Welcome Sonja!!

By djl_team, 18 July, 2011, No Comment

Hey, my name is Sonja and I’m one of the Open Water Scuba instructors at DJL Diving. When I first came to Thailand I immediately fell in love with the island, its culture and of course its diving. I’ve decided to pursue diving to a professional level and I’m nowadays instructing in English and German.
Working for DJL is good fun since our all goal is to make people have a great time and enjoy their holidays. No matter if there are customers who are still a bit anxious about diving, students on their way to get certified as Open Water divers or divers which are more advanced – DJL is offering the full range for all levels. Therefore, it’s a great experience being an instructor and seeing people losing their fear, getting more and more comfortable under water and enjoying the fascinating underwater world around Koh Tao.
But our team is not only consisting of instructors, without the support of all the others working in the shop, bar and restaurant, resort and hostel as well as on the taxi and boat it would be impossible to provide what makes DJL unique: an excellent customer oriented service in a friendly and welcoming atmosphere!

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DJL Minigolf evening

By djl_team, 14 July, 2011, No Comment

This week at DJL we decided to have mini-golf tournament with the instructors and staff taking on the divemaster trainees and a few of the days students. We all met for a few pre-round beverages after the days diving before heading down for the DJL Koh Tao open. It was a close contest with the instructors taking an early lead thanks to Simon ‘Tiger Woods’ Daunt sinking some amazing trick shots and Chris ‘Jack Nicklaus’ Smith with a hotly disputed hole in one early on. The divemasters then got into the swing of things (or maybe the beers were telling on the instructors) and hit back with some fine work from Niral ‘Happy Gilmore’ Patel and Dan ‘Chubs’ Cribben. With the contest in the balance it was left to Sonja ‘Shooter McGavin’ Geier to sink the winning shot for the instructors. We then headed back to the DJL pool bar where we disputed some of the decisions left on the course and how Si’s club head ‘fell’ off after a missed shot. Needless to say we all had a cracking time and the DMT’s challenging us to a re-match shortly.

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Equipment Maintenance

By Bubble, 9 July, 2011, No Comment

I’ve been a part of the DJL team for over a year now, i decided i should continue my education by enrolling in the BSAC Equipment Technician course. This is a great way to improve my prospects in the dive industry. Not only this but it means i can maintain DJL’s equipment, from servicing regulators to mending BCD’s, its very important the dive equipment is looked after and fixed appropriately. Being with DJL is part of a team, it’s important everyone works together to maintain the great spirit and quality we offer around the shop and in the water. Now i have something more to offer, my new skills and knowledge with equipment maintanence. In diving theres always going to be more to learn, i enjoy looking into different aspects that interest me to further my career.

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Cobia mistaken as shark at Hin Pee Wee

By Simon, 5 July, 2011, 1 Comment

During the morning of 26th DJL was doing their first dive of the day at one of the local deep dive sites Hin Pee Wee just off sairee beach. As we jumped in to the water and took a quick glance below we could see straight away we were in for a great dive as the visibility was amazing at least 30 meters. Once we had descended me and my open water group headed south just beyond the pinnacle as I looked below I noticed a fishing box net and a large shadow moving along the bottom. I turned to my student and pointed for them to look down, at first we thought it was a shark as I have seen black tips around that area many years ago, but I could not see any black on the tip of the dorsal fin and it was difficult to tell what it exactly it was as I was at 17m and the “shark” was at about 25m. During the dive we were being filmed and the videographer had caught the “shark” on camera, when we got back to the shop we checked the footage but we were still unclear what the un identified fish was and due to the shape of the face I was starting to believe it could be a very big Cobia. The following day DJL went to the same dive site again and there was another sighting in the same place. This morning I was teaching Deep Specialty with the Divemasters which was great so I could get deep and get a better glimpse! We were correct it was not a shark it was a Cobia. A Cobia is not from the Shark family but from the Tuna family this is due its extended elongated dorsal fin which means it denotes it to the Tuna family. Hopefully this cobia will keep hanging around at Hin Pee Wee because he’s very interesting to look at.

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IDC Candidate Review

By djl_team, 29 June, 2011, No Comment
PADI Instructor course Koh Tao Thailand

IDC and staff instructor candidates koh tao

INSTRUCTOR DEVELOPMENT COURSE- JUNE 2011 WITH DAVEY JONES’ LOCKER KOH TAO, THAILAND
COURSE DIRECTOR: PETER NIEUWHOF
The IDC course started with an extra two days preparation course, which consisted of a pool session, demonstrating all our skills (including rescue scenario), followed by an afternoon sitting all the divemaster lectures and exams. This enabled Peter to see what our strengths and weaknesses were before the initial course started this I personally thought was an excellent idea, also it broke the ice between the class before the whole course started.
The IDC course structure itself was perfect; we started our days at 8.45am, had plenty of breaks and were always finished by 4pm (5pm at the latest). This gave us plenty of time in the evening to prepare for the next day’s presentation, whether it was confined; open water; or academic. There is a lot to cover in the 2 ½ weeks, but I felt that there was ample time to practice things that I felt were not my strong point (i.e. physics).
Peter is a very relaxed instructor and is always open to questions, and definitely explains all your queries thoroughly and doesn’t mind if it takes hours, his teaching skills and diagrams make your learning more visual and this way I found worked for me. He was very supportive throughout the whole course and very positive towards his students, which I feel is detrimental to his role as a Course Director.
The DJL experience as a whole was amazing. The staff are very friendly and always talked to us and enquired about our progress. The resort itself is was situated perfectly and clean and tidy.
If I was to do this whole course over again, I wouldn’t even consider going anywhere else. I am so happy with the completion and even scores the examiners gave me, that I owe all this to Peter and have since completed my MSDT with him, gaining more experience from him with respect to speciality courses. I will definitely be recommending any of my friends considering doing their IDC, to go straight to Peter at DJL. The smaller class size means more personal tuition when it’s needed.
OVERALL EXPERIENCE 5* :)

Anna Proudfoot
PADI OWSI & EFRI (250060 MSDT pending)

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