Well it’s official, we are certified PADI Open Water Scuba Divers!! Our day started bright and early with our first dive at 8am. We first went to a dive site called White Rock. It was SO much better than yesterday!! We still had a few more scuba skills to demonstrate in our third open water dive, such as a mask fully flooded and then cleared and removing our masks completely then putting them back on. We also had some compass navigation work to do.
The water at the White Rock site was super clear, visibility was about 20 meters, which is great considering yesterday’s dives were around 5 meters of visibility. We saw TONS of sea life, even our instructor Dirk was amazed at how many fish there were. He said that they don’t normally see any where near the amount they had today. During our dive we saw a blue spotted stingray, a white eyed moray eel, some long finned banner fish, and a nemo fish…amongst lost of others. There is also a funny little fish called a cleaner wrasse that ha-“wrasse”d us the entire dive…it’s called a wrasse and it harassed us…get it?? ;)
The cleaner wrasse is a fish that eats parasites off of other fish, providing a services to the bigger fish and eels, meaning that they in turn won’t eat the cleaner wrasse. But they don't limit their services to the fish, if you have a bug bit or an open scratch, they will go ahead and clean those for you as well. Since we are covered in bug bites, we were apparently a good feast. I’m not sure if them loving to clean my bug bites so much is a compliment or an insult. They clearly liked me, but they were also pointing out that I am kinda grossly dirty with parasites…jury is out on that one.
After diving at White Rock, we moved to another site called Twins for our final open water dive. This one didn’t have any skills to be tested, it was just a fun dive. Jacob and I had to plan the dive and establish our signals, entry/exit points, etc. We briefed with Dirk, our dive master, and then followed him around Twins. We saw a lot of the same fish as the other sites. Visibility wasn’t as great as White Rock was, but we were still able to see notes of great stuff.
When we surfaced, we were officially certified scuba divers! We hopped back on the boat and headed back to the dive shop, where we grabbed a quick lunch, met with Matt and Ali, and then hopped back on the afternoon boat to go on some final fun dives with Matt and Ali.
The first dive site that was chosen for the afternoon was Twins again, so we were able to enjoy that with Matt and Ali. After going around Twins, we headed to a second site called Junkyard. This site is pretty interesting and unique, because it is an artificial reef that has been created together by a few of the various dive shops on the island (there are around 60 in total on tiny Koh Tao).
The reef contains a coral garden for new growing corals, a sunken car, a few anemones protected by quite aggressive nemo families, a gym (and lift weights underwater is harder than you think…), as well as some different swim throughs. It wasn’t the most colourful of dive sites, but it was very different to what we had been looking at this morning.
Because it wasn’t a massive reef, there were mostly smaller fish on the site, but by the car we did manage to spot a grouping os some quite large puffer fish. And near the gym section we did see a pretty large trigger fish…so named because when they get agitated they have a fin that pops up on their back like a trigger…clever name, right?? I had noticed that if you aren’t sure what a fish is called, describe it and there is a pretty good chance that’s what it’s called, obviously not always true, but pretty accurate.
As that was our final dive, we headed back to shore with the boat, finished our certification paperwork, and then headed off for dinner…which was more stone fire oven baked pizza. It’s safe to say we are all Thai flooded out still. Third day in a row of pizza, and none of us can for sure say when we will be able to look at tThai food the same, if ever. It doesn’t help that the boy’s sensitive stomachs are still touchy, and now Ali has joined the stomach bug gang. But don’t worry, I am still holding strong!!
We wandered around on the beach for a little bit, watching some of the fire shows up and down the beach before calling it a night with a final dip in our pool back at the villa. We have to be up and abroad the 9am ferry back to Koh Samui so that we can catch an afternoon flight over to Phuket, the last stop of our trip. At this point, I would actually prefer just to stay in Koh Tao for the rest of our vacation, but Phuket is already paid for…so to Phuket we go!
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