Day 191! Another day, another dives! Today was another double boat day. Thankfully, it was 3 dives instead of 4 because I was going to be diving on the night dive as well as the morning dives. It was a long and exhausting day, but well worth it!

It was another early start for me! But excitement was in the air because yesterday, two whale sharks were spotted at Chumphon Pinnacle in the afternoon… and that’s where we were headed for our first dive of the morning!

Today I was joining day 3 of an open water course, taught by Chelsea! I would be leading the dives today to get practice leading clients, checking their air, making sure they stayed on my level, and of course making sure I could get back to the boat.

There were only two students in today’s group, one apparently got sick. But I gave them both a dive briefing on what to expect and what I expect from the dive. I then gave them a quick fish ID to let them know what we’d be seeing on the dive and what hand signs I’d be giving for the fish I see.

We moored, geared up, and swam to the nearest buoy to guide our free descent down. We made our way to the southern most part of the Pinnacle and I directed us through bobbing and weaving through different pinnacles, through massive schools of fish, and over the fields of sea anemone.

Unfortunately, no whale sharks yet… but Chelsea was kind enough to use my GoPro and snag some cool shots while I was leading!

Since this was an open water group, we circled around the pinnacle going no lower than 18m. This made navigating the dive site super easy and I seamlessly found our buoy line for the end of the dive. This in turn helped me find the boat and we came right up next to the ladder of our boat! I was very proud of myself.

When we were coming up tho, I started to feel a bit queasy. I didn’t end up puking but I was pretty gassy. Something with equalizing and different pressure changes made me feel a bit unwell… I wasn’t sure if I felt up for the second dive, but after some time on the boat, water, and some snacks, I was ready for dive two!

I relinquished my leading job back to Chelsea so I could focus on having a nice dive and practicing deploying my SMB at the end of the dive.

The second dive was at HTMS Suphqirin, the wreck nearby the one we’ve been going to every morning.

We circled around the wreck and then made our way to No Name Pinnacle to finish off the dive. The visibility wasn’t great but it was still an enjoyable dive!

With these two dives in the books, I was now at 80 dives in total!! And we also had two new open water divers on our hands!

It was also my friend Albert’s last day on the island. He had already finished his DMT with Taco Shack, but he’s been working as a dive master for the past few weeks.

We went back to Taco and after helping wash all the gear, I got a chicken quesadilla. Usually I struggle a little eating it all… but not this time. I was really hungry and tired and ready to eat!

After finishing, I went right to my room, showered, and then fell asleep for the next two to three hours!

But when I woke up, I had to start reading my deep diving course. Tomorrow I’ll be getting deep dive certified and will be reaching a depth of around 40m! Pretty cool and pretty crazy!

I basically vegged out the rest of the afternoon, until 5:45pm rolled around. I headed back to Taco and packed a dive bag because I was night diving tonight as well!

Tonight’s night dive was at Pottery. This time, we actually saw a ton of wildlife!

We saw close to 10 blue spotted stingrays in all sorts of hiding spots, sleeping trigger fish, hermit crabs, and some pufferfish too! One of the pufferfish was pregnant, but when I tried to take a picture, a giant parrot fish became a camera hog and tried to strut its stuff in front of the camera. It was very funny but I unfortunately couldn’t get a good shot of the pufferfish.

After wrapping up the night dive, I headed for dinner at Taco Shack and then laid down in bed to finish reading my course material for tomorrow morning’s dives!

I’m looking forward to experiencing 40m and seeing what it’s all about. 40m is the maximum depth of recreational diving, I believe there’s more certifications to push the depth even more, but for now, this is good enough for me!

– Elie