Thursday, November 15, 2007

Day 42: J gets his advanced certification

Today marked the last day of my Advanced Open Water Diver course. A big "PADI high five" for me! I took the camera out for my "Underwater Photography Adventure Dive." The second dive we did was "Peak Performance Buoyancy" but we cruised right on through the exercises so as to get back to picture taking, which I was really enjoying. Looking back on the pictures, I can see that I should have more carefully followed the advice to grab a handhold before taking pictures--many of mine came out a little blurry.
1. Bida Nok, Ko Phi Phi, Thailand
63 feet for 55 minutes

Back to Bida Nok on the big boat. Western clownfish, Spotfin lionfish, a really cool leopard shark that was resting on the bottom until he finally got sick of us crouching all around him and swam off, and a beautiful giant cuttlefish. below...
Instructor Claire's lionfish and cuttlefish
an anenomefish by one of Claire's students
2. Bida Nai, Ko Phi Phi, Thailand
56 feet for 50 minutes

This was my bouyancy dive, so we spent a little while hovering in the water, and pushing eggs around with spoons, before we broke the eggs open, and fed the yolks to the fish, which was more fun.

Loads of giant Trevally, a really cool hermit crab, a yellow boxfish, which sort of looks like Spongebob Fishpants--all square with a stumpy little nose and tail.











5 comments:

Scott said...

Your posts create such an unbelieveable vacation. Not only am I so jealous of what you guys are going, we're stuck here in the cold New England cross scene. Have fun and keep blogging away. We're reading.

Tara said...

Yay...Julian I'm so proud of you.....that's awesome, hell go for dive master now!!! Great underwater pics too.

Unknown said...

Julian -- kudos to you on your diving accomplishments! Sounds like you're having the time of your life. I'm heading to Belize for a week of diving on Saturday. Can't wait. I'll let you know what I see 140 feet down in the Blue Hole :-).

J said...

Holy... 140 feet? I imagine you´d need a light to see anything at that depth? Or maybe everything is just blue, and that´s why they call it that. Have loads of fun, and yes definitely report back.

Anyhow, thanks everybody for the comments and well wishes. It´s great to hear from you all, and to know that we have an audience.

K said...

Tara, you know all about the Blue Hole at 140 ft. Those floating nudibranchs are a laugh-riot, under the influence of narcosis, that is.