Sea Horse, Dolphins & Night Dives............... Just AWESOME :)

This week started off with me going to Poco Naufragio with Pete, James, and Birgit.
The dive started off in a special way because we saw dolphins right as we left the marina which I guess they hadn’t seen in at least 8 weeks, so that was cool. I have never seen dolphins out in the wild so it was awesome to see them jumping out of the water and doing all sorts of dolphin things right in front of me.

That was also my first dive at Poco Naufragio so going through the canyon down there and seeing an eel was something new for me.
We also visited Pequeno Valle on that dive which was also new for me. The rest of the day was basically a normal day.
The week picked up Sunday though with Hannah and I going on separate dives, I think Hannah ended up in the pool while I ended up going to Las Eras which I enjoyed quite a bit, Melissa led that dive and Steven, James, Birgit, and Mick came with us. I saw a couple new fish, such as the red lipped blenny and really started to enjoy all the diving. It was very laid back and I enjoy talking to all the customers because they’ve all been all over the place.
In the US people go to Florida when they are on vacation but over here they travel to different countries because it’s a lot easier.
Las Eras was probably one of my favorite dives because we went along a pipeline the second time and after Melissa reminded me to pull out my flashlight I could look in literally every crack in the cement around the pipe and see different fish hiding in the dark. It was really cool, we also saw this little octopus in a hole just looking out at us and that was pretty funny.
The next day we had a lot of customers and everyone headed over to Abades for their dives.
Originally I was going with Pete, Patrick and the Discover Scuba Divers but then for some reason I had no weight belt and got switched into Melissa’s group with Mick, James, and Birgit which was fine with me.
Basically I ended up shoving 8 kg worth of spare weights into my pockets and running across the beach to catch up. It all worked out and we had 2 good dives.
On the second dive we saw a seahorse which Melissa couldn’t stop talking about. So it was a fun dive for all of us.
I’ve been getting lucky because I’ve only been here 3 weeks and I’ve seen dolphins and a seahorse.

Then on Friday I went to Pequeno Valle again with Pete, Sean, Kali, Yaro, and Hannah.
This was the dive when Hannah said she was cold and Pete being the nice, caring, and gentle individual that he always is, gave Hannah his extra hood because she was cold.
I couldn’t believe it, it was the biggest display of self sacrifice I think I have ever seen. Pete is so selfless and caring. I honestly cant remember what we did in the day in between, we do so much it all kind of blurs together.

On Tuesday we went to the hotel though and we forgot the toolbox and forgot to take the inserts out of the tanks so I got to run from the hotel to the shop and back which was at least a mile and a half. That was in the middle of the day and in flip flops so it was super fun.

Basically the rest of the week was good, we did a couple of dives with Sean, Kali, and Yaro.
The first morning  was their first experience with a surface marker buoy and the second morning with them Hannah had the day off and we went to Tabaiba.

It was an experience with Kali, Sean, and Yaro and I also managed to forget Alice’s candy bar on more than one trip…Oh man.
The next day I got up at 4:45 to get to work at 5:15 for the night dive with Alice, Hannah, Sean, and Yaro.
I thought it was awesome. Even though it seems a bit more dangerous and scary especially when you first get in it was one of the coolest experiences of my life, if you wave your hand around in the water it lights up with luminescence or whatever they called it.

It made me giggle like a little school girl, then descending down the line was insane because its just black all around you until you turn your light on.
The flashlight sort of allows you to focus on certain points so I ended up seeing a ton of scorpion fish and the biggest arrow crab I’ve seen. It was pretty tight.

