Testimonials section added (and congratulations)
Firstly, I would like to offer my congratulations to diving and first aid students over the past couple of weeks. Firstly, congratulations to Andrew Clark and Maria Moodie for both obtaining their Advanced Open Water certification over Golden Week. Andrew Clark also achieved the Enriched Air, Night Diver and Deep Diver certifications. Julie Kawamura put in a storming performance to become the latest first-aid certified ALT in Okinawa, after completing her EFR course, along with a Care For Children package. And most recently, congratulations must go out to Andrew McGeorge, who on Monday became (at that time) Okinawa’s most recently certified PADI Open Water Diver. Congratulations to you all, and I hope your experiences have been educational and entertaining.
Well, I’ve decided to change my website a little. Gone is the dive buddy page as it was quite underwhelmed with a distinct lack of visitors. Instead is a new section which I hope will be much more popular with visitors. It is a testimonials section, where comments and reports will be put in from people who have taken part in my courses. Hopefully it will give you some varying perspectives on diving and learning to dive, and will entertain you a little in the process. There’s only one testimonial on there at the moment, but that is going to increase a lot as the days and weeks go by.
Bottom trawling to stop in the Southern Pacific
I try to pass on diving and ocean-related news whenever it rears its head, and here is a bit of excellent news to report. Last weekend, South Pacific nations agreed to cease bottom trawling by fishing boats. Bottom trawling is a process in which huge nets (over 60m across) are dropped to the bottom of the ocean and dragged along the bottom to colect fish. This is a highly destructive method of fishing and accounts for a huge amount of deep-sea coral breakage and death. A lot of huge coral is ripped up from the bottom and gets caught in the nets. Once the nets are pulled back in, the coral just gets thrown back into the ocean, dead and with decades of growth destroyed (see below):
A busy Golden Week, and CPR for midgets!
And a busy week since then, seeing as my responsibilities have increased at my workplace, becoming the senior educator in all of my subjects. Consequently, I am in charge of planning all of the classes, arranging homeworks, marking and making sure the syllabus is being followed. It’s a lot of work (more than it sounds) but I’m relishing the extra responsibility and control over my classes. It does mean that if it all goes wrong mid-way through the year, the blame stops with me, but I’m not intending that to happen!
But back to last week, and a series of public holidays collectively known as Golden Week in Japan. This consists of Showa Day (April 29th, but that is a Sunday so the Monday is taken as a holiday), Constitution Memorial Day (May 3rd), Green Day (May 4th) and Children’s Day (May 5th). Consequently, by taking 2 days of annual leave I managed to have 9 days away from work. I was determined to not waste it though and set up diving classes for almost every day of the week. A couple of days before Golden Week started, my first student (and one who was taking a whole range of classes with me) postponed his diving for 3 days as he wanted to go to another island drinking with friends. It was at short notice but I’m pretty tolerant and flexible so rearranged my schedule for him. Unfortunately I had to cancel my first 2 days of instructing due to a cold. And then my student for the 3rd day sent me an email overnight telling me that he couldn’t make the diving due to ill health. I may be sceptical, but I’m hoping he was ill rather than it being a self-inflicted illness! When I heard my customer for a Discover SCUBA experience the net day pulled out, I was feeling decidedly down. After gearing myself up for about 6 weeks for this hige week of diving, almost 4 days had gone and I hadn’t even touched the ocean. I had taught a first aid course to one customer on the Sunday afternoon, who came with one of the strangest questions I have heard so far in my short career. While covering the differences between child & adult CPR, the customer asked “What method should we use if we’re giving CPR to a midget?”. I have absolutely no idea how the customer managed to keep a straight face while they asked that question but that really threw me. Their thinking was that, although they may have a child-like body, their bones would be strong and like an adults. Well, we stopped for a coffee and I was looking on the net but failed to find anything. So if anyone out there is a nurse/paramedic trained in treated midgets/gravity-challenged/whatever-else people, let me know what protocol to follow so I can pass on the advice!
Dive logs 242-258 (April 21st - May 5th)
Here are some more divelogs, although you might notice a couple of dives missing from these logs. The reason for this is that they were dives in the pool, which are in my logbook, but which are really not interesting enough to add here. But if you like to see details of my dives, then sit back and read on…