Swimming with Sharks

Baby turtles very cute
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Ooooo exciting week of diving this week just seems to get better and better.  Weather is absolutley lovely again now sunny sunny sunny which makes the water visability brillant.  So this week did a night dive and a cave dive on Friday which was quite scary but very very good.  We normally leave for diving at 7.30am if going to Phi Phi but for the cave and night dive we left at 2pm, which was great having a lie in during the working week.  Went to an island called Koh Yawabon which has several caves running through it, even though you can swim through they are pitch black and you can't see the other side as quite long.  Went down about 3pm with out torches which I would like to say were no use at all.  I was a bit apprehensive at first as I entered the cave but soon started to enjoy it.  Really weird feeling being enclosed under water, even though done a swim through before it was a lot bigger and shorter so you could still see clearly.  Once we came out of the cave thankfully all of us safely and no one got stuck on the top we swam back round the island to the boat.  We then waited on the boat and watched the sunset which was great then got ready for our night dives.  At this point the sea is absolutley pitch black and only the boat lights for seeing.  We went in small groups to make it easier to stick together and not lose each other.  I was with Marie one of the conservation workers for projects abroad and Claire another volunteer.  As you get in and look below its quite spooky as you really can't see anything and as I said before the torches are not the best.  Once down we followed the island wall along trying to spot any nocturnal animals out and about but unfortunatley didn't really see anything.  Very different diving in the night compared to the day no where near as nice but glad I have done it.  When you see the torch beams from the other groups it looks like something from the X-Files very spooky.

View from marine biology centre
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Next day we went back to Maya Wall and Ao Nui, Maya Wall was were we had seen the turtles and octopus the other week.  This week after we finished our reef watch survey we had a fun dive just to see if we could spot anymore turtle.  Even better this week saw loads of sharks just swimming around near us.  At first just saw two black tips in the distance speed past us and was very pleased with that, but as we swam along we just kept seeing more and more some very small and some up to about 3ft.  You have to just float along or they get really scared and swim off into the rocks and dont come back out.  It was great just another great marine animal to tick off my list of ones I've swam with.

Me working hard cleaning turtle poo!!!!
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Also had a great trip to Phucket this week to the Marine Biology Centre there to have a presentation on Sea Turtles and do some work with injured and rescued turtles.  Firstly had a presentation about the different types of turtles and their habits, we were then shown around the breeding pools which had loads of baby sea turtles in there which are very cute.  They are all at different ages ready to be released into the wild.  We were also shown the bigger pool for the turtles that had been rescued from boating accidents or found ill on the beaches,  all fully grown some of them massive.  After looking around the aquarium and having lunch we went back to the pool with the rescue turtles in it and helped the team there clean it out.  It was great fun it was empty except for about 20 turtles just lounging around.  We had to clean the floor and walls with scrubbing brushes and hose down after.  When we came across a turtle that needed moving we were shown how to move them and literally had to just pick them up and place them somewhere else.  The smallest where very heavy but the big ones needed two to four people moving them didn't realise how heavy they would be.  When the pool was clean we then had to clean the turtles shells to get rid of the dirt that builds up on them.  So we set about giving them a good old scrub, really good day hot sweaty work but definatley the best days work going it was great.

Me with little baby turtle
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Well only off today (sunday) then back diving tommorrow will let you now what happens next week.  Can't believe only got 2 weeks left on the project before I'm off on my travels.  Oh forgot to bring my camera so will put up the pictures of the turtles in the week.