Eric (Bananaman)

Dolphins, Sting Rays amd my new diving knife

Well last week started off well with a few dives at Abades led by Patrick. We saw a bunch of sting rays there and some trigger fish.
Also beginning Monday we changed all the jobs up. So I switched from being on kit to being told to direct our little trio and check boxes and everything along with organizing all the gear in the morning and directing traffic once we got back.
I’ve got to say that Pete and Alice and Melissa were all blown away by our performance last week, specifically mine.
If there was one word I could use to describe last week it would be fantastic.
Hannah, Ioannis, and I worked like a well-oiled machine, each of us knew what to do and without even communicating we set about our tasks with the speed and fury of a herd of thundering stallions.
That was until Tuesday rolled around and it all fell apart. James showed up to start his PADI Assistant instructor course and we or I could not get it together well enough to make it look like we had any idea what we were doing.

It happens though, at the end of the day we thought that would be it. We thought that was our worst day. Wednesday made it seem like that was the case; we stepped up our game and came through.
Setting up in the morning went well and the entire day was much smoother. But the roller coaster of a week was only half over and Thursday and Friday were both similar in that they were the drop of the coaster.

One long, two day drop. But one Thursday and Friday we got 3 pool sessions and were able to work on our skills and then we got to go to Yellow Mountain for a dive around Alien rock after James did his open water skills. Luckily it all went well as far as the dive went and when we got back to the marina I got some time to chill as I swam rabbit for James.
Then after that we went back and slogged through the rest of the day.

The biggest highlight for me on Friday though was that my knife came in, it’s called the Diablo, and I got to use it on my first dive with it to kill a black sea urchin. Then Friday night we went to the Aberdeen Steakhouse for dinner and then headed to a bar down the street for karaoke.

It turned out that I am a fantastic singer and I was able to enchant an older woman with my melodic voice. She loved my beautiful singing and couldn’t get enough, it’s sad I don’t have a cd out yet.
Everyone else thought I was terrible though. But they did say I was very entertaining which is what counts in my book, if you can’t be a good singer you might as well be a good entertainer. Saturday I didn’t get up until noonish. And I didn’t go to work until around 230, we went to the hotel pool and Alice swam around and managed not to make anyone cry.

Then today, which is Sunday went very well compared to last week. Hannah got to go do sessions in the pool with Melissa who is now an instructor, congratulations!
With her first two students and Patrick helping out. I went with Alice, Pete, James, and Birgit to dive down to almost 30m and saw some fish I had never seen before, I saw a black moray eel and some barracuda and the largest stingray I’ve seen so far.

I also had James point out some type of coral or something that I have been unable to positively identify, though I’ve got it narrowed down I think.
Today went decently though, it wasn’t great but it wasn’t terrible either, it just kind of was. Which I can live with.
And now I’m watching the Sunset Limited and typing this.
The end.

Eric

How not to Map a dive site and Kit Exchanges

I finished last weeks Blog talking about locking myself out of my apartment and staying on another intern’s sofa, this is mistake number one.
However, it only got worse from there and it was a wonderful way to start my week. So for some reason I decided that I’d be more comfortable leaving the balcony doors open whilst I slept on the sofa, looking back on it, this was mistake number two.
Mistake three was not covering myself head to toe whilst I slept.
The combination of these three mistakes meant I was mauled by mosquitoes and it looked like severe chicken pox the next day.

Moving on from the torture that was Sunday night I came to work Monday morning hoping for more success, I was not going to find any.
I was going to be leading Moomin, Perry and Angela on a mapping dive. They were mapping Alien Rock and dive one went well. With some measurements missing we were going to head back in and go the same route. This dive was one I’d rather forget.
In my head I thought the group was going in the same direction as dive one, apparently not. We ended up very shallow and I didn’t have a clue how. In my defence I think it would be excessive to say we were lost as I knew where the boat was, just not the dive site. I ended up calling the dive off and admitting defeat at twenty-seven minutes.

New customers this week! Nick, Tony, Eileen, Linda and Mark joined us for a week of diving. The group’s first dive site was going to be LasEras, which was quickly becoming popular with me, as there is just so much to see. The first dive here you head left out of the bay and end up at around twenty meters, the first dive you tend to see lots of colourful fish such as Cuttlefish, Barracuda and Atlantic Damsels. This is the first time I’d been here with such an experienced dive group, which meant we managed to make it to a sunken nativity scene. Admittedly it was much better in my head, in reality it’s very small and damaged, but brilliant none the less to make it there.
The second dive here as I’ve mentioned before heads over to the pipeline where there is an abundance of Morays, Cleaner Shrimp and Rays hiding in all the crevices. 

