The 7th week of our internship in a brief recap.

With all of our skills and stamina tests finalized, it was now only some minor formalities that was left in our PADI Divemaster course. 

One of those was to observe an Open Water Diver course in open water, and we were so lucky that Steve joined us to do his. 

So we went to Arrecife with Will, Cassandra and Trigger to get that sorted out. Unfortunately, conditions were not ideal with bad visibility and swell causing the most troubles. 

One really nice thing about the dives was to see Steve's reaction when he spotted his first-ever  Atlantic damselfish. It absolutely blew his mind, and his enthusiasm was very refreshing as well as a reminder to oneself of how it was to get the first couple of dives in open water under the belt.

The following day Theiss went out to have arguably the best dive of his stay here in Tenerife.
He went to Las Eras for the first time together with Melissa, Marvin, Nemo, Bruce, Village, Susanne and Frankie, and they basically saw everything you can ask for and more in near perfect conditions with a visibility that was very close to being 30 m.

First and foremost, the group saw a common octopus hiding under a rock, and from there it just got better and better, with the sight of hermit crabs, a glasseye, a school of barracudas, a common eagle ray, a decent sized round stingray, a black moray eel and a couple of beautiful streaked gurnards.

Meanwhile, Malene was at Yellow Mountain to do her Navigation exercise and her Search and Recovery: again only small details that had to be sorted out before we could get signed off.

In the afternoon, we had Ulrich, Elin and Joost in the pool for their DSD programme, 

They did really well all of them, and were very eager to go in to open water.

And that happened the next day. The five of us went to Abades together with Melissa, Will, Trigger and Susanne. The visibility and swell near the shore was bad, but once we hit the reef, it turned out to be a couple of nice dives, where we saw a barracuda and a black moray.

On Thursday all of us (even Pete!) went in the pool in the morning to do a so called DSD workshop, where the instructors acted as simulated students to get us prepared to handle the most common mistakes we can encounter when conducting a DSD programme. It was a lot of fun and everybody had a laugh, which is always a good thing to enhance the team spirit. On a more serious note, we all learned something and we're definately better equipped now to conduct a successful programme.

On Friday we went to the marina, and the objective was to get some of the stamina tests out of the way for the new interns. Malene was observing Pearl's and Oz' Rescue Course (the confined part) together with Nemo.
Theiss was cleaning kit and because we didn't have any time schedule, as we normal have when washing kit, we could do it more thoroughly than usual. Also, the boat and the cars got washed.

Saturday was a sad day, because it was the very last day for Cassandra and Trigger.
We went to Poco Naufragio to do Richard's and Steve's deep speciality. On the first dive we, together with Cassandra, observed Richard doing his exercises on 27 metres of water conducted by Will, which went without a hitch. On the way down we were met by a couple of curious common stingrays. The little wreck was teeming with life, and once we got back onto the shelf we saw a black moray eel, so it was an excellent dive all in all. But, then, on the second dive it really picked up.

I led Nemo and his dad, Gary, on a jolly, a once we got down we saw three massive rays (two round stingrays; one roughtailed) circling the site casually. One of them even had a live sharksucker attached to itself, and since they a pretty rare, our theory is that it must have been the same individual we've seen a couple times there now.
That was simply breathtaking, and the magnificent animals kept appearing on the dive as we went on.

Come Saturday night we all went out in Las Américas, which was obviously a lot of fun and a great way to greet Cassandra and Trigger a proper farewell.

On Monday, Malene went to the pool with Melissa to help out with Allan, a new Open Water student.
In the afternoon, we had a new intern arriving, Graham, and Malene showed him around the place.