Image: Snorkel test with a difference – this time the new PADI Divemasters decided to dress up as smurfs!

As is customary at the end of every PADI Divemaster internship, we celebrate the achievements of the new PADI professionals with a special event or party. This normally involves a Koh Tao traditional passing of rights ceremony which is widely known as a ‘snorkel test‘.

These tests regularly have themes based behind them, and this months was Smurf-tastic!

With little to no prompting , this months PADI Divemaster internship graduates – Sami, Tim, Nathan and Emma decided to cover themselves in blue paint and dress up in adult nappies. There were a few fun drinking games, followed by the Snorkel Test – a bucket of cocktail consumed through a snorkel! Was lots of fun, (except for washing the blue paint of after – ask Tim!)

Congratulations to new PADI Divemasters -  Sami, Tim, Nathan and Emma, who are now able to work and live in paradise!

                          

This afternoon saw the completion of Shay, Joel, Louisa, Patty and Alex’s PADI Rescue Diver course here at Simple Life Divers!

These guys were all put through their paces, with a number of panicked snorklers, divers, swimmers – shock, horror, missing and unconscious divers.

After a large amount of surface swimming (Joel and Louisa!) these guys really excelled in all that had been taught to them over the previous 2 days, successfully managing to revive both of the DMT victims, (Nathan and Sam)!

Congratulations guys -  for Shay, Patty and Joel, enjoy your Divemaster internship, and hopefully we will see Alex and Louisa back at Simple Life soon for their Divemaster Course!

                          

Due to the brilliant dive conditions and weather we’re currently enjoying on Koh Tao, after enjoying their entry-level dive training at Simple Life a number of students have decided to stick around and enroll in our PADI  Divemaster internship.

Having endured the PADI Rescue Diver course and come out as more confident and competent divers, Hannah, Sam, Patty, Joel and Shay all decided that they were keen to continue down the route of PADI proffessional.

Over the next four to six weeks these guys will all be assisting on courses from PADI Open Water through to Rescue, leading dives for certified divers and navigating around the Koh Tao dive sites, and participating in a number of other fun activities. Over coming weeks these guys will be getting real hands on experience here at Simple Life and becoming part of the dive team.

At the end of all this, after having completed the Tao tradition of the “snorkel test”, these guys shall all be certified Divemasters and able to travel the world whilst receiving paid work. Why not!

Check back soon and we’ll keep you updates with photos and stories of how the posse are getting on with their Divemaster internship.

                          

Save Koh Tao marine conservation

Back in 2009, the project was creation of the ‘Hin Fai’ biorock structure. A series of domes were laid underwater off Koh Tao’s north-west coast, with a weak electric current passed through the structures to stimulate coral growth and create an artificial dive site.

For 2010 the project is even more spectacular, with the creation of Koh Tao Buoyancy World near the popular Twins dive site.

Koh Tao’s ‘Twins’ dive site is a series of coral covered shallow pinnacles lying off the west coast of Koh Nangyuan. The shallow depth, massive variety of marine life and flat sandy areas just off the dive site make Twins a popular dive spot for PADI dive training. Understandably a lot of divers visit the Twins dive site each day.

In an effort to ease pressure on the dive site and offer Koh Tao scuba diving instructors a valuable training aid, Buoyancy World will be an artificial reef structure custom designed for PADI dive training. The artificial reef will incorporate:

• Hoops and rings, perfect for peak performance buoyancy training
• Caves and swim-throughs
• Hover weights and balance beams
• Permanent fixed CESA lines for the PADI Open Water course (for the controlled emergency swimming ascent skill)
• Underwater navigation way-points, ideal for fine tuning natural and compass navigation
• Transects for coral reef monitoring / Reef Checks

In addition, work will also be undertaken to encourage corals and marine species to inhabit the artificial reef including:

• Coral nurseries and anchoring points
• Fish nurseries
• Divers habitats for coral reef species

Finally, some sculptures and art work will be added to the artificial dive site to enhance the diving experience.

Work will be taking place between the 6th and 10th Febraury, with the main deployment taking place on the 7th. For this the project has the use of one of Koh Tao’s large night boats to help simplify logistics.