My chance to redeem myself was upon me. The dive group’s second day was to Yellow Mountain and I was going to lead. Obviously, being practically perfect by this stage of my internship it all went off without a blip, on the first dive to Alien Rock I saw my first Canarian Lobster since I’ve been out here, as well as a small Common Ray.
The second dive I lead us all to Swim Through. Tony who had been recording a lot of the dives on his HD camera managed to get some brilliant shots of us all coming up through the swim through.

I was very close to completing the last few bits and pieces for my PADI Divemaster at this stage, and one of the two requirements left for me to fulfil was the kit exchange. I’d been worried about doing this for a fair amount of time, but when it came down to actually doing the skill, it was a piece of cake. The only real issue with the skill is when someone has medium fins on and I’m an extra large, and have to try and fit theirs on.

Back to diving, and it was a new dive site for me as well today, El Delfin, means something about Dolphins apparently. The dive itself was fairly impressive with Morays and large shoals of fish, but for me I was more excited about doing my deepest dive out here. All the way to 35 meter,s later on there is the opportunity to head to 40 but my air was low by this point so couldn't make it.
Dive two and we headed to good old PequeneValle, which always provides large shoals of Roncadore, Bream and others. However, this time, there was something even more exciting, a Butterfly Ray.
Or at least it would have been more exciting had it not have been so lazy. The Ray was quite happy to sit there and barely move even with all eight of us around it.

Last day diving for the week and it was to Poco Naufragio, the site we go to see all the Rays, the group had been earlier in the week and seen some massive Atlantic Rays so I was even more excited to get in and hopefully see some. Sure enough, as soon as we descended there was a couple little Rays, a Duckbill being one of them, and I’d never seen one so close but it is easy to see where they get their name from. Plus, it didn’t take long before the big boys decided to come, we ended up doing both dives here and the first one was definitely one of my best dives out here.

I was going to have beans on toast Sunday morning but discovered I had no bread and well that just leaves beans, so as an alternative I had cereal but quickly realised my milk had gone off, so I had sour milk and Special K, beautiful......... Just in case you are interested in my diet :-)

Sam (Popeye)

Urchin-killings and a new Dive Site ~ El Delphin

Week 3 of my internship has just passed, which means I only have 5 more days to go till it´s back to freezing Dutchieland. (Actually thinking about it, I don’t think it will make such a big difference whether your soaking wet because of the rain or soaking wet because your sweating like a pig all day!)

On Sunday we went to Las Eras for my and Geoffrey’s PADI Deep Speciality dive and my SMB Speciality dive. 

Las Eras is a really nice dive site, with a great underwater world. On our way out everything went really smooth, just bobbing around in the water, letting ourselves be carried away by a current, checking out the Needle fish, Octopus, Barracudas and all the little critters along the rocks. 

At around 30m. Gareth made us play a little game to check if we were effected by gas narcosis, writing our names backwards. No trouble for me there, Geoffrey on the other hand seemed pretty narced, having trouble remembering and writing the correct letters (although he did had some trouble spelling his name backwards at the surface as well, but we’ll blame the early morning for that!).
After our little play-time, it was time to return to shore. By then we realized that the current was quiet strong and we struggled to swim back.
To be honest we did really well, considering we did a 30m. dive for 43 minutes in a current that strong! Really cool detail is the Octopus we saw eating a big Trumpet fish (with the Trumpet fish still sticking half out of the Octopus….I’m realizing now without a picture this description is missing a bit of X-factor, not sounding half as exciting as it actually was, you should have been there…). 

