PADI Divemasters.............. almost!

Our sixth week into the internship in a brief summary.

Monday was a busy day, where everything had to run smoothly, but unfortunately we were still having trouble as a team to do even the simplest of tasks. Some pieces of customer kit was forgotten and Theiss' entire kit (except for his dear socks) were also not brought, so we got a rather late start to the day.

After we got everything sorted out, Theiss went off to Yellow Mountain together with Will and Pete to lead Fruzsina, Johannes, Richard, Frazer, Bill and Marvin on a couple of jolly dives. Will was conducting Giorgios's Open Water part of his Open Water Diver Course.

And the party started before we even got to the actual dive site. As we took off from the marina, a couple of dolphins together with a baby individual crossed our watery path which obviously bouyed the group, customers and staff members alike. To be honest, why bother going on dolphin sightings with expensive tourist charters when you can go and dive with Dive and Sea Tenerife?

The actual dives went really well, and the group stayed nice and close during the fun dives, which was important, especially since Theiss was "on his own". The group saw a school of barracudas on both dives (it might have been the same), which was really awesome. Theiss has now been on three dives with Fruzsina, our Hungarian/Danish visitor, and on every one of these they have seen a school of barracudas, a fact she found very peculiar herself as well. Moreover, they came across a common octopus and a scrawled filefish.

In the afternoon, Malene did her DSD Kit Set-Up Presentation and scored a 5, so she was obviously buoyed by that! Theiss was acting as surface support for a couple of DSD students in the pool.

Wednesday was a quiet, but an important day for the senior interns, because we all got one step closer to the DM sign-off. In the morning we had our final pool session before our exam, and it went all right, we reckon. Afterwards, Malene and Trigger did their final 400 m swim in the pool super-speedily and they both got a solid 4 score, which definately was impressing considering that Trigger lost his swimwear all together halfway through the race. Let's just say it was good thing that we didn't have any kids snorkeling around in the pool at the same time.. Then we headed back up to shop, preparing for the final DSD Kit Set-up Presentation and Predive Safety Check. We both nailed it to a 5 despite some minor mistakes, but apparently that is allowed, because English is not our first language so our margin of error is bigger than the English native speakers.  

All the new interns were observing and commenting on all of our attempts, and even though they probably got fed up with it at the end of the day, it's really good for them to learn off of our mistakes. We definately expect no less than perfection from these guys now!

The following day we both went to the pool in the morning together with Melissa and three DSD students, Hallie, Cynthia and Harrison, who were actually people we had had through our free try dive a couple of days earlier. They all did well in the pool, and afterwards we went to Abades for their two Open Water Dives. The sea was rioting, so it was rough conditions for three brand new DSDs, and even though they struggled with a couple of minor psychological issues prior to descending, they all managed to complete and, more importantly, enjoy the dives, so well done to them!

Friday was again a very important day for the "senior interns". Due to bad weather conditions, all open water diving was cancelled and that offered the perfect opportunity for all of us to go to the pool first thing in the morning to perform our final skill set. And it was both a pleasant and a nerve wrecking experience. Some of the skills went without a hitch, while other skills went... hmm, let's just say that it was a good thing we didn't get through the entrie set on this day so we had to have one more session to complete both the missing and the failed skills. It was a really good experience for the new interns to watch our final skills and afterwards participate in the brief of the critique, good and bad, so they now know what "traps" to look out for.

Afterwards, we went to the marina to finalize our stamina tests as well. The newbes also had a go at the 100 m tow, 800 m snorkel and the 15 minutes float, so that was once again nice for them to get a primary assesment of what to work on during the following weeks. We, the senior ones, all got our finals, so that was really nice to get some more tests checked off. All in all a very enjoyable day: though only a small step for a dive center it was a giant leap for a couple of divemaster-aspirant.

Saturday, we both went to Poco Naufragio where Malene, Oz, Suzanne, Nemo and Bruce did there deep excercise together with Will and where Trigger led his first dive with Theiss, Alex, Aidan and Cassandra. The vis reminded of us diving back home, so even though it's normally an easy site to dive in Trigger did very well navigating in the bad conditions. The first 15 minutes of the dive were not very dramatic even though we did see some very colorful anemones. Then, we managed to point out a beautiful black moray eel and from there the dive only got better and better. We headed back to the anchor line and were met by an elegant, curious (and desperate?) live sharksucker, aka. rémora, which was really, really cool. It's nature is to attach itself to big pelagic animals, and hence it was clearly trying to attach itself to us. But suddenly, during our safety stop, it took off. We followed it with puzzled eyes, until we realized the reason of this strange behavior: it had found it's host again, which turned out to be a massive stingray, around 2 m wide, searching the top shelf for dinner. It was simply the most amazing sight, and it was so difficult to take our eyes off. To be honest, the last 10 minutes of the dive saved the whole day.

Afterwards we got back to the marina, changed tanks, dropped off Aidan and headed back out again to Arrecife. The conditions were terrible: the visibility was around 3-5 m. and the swell was strong. Practically, it reminded us of being back in Denmark diving. We did, however, see a stargazer, which (kind of) saved that dive...

In the afternoon we headed to the hotel pool together with Will, Nemo and Cassandra. It was a busy day, and we had a decent amount of people through, where a couple of them seemed very interested in joining us for some "real" diving soon.

Sunday was our day off, which we spend together with Theiss' parents in Los Christianos. Moreover, we're now very close to achieve what we came here for: the Divemaster Certification.