My Internship and new Parrot !

So I started off my internship in Tenerife with a taxi ride to a random roundabout where the driver told me to get out and walk the rest of the way!
Luckily Melissa was kind enough to come retrieve me.

First day on the job I met Alice, Pete, and Hannah right away and we were put to work immediately. Alice showed us how to set up all the kits and perform all the jobs that are done on a daily basis. There was a lot to take in but its slowly sinking in.
The little things get you though, like putting the dust caps back on right after you take the regulators off, it’s easy to do but it’s also easy to forget. I think that first day we also got into the little pool which is basically filled completely with ice and did a skills session which Hannah and I did fabulously on!

Tuesday Stiven slept in but Patrick helped out with kit set up and we got to go to Abades for a navigation dive and a fish I.D. dive. The navigation dive went well, we managed to navigate in a straight line down and back, a square, and a triangle underwater.

The fish I.D. dive was more fun than the navigation dive because we actually saw fish, though my drawings of them were atrocious I did manage to figure out which fish I had drawn later on. After the dives we went to the marina and learned how to wash all the kits. Then we headed back to base and had lunch. That afternoon we went to the hotel pool for the try dive which is fun because we get to meet a lot of different people.

Wednesday we went to Tabaiba where it was misting slightly and the water was pretty cold, but the deep dive and the wreck dive were awesome. First thing you see is a bunch of garden eels which are much cooler in real life than in pictures. The wreck dive was my favorite though because I was just kind of swimming along and I looked up and there was a ship right in front of me. It sits on a bit of a decline so its listing to one side and when you swim over the side onto the deck it can be a little disorientating, but it was very cool.

Stiven made it to these two dives and in between them we got the privilege of walking back and forth from the Jumpy multiple times for a candy bar, inserts, allen keys, and new tanks. All of which really should’ve only taken one trip! I guess w will learn!
Thursday was our first boat dive I thought it was fun and Yellow Mountain was one of the best so far, there were tons of fish to see. Within the first few minutes of being at the bottom we got to watch Alice kill a couple of sea urchins and then we got to watch Hannah ineffectively poke at one with her knife. I didn’t get to try because I didn’t have a knife.
The second dive was our first mapping dive Hannah took spot depths while I took bearing measurements and we went through the swim through which was neat. We also saw a scorpion fish.

The rest of the week we worked on skills and were in the pool.
This week was challenging but enjoyable.

Eric