A little less cool was the dead baby Turtle we saw, lying on the bottom, all white and with his head ripped off, starting to deteriorate (again, you should have been there for the visual effect with this description…or maybe not).

We also had some time this week to go exploring! Pete decided it was time to check if he still had it, so along with Gareth, Geoffrey and me, we went to a new dive site called El Delphin (named after a Dolphin statue we passed while descending) for another deep dive. 

Star of the day was the huge Atlantic Ray that swam towards us as soon as we arrived on the bottom. A beautiful start of the dive! 

Gareth also decided to take some breakfast food from his fridge to play yet another game. Playtime was over pretty fast (which is actually a good thing at that depth)…The boys were not able to crack the egg under water so I had to show them how (pretty pathetic guys that even under water the woman has to handle the food like in the kitchen) and Gareth didn’t really knew why he brought the tomatoes (other than they were mouldy anyway and taking up beer-space in the fridge) so we squeezed them all up and prepared a nice little breakfast for the Bream and Trumpet fish.

The second dive of that day was a project Aware dive. We went to Starfish bay to do some urchin-killing. Somehow everyone was really exciting about this dive, it didn’t bring up the best in all of us. 
In the beginning I felt a bit sorry for the urchins, especially the little one's, so I have to admit that in the beginning I did let the little once get off the hook.

When I looked to my left and right side, I saw my team-members who turned into psychopaths; tossing the urchins up in the water slicing them like Japenese sushi-chefs or Samurai soldiers. 
Some of them would put them on a rock, watch them walk away, toss them over, making them think they could escape the massacre and then give them the death sentence anyway. 
I just thought they were weird and British….UNTILL….I got stabbed by one of those sneaky bastards (talking about the urchins again not my team-members)! 
Then my finger hurt, a little drop of green blood dropped out of it, my mind went blank…. From that moment on it was Die Urchin Die!!

(Again for the people not familiar with the urchins, they are a pest in this area, not native to the area and are sucking the life out of this part of the ocean, they don’t have natural enemies so we need to kill them to protect the underwater life).

Also the past week, the All-stars turned into the All-blacks after they all became PADI Divemasters by completing the exams and kit-exchange, which makes me the odd one out in my red T-shirt. 

I did the kit-exchange together with Geoffrey. 

Before the exercise we had 5 minutes to practice in which we agreed / learned that:

1. We were just going to see what was going to happen

2. You should not clear your mask when you don’t have your reg. in your mouth because yes, you will run out of air and yes, you will try to breathe water.
3. We’re awesome anyway so this is going to be easy as!

The kit-exchange went really well, Geoffrey was in a bit of a rush which made it a challenge to keep up with him. Trying to take my fins off and put his "fins-fit-for-a-giant" on wasn’t that easy, made me tip over and sit on my backside at the bottom of the pool…..BUT….goal of the exercise was to make it look smooth and easy so I took my time (trying to fool the big boss that this was all part of mine and Geoffrey’s brilliant plan of preparation), and had a little moment for myself before Geoffrey helped me back up, proceeding the exercise in lightning-speed. In the end, like we expected, everything went awesome and we could be proud of ourselves.

I also had a go at doing a pre-dive safety check and the kit-set-up. Toughest part was to pronounce the word ‘Knurled Nut’ without laughing. I also need to remember to actually put on a weight belt when showing the student how to check for a weight belt and to actually turn the air on when I want to check my air!

At the end of the week, we went to a very informative presentation of Pro-sub, The Dive Centre's supplier of dive equipment otherwise known as Toy’s R Us for divers! 

Here we gained some useful information about the latest equipment and some sales- and business techniques.

Like I said in my intro, only 5 more days to go with hopefully a lot of beautiful diving!

Susanne

The week of the sore ass, the proud daddy and more diving!

