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