Back on track

Hello everyone!

Good news! It stopped raining! After a week of continuous storms the sun finally started to shine again... and we sure didn't loose any time waiting around! We've been diving as much as possible, every morning. Afternoons are still dedicated to "office work" since we still have a lot to finish before next week.
I've almost finished the fish presentation (which turned out to be even longer than the inverts one... 97 slides) and there's only one left to go... corals. That'll be very tricky... especially since the're often hard to identify because the same species varies so much in appearance depending on its environment...
Life on Koh Sdach is enjoyable, but i'm really missing Koh Rong Sanloem... the morning runs on the beach, attending to clients... the big lunches and dinners... and the people ofc. Here we have no outsiders passing through and it gets a bit boring at times...
Today we went diving on the neighboring

island of Koh Chan... I didn't think it was physically possible, but the visibility is even worse than on Koh Rong. XD
I brought along the coral identification guidebook and started looking at corals while Fia and Owen were looking at fish. After a while Fia found a huge net caught in a coral patch with a couple crabs stuck inside... we decided to free the crabs and bring the net away with us, but it proved to be way more difficult than anticipated. The net was tightly caught in a big chunk of dead coral, and it was full of sand so as soon as we started moving it the viz went down to 0. After trying to cut the coral loose for about 20 mins we realized we weren't gonna accomplish anything anytime soon so we pulled the whole thing up to the surface and managed to untangle the coral chunk from there. We managed to free one of the crabs while underwater, while the second was so tightly tangled up that we had to deal with it on the boat while coming back to Koh Sdach. In the end I managed to cut it free and release it under the unbelieving eyes of our two lifelong fishermen captains. :-P
Tomorrow Owen and I will go on a field-trip to Koh Kong...he has some Shallow Waters business to attend to while I have to sort out my visa situation instead. Visas always seem to have a problem with me.. doesn't matter in which country i am.  Turns out my electronic visa can't be exchanged for a business visa, so i have to cross the border and come back in with a new business visa.
Oh well.. it'll be a good excuse to do some travelling and see a new island...and it won't take more then a couple days anyway.
Only one week left before the next volunteers come in... and we're getting quite exited about it! I can't wait for the science officer to get here so i can bombard her with the million questions i've been asking myself for the mast month and a half... she'll probably start hating me right away.  :-P

Still no reply from all the job ads I e-mailed... I hate when this happens. I'm starting to accept the idea of having to come back to Europe for a month after this... :-(
Oh well... I'm sure I'll enjoy the food and Christmas atmosphere :-)

Until next time!

Marine Protection Program

Hello everyone,

Small post just to keep you up to date... today David and I took our fish, invertebrates and coral identification tests.. we passed. Tomorrow we'll probably do the practical part of the exam, but I won’t start worrying about it until we’re actually in the water… After that we’ll be finally ready to start surveying the area. Data will be abundant to say the least and I’m really curious as to how it will be sorted… too bad the Project Scientist isn't here so I’ll have to keep all my questions probably until October… In the meanwhile I've come up with a new coding system for all the data which should make it statistically easier to analyse (I think).  Another thing that I’ll have to put on hold for a while…
My Divemaster course also started today… Fia greeted me this morning with a huge box full of manuals and materials to start studying ASAP (and there go my 2 extra kg in my bag). Burned through the first 2 chapters this morning but after lunch I fell asleep like a log in the dive house so I didn't get much more done… I’m slowly taking all my swim tests as well, one per day, which include 15 min static swimming with hands out of the water, 800m snorkel swimming (just fins, no hands), complete scuba equipment exchange underwater, 100m tow of an unconscious diver to shore, etc…
The occasional internet connection that I managed to get on my phone decided to die completely today and I really can’t figure out if it’s a network problem or if there’s something wrong with my phone (which also doesn't charge the battery at times)…
The weather has been kind in the past 3 or 4 days… no rain at all… it’s been sunny but also very windy so at times the waves were just too strong to dive properly (which often also resulted in poor visibility)… but at least I've got a nice tan now :-P