A new IDC started again and we wish all of our candidates good luck during this IDC. Today we’re conducting a skill circuit and we do some divemaster theory. Make sure you bring all your equipment and tomorrow we will have a look at the schedule for the next coming days and all the materials you need.
We had some great dives today at Chumpon. The deep dive to 40m on normal air was a bit cold because we hit the thermoclyne and the visibility went down to 2m. Nobody was really narced and you all did great on the simulated decompression stop. On the second dive we did the nitrox dive, we were the only boat there and the visibility was awesome ( 30m + ). Great job, see you all tomorrow for the search and recovery, multi level academics.
Yesterday the Instructor Exams for the Divemaster theory and Standards took place in the Montra Resort on Koh Tao. Everybody passed with great scores so congratulations to all of you !!! Good luck with your classroom presentation and your open water presentation today.
The Thai New Year (Thai: สงกรานต์ Songkran, from Sanskrit sankrānti “astrological passage”; Chinese: 潑水節) is celebrated every year from April 13 to April 15. It coincides with the New Year of many calendars of Southand Southeast Asia.
The date of the festival was originally set by astrological calculation, but it is now fixed. If these days fall on a weekend, the missed days off are taken on the weekdays immediately following. If they fall in the middle of the week, many Thai take off from the previous Friday until the following Monday. Songkran falls in the hottest time of the year in Thailand, at the end of the dry season. Until 1888 the Thai New Year was the beginning of the year in Thailand; thereafter 1 April was used until 1940. 1 January is now the beginning of the year. The traditional Thai New Year has been a national holiday since then.
The most obvious celebration of Songkran is the throwing of water. People roam the streets with containers of water or water guns, or post themselves at the side of roads with a garden hose and drench each other and passersby. This, however, was not always the main activity of this festival. Songkran was traditionally a time to visit and pay respects to elders, including family members, friends and neighbors.
Besides the throwing of water, people celebrating Songkran may also go to a wat (Buddhist monastery) to pray and give food to monks. They may also cleanse Buddha images from household shrines as well as Buddha images at monasteries by gently pouring water mixed with a Thai fragrance over them. It is believed that doing this will bring good luck and prosperity for the New Year. In many cities, such as Chiang Mai, the Buddha images from all of the city’s important monasteries are paraded through the streets so that people can toss water at them, ritually ‘bathing’ the images, as they pass by on ornately decorated floats. In northern Thailand, people may carry handfuls of sand to their neighborhood monastery in order to recompense the dirt that they have carried away on their feet during the rest of the year. The sand is then sculpted into stupa-shaped piles and decorated with colorful flags.
Some people make New Year resolutions - to refrain from bad behavior, or to do good things. Songkran is a time for cleaning and renewal. Besides washing household Buddha images, many Thais also take this opportunity to give their home a thorough cleaning.
The throwing of water originated as a way to pay respect to people, by gently pouring a small amount of lustral water on other people’s hands or over a shoulder as a sign of respect. Among young people the holiday evolved to include dousing strangers with water to relieve the heat, since April is the hottest month in Thailand (temperatures can rise to over 100°F or 40°C on some days). This has further evolved into water fights and splashing water over people riding in vehicles.
Nowadays, the emphasis is on fun and water-throwing rather than on the festival’s spiritual and religious aspects, which sometimes prompts complaints from traditionalists. In recent years there have been calls to moderate the festival to lessen the many alcohol-related road accidents as well as injuries attributed to extreme behavior such as water being thrown in the faces of traveling motorcyclists.
The water is meant as a symbol of washing all of the bad away and is sometimes filled with fragrant herbs.
Songkran is also celebrated in many places with a paegant in which young women demonstrate their beauty and unique talents, as judged by the audience. The level of financial support usually determines the winner, since, to show your support you must purchase necklaces which you place on your chosen girl.
We wish our IDC candidates ( Xavier Mendiolagaray from Spain, Callum Mulhern from England, Michael Knittel from Canada and Kim Diamond from England ) all the best with there Instructor Development Course. We did our first skill circuit and rescue assessment and you all looked spot on, keep up the good work. WE have 2 days off for the Songkran festival and we continue on the 15th. Have a great party and I will see you all on the 15th.
This year’s festival will host educational booths and discussions, land/underwater clean-up, with games and activities to raise money for this years Save Koh Tao Projects. All money raised through the event will go directly towards the funding of the three Save Koh Tao Branches. The theme of the 2009 festival is:
Say No to Plastic and Styrofoam!
The Underwater clean-up will be on the 21st and starts at 14:30.
The land clean-up will be starting at the same time from the festival area in Sairee, so if you are not attending the underwater clean-up please try to make it there.