Let´s start this week’s blog with a little quiz:
- Is your body starting to look like a female bodybuilder a little more every day??
- Do you find yourself suffering from muscle pains 24/7??
- Do you find yourself almost falling asleep during your 15 min. Float stamina test??
- Do you find it difficult to keep your eyes open after 4pm.??
- Do you find yourself ordering half a pint instead of a ‘big pint’??
- Do you find yourself ordering water instead of half a pint??
- Do you find yourself skipping the after work drinks for some nap-time??
- Do you find yourself on a boat at 9 in the morning, praying to god the day would end soon and you would not puke over or near any customers??

If the answer is yes to all of the above: CONGRATULATIONS, you just survived your second week of the DM-internship!!

Actually, my second week into the internship started pretty awesome: I had my well deserved day-off! After that, again, my life has known its ups and downs.

First day back to work, I decided to see if the stairs leading towards the pool were really that slippery when wet. And yes, I can confirm that now. After slipping down the stairs, the day only got worse. 

For the dives that day, I was scheduled on my first boat duty. With a lot of confidence and excitement, I loaded the gear on the boat, untied the mooring and rushed into my wetsuit….. so far all good. 

Once out of the harbor I started to realize that the waves were just a tiny-little bit bigger than the week before, which actually made the boat-ride out awesome, bumping around on the side of the RIB. 

Once we arrived at Yellow Mountain and all the divers were in the water, my staring contest started, looking at the horizon for 30 minutes, taking deep breaths, fighting the sea-sickness, asking myself out loud why I ever started this internship, swearing silently inside, and praying to god for the day to end, or the boat to sink (when you’re sick on the sea, there are only so little solutions)! 

Tuesday was course-day for myself, doing my fish-ID speciality dives at Alien Rock (Yellow Mountain). On the second dive I was able to take the camera, which is certainly a challenge in the beginning. The fish started to frustrate me by not sitting still, so the sea-urchins (who we normally kill) became my next models/victims, at least they were good for something. In the end I got the hang of it and really started to enjoy the dives and taking pics!

Talking about sea-urchins, I’m proudly to announce I killed my first two sea-urchins in the last week. I was a bit reluctant, but after you killed one, it’s easy as to become a serial killer (gives me actually a good insight in the minds of the boys at the juvenile prison I work at home….strangely we’ve got more in common than I thought!).

For the record, the black-long spined sea urchins are not native to the Tenerife waters and suck the life out of all the rocks and corals. They don’t have any natural enemies and are a threat to the underwater area, so killing them is a necessity for the preservation of these waters and the sea-life!

This week I also finished the first dive of my navigation specialty, which was pretty easy and fun to do, and also the first dive of my SMB-speciality. Thanks to our self claimed very-very-ill (not mentally) instructor Gareth (he can make a sore throat sound like he’s dying), that dive has to be repeated (but I’m not complaining! More diving and more practice sound good to me). 

Assisting Gareth on a couple of other dives and courses has been a very interesting learning experience (not only because we spotted tons of octopus this week). Every customer is different, which makes it a real challenge to provide the assistance they need to an awesome dive experience! It’s not just about the dive-skills, but a lot has to do with ‘reading’ your customers behaviour and actions.

The highlights of the week were the stamina tests that were all done on Tuesday and Wednesday. I’m very proud of myself and the All-Stars for getting awesome results and even getting compliments from the big boss himself, who was ‘very proud of his children’. We all had wobbly legs and trouble walking the stairs the next day, but we all scored fours on the tired-diver tow and the 800 m. snorkel, threes on the 400m. and fives on the float! We rock!!

Second highlight of the week was spotting the Dolphins on a boat ride out of the harbor towards dive sites Poco Naufragio and Pequeno Valle. It makes your day when it’s 8.30 am., your ass is still hurting from the fall down the stairs, your legs can’t carry you because of the tiring stamina tests and you can just sit on the boat, watch the sunrise and spot some Dolphins 3 m. away from you!

Summarizing: It’s been a busy week, with looooong working hours, but I was able to gain a lot of assisting-experience, finished my stamina tests, been to a lot of new (shore) dive sites and only gained 3 beer fines!!

Looking forward to next week!

Suzanne