All dive schools are asked to avoid diving Twins between 12pm and 6pm on Feb 7th, to allow the work to take place unhindered.

                          

Well done to Matt, Vicki, Alex and John on completing their Padi Open Water course here at Simple Life Divers, Koh Tao.

The guy’s arrived at Simple Life Diver’s through the recommendation of other travelers. Arriving on Koh Tao on one of the morning ferries, the team were ready to start their PADI Open Water course that same afternoon. The first day was a nice and relaxing session starting with an orientation and watching the PADI Open Water videos.

The next morning off the team were rested and ready to start the confined water skills session in the afternoon. With our equipment prepared and buddy checks completed we headed to beach. The guys were excellent in the water and breezed through all the skills, more than ready for their first two open water dives of the course.

The third day we finished the rest of the videos and quizzes, then made our way out to our newly painted and serviced dive boat. We headed out to the always excellent Twins and White Rock dive sites off Koh Tao’s western coast. The guys really enjoyed themselves and could not wait for the next days trip to the spectacular Chumphon Pinnacles dive site.

For the final two dives of the PADI Open Water course they weren’t disappointed. There were sharks aplenty and many other fish around the dive site and the group got to enjoy some fantastic diving.

Thanks again guys for making it a fun course, and remember, ‘keep it Simple’!

                          

Eric perfecting his buoyancy during the Koh Tao PADI Advanced Open Water Course.

Posted By PADI Dive Instructor Jon:

Well done to Marylee and Eric on completing there PADI Rescue Diver course.

After catching the diving bug after their PADI Open Water Course they decided to continue their training up to PADI rescue diver level, which would better prepare them for future planed diving excursions.

En-route highlights of the advanced course included grey reef sharks on the deep dive, multi-level computer dive showing the benefits of a computer assisted dive and  the peak performance buoyancy dive helped fine tune their diving.

The underwater navigation dive built on the introduction of using an underwater compass use during the PADI Open Water Course and we finished the advanced course with a magnificent night dive.

Marylee and Eric’s PADI Rescue Course started with some important self rescue skills. One of the main advantages of the rescue course is that it builds diver confidence, both in being able to assist one’s self and helping others. Along with the usual exercises of rescuing tired, panicked and unresponsive divers both underwater and afloat there was always time to sneak an extra fun dive in at the Chumphon Pinnacles, descending down along the anchor line to 30 metres to search for sharks.

Yesterday after practicing the mentioned skills the couple completed their final scenario, locating and rescuing a missing diver.

                          

The official dates for the Songkran celebrations are from April 13^th – 15^th, so in the bigger cities things will already be in full swing a couple of days prior to the Koh Tao Songkran festivities.

Know What Songkran Is?

Songkran is the Thai New Year which occurs each April. This is one of the hottest times of year on Koh Tao, with temperatures usually getting up around 40°C.

The event is marked by people throwing water over each other. This originated as a mark of paying respect. Originally, water was used poured over Buddhas to cleanse them. The water was captured and poured over friends, family and neighbors, with the ‘blessed’ water said to bring fortune.

Nowadays people still indulge in the throwing of water, but for most Thais the focus seems to be more on fun than the traditional religious meaning. Songkran has involved to become a nationwide giant water fight!

Either way, getting doused with a bucket of water during the hot season is a welcome relief, and a lot of fun. The Thai’s often add scents to the water, mix in flour, or sometimes add prickly heat powder which brings a nice cooling tingle! It’s a really great day to be on Koh Tao with all the locals and tourists joining together for a giant party across the whole island.

The usual sequence of events is that during the daytime the water-fight takes place on the streets, with pickup trucks being loaded up with barrels of water and people doing some low speed drive-by soakings, meanwhile lots of pedestrians arm themselves with water pistols and buckets . By late afternoon / early evening most people make their way down to Koh Tao’s popular Sairee Beach, where thousands of people congregate for a giant beach party.

