, you monitor which species are to be found in a certain surface-interval. This means that you have to be able to identify basically every living creature underwater. People here tell you that it is very nice to know every creature you encounter...
Well that is about it for now, the next thing to do is cleaning the rooms, hallways, Science-room and living-room, also called the ’inside’-chore. Later today, we will watch the second 'Pirates of the Caribbean' (that's how we feel about ourselves a bit too, looking for underwater treasures as we are...) and there are some lectures planned about coral species and, maybe tonight, we go to the Beach Bar, a very small bar downtown Charlotteville.