Patrick from Asia Divers (083 394 7457) will be the leader for the clean-up so he will be taking care of getting the baskets to the boats and the rubbish off afterward. All the rubbish will go to the Asia Divers boat so it can be brought to the main pier in Mae Haad for sorting and weighing.
So far the following schools are signed up to have boats or help out: Asia Divers, Big Blue Diving, Crystal, New Heaven Dive School, Phoenix Divers, Sunshine, New Way Diving, Scuba Junction, Sairee Hut, Seashell and Secret Garden.
If you would like to join the underwater clean-up but don’t have a boat to go with, contact one of the above schools or contact Patrick on the morning of the clean-up.
Mr/Miss Save Koh Tao
About 30 people have signed up for this event, it will start at 20:00 on the 22nd, definitely be there for this one! If you are going to be on stage please be there a little bit earlier.
Other notes about the day:
* The Opening ceremony will be a big press event and a way to show the strength of our community. Please try to be there to show your support (some of the turtles will also be released at this time).
* The girls from the Miss Thailand Universe Pageant will be here, and the news groups following them, for the festival and will be releasing a few of the turtles on the 22nd at 15:00.
Save Koh Tao is a local community group which is divided into three branches;
- Education
- Land conservation
- Marine conservation
Save Koh Tao’s project goals in 2009 include:
* Develop Koh Tao in a way that is both environmentally and economically sustainable.
* Monitor and evaluate the local marine and land eco systems to identify problems or threats to these systems.
* Reduce negative impacts on the environment by working with the community, tourist industry and government to develop new methods of development, energy and business practices.
* Educate the local children and provide activities which encourage creativity, job and life skills and environmental awareness.
* Restore damaged areas and help to maintain the beauty and biodiversity of the island.
New Way Diving wishes our new DMT’s Stefan ( Germany ), Jim ( England ) and Mike ( Holland ) all the best with there Divemaster course and hopefully see you all on our next IDC. You all did very well with your first exams and skill circuit so keep on the good work.
OUCH!
Mooloolah carpenter Greg Robertson is recuperating in Nambour hospital after a sickening accident in which he speared himself in the groin area with a speargun at Coolum yesterday.
The drama unfolded off the rocks at Point Perry about 3.30pm when the 25 year old was pushed onto the speargun, which had been washed out of his hands by a wave.
The two metre long spear pierced his inside upper thigh, just millimetres from his genitals and femoral artery, and lodged several centimetres under the skin.
The first time spear fisherman had been enjoying a day at the beach with his girlfriend Jacinta Fisher and mates Casey Jensen and her fiance, who unscrewed the spear from the gun when the accident happened.
It remained lodged in place and sticking out from his body as paramedics gave pain relief and packed around the wound.
“A big wave knocked him into the rocks, he lost his spear and the spear rebounded off one of the rocks and got him right near the groin,” Casey said.
“The spear’s barbed on the end, so it’s locked in there. He got up and said ‘It’s in me, it’s in me!
“He’s ok now. He’s still conscious and talking.
“He’ll probably have a laugh about it in a week. We joked about it…we told them to not spear themselves and mistake themselves for a fish and then it actually happened.”
Brisbane holidaymakers Doug and Richard saw the accident happen and called triple 0.
“The girlfriend was holding him and we were all quite anxious because he was walking around the rocks and slipping and sliding with this spear hanging out and we’re yelling out, ‘Stop, don’t move, the ambulance is coming’,” Doug said.
Richard communicated with the two couples from the headland above.
“He seemed to be ok, but he was in shock,” he said.
“He was very close to being in real trouble.”
The Energex Community Rescue Helicopter dropped off two crew on the nearby rocks and then performed a winch rescue in front of hundreds of onlookers who had gathered for the spectacle.
Those who had stationed themselves right on the Point Perry lookout tower had the best view, as the chopper hovered right at their eyeline for the winch.
“The challenge for the crew was how to remove the two metre long spear to something that was manageable,” Energex crew member Dan King said.
“They stabilised the bit that was lodged in his leg and unscrewed the long pole so there was only six or seven inches sticking out.
“He certainly could have come off a lot worse than he did. Initially he did say that he thought he got washed into another rock, but when the wave drew back he realised, ‘Oh dear, there’s a big metal thing stuck in my leg’.
“Hopefully he’ll make a full recovery.
“And I asked him if he caught any fish and he didn’t. But if you are going to have one bump a year, you may as well get it out of the way of the first day of the year.”
Mr Robertson had surgery to remove the spear last night.
