Night Diving

By djl_team, 3 December, 2011, No Comment

One of my favourite PADI courses to teach has got to be the advanced open water course, this is for many reasons but the main reason I love teaching it is because I get a chance to take my students on possibly their most exciting dive since their first ever dive. The Night dive!
As the sun starts to set we set off for the dive site, we get to the boat, set up our kit and have a dive briefing. Everyone who has never been on a night dive before seems a little bit on edge, not scared, but excited. As the sun starts to dip below the horizon we all get into our kits, do our buddy checks (remembering torches of course) and jump into the water. As we are jumping in with some natural light available we can look down onto the site and it already looks different, apart from being much darker you see lots of different fish down there.
I have two favourite night diving spots, one being the famous “White Rock”. Students come here for an exciting treat of great barracuda hunting by our torch light, rays swimming around looking for food, Cuttlefish floating in a ghostly manner over the sand and recently lots of sightings of sleeping turtles. The other spot I love for night dives is Hin Wong Bay, which we take the taxi over to the other side of the island for a shore dive. The great things about this site, it’s far away and most dive schools don’t go there at night because of its distance by boat, but with the taxi only 15 minutes away, which means we have the dive site all to ourselves! Also its maximum depth is around 10 meters which means nice long dives. Things we get to see here are a little different to White Rock also. We get to see lots of different crab species hiding in and around the rocks and corals. We almost always see the camouflage scorpion fish sat on the sand, Loads of rays hunting over the sand and if you look very hard you might even see an octopus! There are other great sites too but these two are my favourite and I usually try hard to get my students out to one of these sites. All around the island we are always in for a treat with the phosphorescent algae that glows with every movement you make leaving trails of stars behind your fins! Either one we go to everybody always has a great time and loads of things to talk about when we get back to the shop!

Schmike

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Sun Sun Sun and Whale Sharks…

By djl_team, 30 November, 2011, No Comment

4m Whaleshark Spotted at Chumpon Pinnacle

This November has seen a huge increase in the number of whale shark sightings around Koh Tao and we are wondering if this has been due to the lack of rain we were expecting. Maybe the whale sharks have always been around in November but because of the usual monsoon season we have been unable to see them. This month we have been extremely fortunate with the amazing sharks being seen on many of our open water courses and on more than one occasion, two sharks on one course or even dive. This is because the huge fish (they can grow up to 14 meters in length) have been spotted around our shallow dive sites that we use for our courses, such as Twins, White Rock and Hin Pee Wee. I was fortunate to teach an open water course last week where on dive 3, we went to an old World War ship wreck and found out that we were not the only one interested that day. We were accompanied for most of the dive by a 5-6 meter whale shark which of course the students loved. On dive 4 about an hour later we were on a second dive site, White Rock and as we were hanging around a really cool hawksbill turtle, it suddenly went dark and the shark was back for another half an hour with us. So forget what the weather report says, Koh Tao is scorching hot and the diving is as good as ever so hopefully we’ll see you soon!

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Another batch of graduating divemasters

By djl_team, 23 November, 2011, No Comment

Congratulations to Martin, Ryan and David on completing their divemaster course and surviving their snorkel test. DJL has a reputation for exciting snorkel tests, but seeing is believing so come down and watch!

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Instructor development

By djl_team, 19 November, 2011, No Comment

On the bright and sunny morning of the 29th of October, three intrepid individuals embarked on the next phase of their PADI Pro careers by undertaking thier IDC Course.

Lead by the vastly experienced course director, Pieter, students Kathryn, Emilio and Tom were like rabbits in the headlights looking at the course schedule in front of them.

Luckily Chris and Harry, current DJL instructors ,were taking their next step too and doing the staff instructor course, thus enabling them to pass on their knowledge and allay any fears the IDC candidates may have.

After a day of lectures and paperwork, the pool work began in earnest, on day 2. The candidates were given a multitude of skills to demonstrate as if teaching an open water course. Over the next few days of lectures and pool work, this was increased to full confined and open water presentations where Pieter and Chris and Harry brutally watched our every move, going through everything with a fine toothed comb.

Exams were also a constant with Pieter even bringing his own out to test us. We were examined on Physics of diving, Physiology of diving, the RDP dive planner table, the ERDP dive planner, Equipment and ……….. We were also examined on the PADI Standards and guidelines which is an open book exam. This was Emilio’s personal favourite.

Also after each confined pool session we practiced our rescue skills by doing rescue exercise number 7, unconscious diver on the surface which, to anyone that has done it, is a very exhausting skill.

As we concluded the IDC each candidate was feeling confident and at ease with the requirements of the IE.

The next day we completed our Emergency first Responder Instructor course with the resuscitation doll being incredibly well looked after.

Then came the mock IE for the following two days where everybody looked excellent in the water and achieved great scores in the exams.

So off to the IE we go.

Many thanks must go to Pieter for guiding us and passing on his valuable knowledge. Also to Chris and Harry who, while doing their staff, passed on valuable hints and tips to us all.

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DJL Koh Lipe is up and running!!!

By djl_team, 15 November, 2011, No Comment

Davy Jone’s Locker ’s branch in Koh Lipe is now up and running.

Koh Lipe is a small island in the Southern part of the Andaman sea. It is located in Satun Province, close to Langkawi island (Malaysia), about 60 Kilometres (38 miles) from the mainland. It is part of the Tarutao National Marine Park, a large group of over 70 islands, and also part of a smaller cluster of islands called the Butang Islands or Adang Archipelago.
Koh Lipe is famous for diving and snorkeling, and for the beautiful beaches and the relaxed atmosphere.
Our new office is right on the beach so that we can offer diving right off the beach or from our Rhib. DJL customers are now able to use their returning customer discount in Koh Lipe as well as on Koh Tao. We are looking forward to a long and prosperous new venture!

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