Diving with Whale Sharks in Koh Tao

Meanwhile April is also a great time for scuba diving here on Koh Tao. The hot consistent weather and flat seas mean that we get great visibility around the Koh Tao diving sites and can enjoy visiting all of our deeper pinnacle dive sites.

And best of all, each April we get a high number of sightings of whale sharks around Koh Tao. Usually these giant fish hang around a dive site for a day or two, feeding on plankton which is stirred up as the current passes over a rock formation. It’s a truly spectacular site.

The whale sharks we see in Koh Tao range from 3-4M right up to larger specimens of 8 or 9M in length. If you stay still and calm, quite often a whale shark will swim up to you to check you out and to try work out what’s making those funny bubble noises.

So if you’re planning a Thailand Gap Year and are looking for a fun place to spend some time during April, you really should think about visiting Koh Tao!

                          

Browsing the Simple Life dive internships Thailand micro site, you’ll notice that some of our longer gap year internships include PADI Specialty courses, one of which is the PADI enriched air diver specialty. But what is enriched air nitrox, and what advantages does it offer when scuba diving?

The Limitations of Diving with Air

Most of the time when scuba diving, we dive using air. The good thing about air is it’s cheap and readily available – all we need to do is filter the air and run it through a special breathing air compressor and we’re good to use it for scuba diving.

Remember that air is made up largely of two gases – oxygen (about 21%) and nitrogen (about 79%), with a few other insignificant traces.

When we go scuba diving, the regulator system delivers air from the scuba tank at the same pressure as the surrounding water. That means that when we’re scuba diving, we’re absorbing much more oxygen and nitrogen into our body than normal.

Scuba diving within normal recreational depths (i.e. down to 40M), oxygen isn’t an issue as our body metabolizes the O2 which we exhale through the regulator as waste carbon dioxide. But, whilst at depth we’re accumulating nitrogen in our body absorbing more and more nitrogen throughout the dive. At the end of the dive when we make our slow ascent to the surface and the surrounding water pressure reduces, that excess nitrogen must be released. That’s why we always make a slow ascent, giving our circulatory and respiratory system plenty of time to release the excess nitrogen which we exhale through the regulator.

So, it’s nitrogen absorption and elimination which limits our dives, determining how deep we can dive and how long we can stay down for.

On shallow dives (say 0 – 20M), allowable bottom times are very long so scuba diving with air is the ideal choice. But, when we move into the 20-35M range our maximum allowable bottom time becomes significantly shorter. This especially true if making multiple deep dives in one day, or repetitively diving for several days in a row (typical of working as a PADI Divemaster or joining a multi-day scuba diving live-aboard).

So if we want to enjoy a longer bottom time on repetitive, deeper dives we need an alternative. The answer is enriched air (nitrox).

What is Enriched Air / Nitrox?

In enriched air Nitrox we add some extra oxygen to air to enrich the mix. In normal diving, it’s common to use nitrox mixes containing up to 40% oxygen (versus air which contains only 21% O2). By adding more oxygen, we reduce the percentage of inert nitrogen, thus lowering the amount of nitrogen absorbed by our body during a dive.

What means that we’re able to stay deeper for longer. Enjoying long bottom times on Koh Tao’s deeper dive sites gives you a great opportunity to enjoy some of the island’s more spectacular marine life, such as checking out the sharks and barracuda at the Chumphon Pinnacles.

Scuba diving using enriched air does introduce a few complications not encountered when diving with air (such as special equipment and safety). The point of the PADI Nitrox specialty is teaching you how to dive safely using nitrox, following these special procedures and discovering how to plan your bottom times using the mixed gas.

Scuba Diving with Nitrox as a PADI Divemaster

Being certified to dive with nitrox as a PADI Divemaster offers a couple of big advantages. Firstly, for your own enjoyment you’ll be able to extend your bottom times at depth, giving you an even better opportunity to enjoy Koh Tao’s fantastic scuba diving.

Secondly, you’ll be able to guide groups of nitrox certified divers, making you more employable as a PADI Divemaster.

Nitrox diving is also a first step towards the exciting deep sea world of technical diving and is your first taste of deep diving with mixed gases.