Divers find Ms Thailand’s heirloom ring
ALAMINOS CITY, Pangasinan, Philippines—For about an hour on Friday, five divers combed the waters off Clave Island in the Hundred Islands National Park to find a diamond ring owned by Miss Earth candidate Piyaporn Deejing of Thailand.
On Thursday, Deejing’s ring, a family heirloom, was dropped by a staffer of the beauty pageant while the candidates were visiting the Hundred Islands as part of the pageant’s activities to promote environmental concerns.
The search bore fruit as the ring was found and returned to Deejing on Friday night while she and the other contestants were in Capas, Tarlac.
Tearful contestant
The staff of the beauty pageant and personnel of the city government searched for the ring the moment it was reported missing but high tide prevented them from doing a thorough search.
Deejing turned gloomy and sat down crying, but she soon joined the other contestants in the activities.
She said the ring was important to the family, noting that she represents the third generation to wear it.
“My grandmother gave it to my aunt who then gave it to me,” she said. “It is not the price but the sentimental value of the ring that matters.”
Rey Livara, a staff member of the Alaminos City government, said Deejing hardly touched her breakfast the following day when the group had to leave for Tarlac, their next stop.
Talking to sand
“She really looked sad. We told her not to worry because we would do everything we could to find it,” Livara said.
Mayor Hernani Braganza promised Deejing that they would find the ring and return it to her.
On Friday, when the tide had receded, divers Leonil Mabanta, Leonardo Mapanaw, Romeo Donato, Paul Viray and Jun Eliseff returned to Clave Island to search for the ring.
The spot where the ring was dropped was marked with a rock. Around it, the divers sifted the sand using their hands and empty shells. “We were like crazy as we even talked to the sand, telling it to return the ring,” Viray said.
Reputation at stake
He said they wanted to find the ring “kasi nakakahiya kung hindi maibalik. Nakataya din pangalan ng Alaminos (because it was embarrassing if we failed to return it. Alaminos’ reputation was also at stake here.”
About 45 minutes later, Donato found the ring buried more than a foot deep, about half a meter where it was supposedly dropped.
On Friday night, the divers and Alaminos personnel traveled to Capas to hand over the ring to an ecstatic Deejing, who hugged the diver who found her ring.
The other candidates cheered as the divers gave her the ring at the lobby of the hotel where the candidates were staying.
Deejing said she thought she would never see the ring again.
“I called up my mother to tell her I lost the ring and she was screaming over the phone. I called her again [to tell her] that it had been found and she was so happy,” she said.
The 31-year-old German has blown away the competition in the nascent sport of “free diving,” in which people vie to see how long they can hold their breath underwater. Thanks to a large set of lungs and advanced training techniques, Sietas has pushed the boundaries of physical endurance far beyond what was thought possible.
Doctors once assumed brain damage was certain for anyone whose respiration stopped for more than three or four minutes. And yet, on June 7, in a swimming pool in Athens, Sietas submerged himself underwater for 10 minutes and 12 seconds, shattering the world record by more than a minute.
Sietas, a lanky fellow who stands 6-foot-4 and weighs 165 pounds, doesn’t appear any worse for the wear. “I’m a pioneer in my sport,” he said in an interview, relaxing at a cafe at this river city in northern Germany.
He’s taking a short break from training these days after a busy summer. In September, he sat in a plexiglass tank of water on the stage of “Live With Regis and Kelly” in New York and vied for the record in a slightly different category, in which he was allowed to soak up pure oxygen beforehand. This time, he held his breath for 17 minutes and 19 seconds before he bobbed to the surface.
“Tom, are you okay?” a nervous Kelly Ripa asked her German guest as he opened his mouth to gulp in fresh air.
“Much better,” he replied with a smirk.
In July in Hamburg, he set the world record for swimming the longest distance underwater without taking a breath: 700 feet, or almost nine lengths of the pool.
Like other extreme sports, free diving has exploded in popularity in recent years, attracting an estimated 10,000 competitors to organized events.
The sport draws on a long tradition of underwater breath-holding, including Asian pearl divers who swim to depths of 100 feet to harvest oysters and abalone. Even today, most free divers prefer to test their limits in the freedom of the ocean, instead of indoor pools.
Sietas discovered the sport in 2000 on a trip to Jamaica. He was scuba diving but was constricted from pain in his ears that got worse the deeper he went. Instructors taught him how to equalize the inner-ear pressure, a trick that worked so well he ditched his scuba tanks and began testing how deep he could go.
“I was so happy,” he said. “I could go down 15 to 20 meters” — 50 to 65 feet — “and the whole undersea world was just so wonderful.”
New Way IDC News
