Tomorrow morning we will be working on a buoyancy class! With the PADI Peak performance Buoyancy specialty you can really practice your "fishy" skills, improve your air consumption AND this will also benefit you if you are looking to take photos underwater too!

Quote of the day from a DMT whilst mapping: My pencil broke underwater so I had sharpen it with my teeth.
So.....what about your knife?
Ooh yeah.....forgot about that!
Hmmmm?!

So, Spring break here we come! Lots of Cano island trips happening this week and some great viz locally. Yesterday there was some great turtle spottings, octopus madness and lots of other reef action, so.....who wants in?

First Breathes Underwater...

New year, new divemaster trainees!!! So with the courses well underway, lots of diving and plenty of courses to help out on, nobody has time to rest....no maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration , there's always time to relax at the end of the day either on the beach round the corner at our local " la Ranchera"! Anyway, back to the diving bit. So as part of the new PADI divemaster program all trainees must conduct the discover scuba diving program so when 2 eager new students came in wanting to have their first breathes underwater Divemaster candidate Eric was assigned to help them out. After the video and paperwork we headed off to the pool where he showed good control, demonstrations of the skills and communication. Basic skills are always practiced for a Discover scuba class as once you head off to the ocean, everyone needs to understand the basics before actually diving down to 40ft! Next day, off to the ocean where I think I can guarantee there will be more fish than in the pool!!

Skills in the pool for the DIve master internships...

With the busiest week of the year finally over its time to jump back in the pool and polish up some of the skills of our divemaster interns. With 4 divemasters in the shop at the moment there is a lot of extra help and at this time of year there is always plenty to do. So yesterday we headed off to the pool after the morning dives to run our first skill circuit of the year. Not only know is there 20 skills to practice for scuba there are also additional skills for the skin diving portion. This is a good thing as once you are a qualified divemaster you can teach the skin diving program so it is good to get your skills up to demonstration standard. These include displacement clearing, blast clearing and surface dives. Luckily we have pools deep enough here in Manuel Antonio so we had fun practicing our diving demos. Just to make the afternoon just that little more fun I threw in the equipment exchange at the end which both students JT and Eric completed with ease. Off to the ocean again this morning and the pool again on the afternoon, but this time just assisting so they can relax just a little ; )

Back to the Ocean for the IDC

So another IDC here in Costa Rica is drawing to a close. We finish up in the pool this morning but yesterday we headed out to the ocean fro our final open water dives. To begin with we completed our adventures in diving workshop This gives all the students a chance to practice teaching and completing an adventure dive, with each student taking a different responsibility. We decided to work on the Deep dive portion, as it also gave the students more of a fun dive and a chance to blow some good bubbles. The visibility is slowing getting better after the storms which is a good sign and we managed to see some nice jack schools, moray eels amongst other things. For the open water presentations we headed to more protected shallower water, but unfortunately the current had picked up, which made it tricky for the students but certainly gave them a lesson in control of their class. Good job all round. We finished up with the 800m snorkel test, which is a good test of stamina.
After lunch we headed to the classroom for their final classroom presentations. To ad something interesting to the mix I put in two training aids, a rubber duck and a plastic bag. Its great to see everyone use their imagination a come up with different ways to use these objects even though they have completely different subjects! Well done guys! Now lets see how our final day ends up!!