I thought this would happen, the daily blogs may turn into weekly blogs. As I said in my previous blog we have had this school group join us on the project. There are 3 leaders, Gordon who is from the company they booked the trip through, Rachel who is an English teacher at the school and her son Seb who lives in Australia teaching scuba diving but helps out on trips his mum organised. I had been at Tiga Ruang til Friday and we had seen a couple of turtles on the Thursday night, both laid over 100 eggs. Friday was such a relief to return to the village, I had been bitten, cut and burnt. I got back and chilled for a bit, but was booked in to take a group on a Snorkel survey. This was different to our usual surveys due to being more people to take with us. Instead of taking the Kayaks, we got a boat and it was more of a Snorkel Tour and if we saw a turtle we photographed it and recorded it. I did one of these every day til Tuesday, going to different locations around the islands. We saw some cool fish as well as several turtles. Some examples of interesting things we saw were: Porcupine Puffer Fish, Map Puffer Fish, Humphead Parrot Fish, Clown Fish, Black Tip Reef Shark and a Eagle Ray.
On one of the surveys when we got to one of our survey sights, Shark Point, there was a boat overturned. We all got out of the boat and helped try to turn the overturned boat the right way up. By standing all on one side of the boat eventually the boat flipped and then a couple of guys bucketed water that was inside the boat out of it until it was level. There was a french girl who was on the boat that flipped and she dropped her phone (that was in a waterproof bag) and her purse. Luckily for her there was a nearby divers boat and he managed to dive down and find it. One of the other surveys there was a lot of police boats about, they were doing inspections, our boat got checked everyone had to wear a life jacket (usually you don't have to). They checked our boatman's licence and sent us on our way. Another of the surveys we went to a place called D'Lagoon I hadn't been here before. It was a popular dive spot with some really nice coral. While we were there, a dive team was teaching a group. They use markers that float on the surface of the water to show where they are diving. Under the water are 2 rings, Dan and I saw this as a challenge to dive down and go through the upper ring. Dan went first and successfully went through, which meant pressure was on for me to do it first time as well. I got down okay and made it through the ring however, my ascent wasn't very graceful. A couple of the school kids attempted it too. One kid called Tom was brilliant, he had that innocently stupid comment behaviour which cracked me and the team up. The best thing he said was when he asked Ramona what the crackling you hear in your ears when you are snorkeling, I assumed it was air pressure. However, Tom's idea of what it could be was better, he thought it was fish farting. I later found out that sound is fish eating. A great thing about taking volunteers on survey with you is that you have more eyes to search for turtles and more people to take the photographs. However, it helps if the volunteer's turn the camera on, which is what happened when our Irish volunteer Seb found out when we came back from survey. He thought he'd got good photos of two turtles which he might have done if the camera was on. On Tuesday me and volunteer Rachel went on our usual survey to PIR in the Kayak. We were only out there for an hour and surveyed 6 turtles. However, during data analysis it showed we only had surveyed 4 turtles. One of the sightings was a duplicate sighting and the other Rachel had forgotten to turn the camera on when I passed it to her. I would have remembered to turn it on before giving it to her, but I was busy saving this large Chinese guy who was screaming for help. He had gone snorkeling and not gone that deep when all of a sudden started screaming for help, there was no one else around so I paddled over to him. When I got there he was spitting and hyper ventilating. I asked what was wrong, he said salt so guessing he swallowed sea water. I tried to get him into the kayak but he wasn't having it, I gave him my life jacket and he floated for a while. I asked him again to get into the kayak but he wouldn't. I decided to get him to hold onto a bit of string at the back of the kayak and paddled him to shore. He kept saying thank you and when we got to shore he found his kid and collapsed on a lilo. Not all heroes wear capes, some wear swimming shorts.
On the last day the school kids were with us I took a group to Romantic Beach to do a Beach Clean. There wasn't anything particularly romantic and Romantic Beach, there was very little shade and it was full of tourists. I reckon its called Romantic Beach as there isn't anything there to get distracted by as there are no stalls or facilities. When we got there it appeared to be quite clear of rubbish but as we started walking along we realised there was a fair bit.
We managed to fill four bin bags of litter, after that I let the guys have a swim and snorkel as it was their last day. The boatman stayed in the bay til 4 o'clock and then disappeared I got a bit worried as we had planned on him leaving with us at 4:30. Thankfully he came back for us at 4:30. For their last night their was a massive BBQ for the school group but Dan was at Tiga Ruang that night so missed out. There was so much satay chicken and fried squid, one of the best meals I'd had. After dinner I had my first ice cream since being on the island as well. The next morning it was time to say goodbye to the kids, hopefully stay in contact with Seb and go diving in Australia.
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