After a few days off, we chose to dive again today and were rewarded for our patience. The ocean was flat so visibility greatly improved. We saw everything short of a whale shark. Our first dive at Bida Nai (inside island) treated us to at least two leopard sharks – I say at least two because we had four sightings total, but we’re pretty sure it was only two sharks. We were then treated to a beautiful dive of lionfish and nemofish and Indian Walker fish and a couple of swim throughs. Our safety stop was amidst small black tip reef sharks. Dive two was on the windward side of Phi Lay – a site called Palong South. This time we were treated to two turtles – one had a conch riding on it. We also saw a greater variety of nudibranchs on this dive than we’d seen so far. Oh, and an Octopus. I failed miserably in the photography department today, which is why we saw so much great stuff! Oh, and Andy, our instructor/divemaster/tour guide, came with us as well which might have added to the spotting of cool stuff!
Had a couple frustrating days. After seeing two brand new job listings on the PADI board yesterday, we visited both shops only to be told that they weren’t *really* looking for anybody. One of the shop managers even kind of made it sound like their shop totally didn’t have their crap together – not the best way to attract staff – AND talked badly of another shop which is totally unprofessional – in fact the shop he bad-mouthed was the same shop that we first applied to. It’s a shame because the other chap who works there who first greeted us was great. In the meantime, I’m starting to feel quite comfortable with the shop we’ve been diving with – we’ve chatted a bit with the three anglo staff members there and they’re all real nice. If we dive with them enough, who knows, maybe we’ll end up sticking there as permanent fixtures.
It’s low season, so the job thing is tough. And I’d gotten my hopes up a bit seeing as one shop was hiring I started thinking it would be nice to get jobs this early. In a couple months every single shop will be hiring.
Oh, I should really post about this: Andy’s best friend is Eel Toe Thumb guy. If you don’t know who Eel Toe Thumb Guy is, then watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHNpYxCSnUM. I’ll reserve all judgment - I’m sure the story actually hits much closer to home than some of us might care to admit or want to think about. Andy’s then girlfriend is the one who shot the video. The eel lives in the Similan Islands and is a friendly eel – would come out and happily take hot dogs from tour leaders and would rub himself on divers. Combination of the “friendly” eel having a “grumpy” day and as you can clearly see in the video, Toe Thumb Guy having a bit of a problem getting the hot dog out of the bag AND this eel, as all eels, having extraordinarily bad eyesight, led to a particularly bad day for Toe Thumb Guy. As Andy told us, they’d done this tons of times (think of how many harbor seals you’ve petted or how many crabs you’ve picked up) and it was very, very shitty luck. What got me the most about the story as if it wasn’t bad enough was the following detail – it wasn’t to the first set of jaws that he lost his thumb, it was to the second set. So the moral of the moray story is: don’t harass or feed the wild life! Didn’t you learn this in open water?
Oh, another tidbit of wisdom, I’ll pass along to all my diver friends – don’t watch where you put your knees in the sand, just don’t put your knees in the sand! We watched a scorpionfish today walk across the sand and bury himself and disappear to where I could not make it out at all – no classic telltale signs - no mouth, no eyeballs, nothing - and I’m still pretty sure that would have been a BIG ouchy if I’d knelt on it. After watching that, I did a lot of picture taking doing fin pivots (maybe that’s why all my pictures sucked). Oh and upon return to shop, we read up on a guy who’d been stung by a stonefish (or maybe it was a scorpionfish) – not my idea of a fun way to spend three months – starting with 1,000,000 units of penicillin over 6 days! Parental units, I apologize if this short episode causes you worry! Don’t worry, we’re not putting our knees down anywhere or feeding eels!
Ryan is now napping – it was my idea to nap and he stole it and I’m sitting at the bar typing! I’m hoping that we’ll decide to do more diving tomorrow and that I can redeem myself with the picture taking.
We saw:
A Leopard (zebra) Shark
A Turtle
A Pretty Nudibranch
And I didn't bother with the reef sharks - they're too squirly to photograph - you'll just have to take my word for it, unless Ryan got some good video. I got some good turtle video which I will post later!
Their leopard sharks look like nurse sharks with spots!
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