Malapascua Diving

It’s official, TSD has been the inspiration for its first tattoo!

Alex Kang has been back to TSD three, or is it four times? On his last visit we recognized a familiar - yet different - shape on his ankle. Lo and behold, it was our thresher shark logo, tribalized into an amazing tattoo!

TSD Tattoo

Way to go Alex!

Thresher Shark Divers are very pleased to have completed our first ever IDC (Instructor Development Course). As well as being a historical event for TSD, it is a groundbreaking in being the first ever successful IDC held in its entirety on Malapascua.

Congratulations over and over to David and Sarah on passing their PADI Instructor Exam yesterday.

They have worked very hard over the last 2 weeks of the IDC and improved in leaps and bounds.

The IE (Instructor Exam), is the final part of the Instructor course when evaluators from PADI headquarters test all instructor candidates during a rigorous two day session. During the IE David and Sarah did us proud, scoring consistently high marks throughout. They were presented with their certificates of completion yesterday afternoon by George Wegmann, PADI Instructor Examiner.

L-R: John Taylor (Course Director), George Wegmann (PADI Instructor Examiner), David Vize (OWSI), Sarah King (OWSI), Mike Ferguson (IDC Staff), me (Andrea - IDC Staff)

Many thanks to John Taylor, our Course Director, and Mike our IDC Staff Instructor, for all their hard work with the candidates throughout the IDC, it really paid off. To round off a very successful IDC, David will remain to complete his Specialty Instructor ratings, and Charlie will be finishing her IDC Staff Instructor Course this week.

We had a great party last night, I think there will be some sore heads this morning….

What a great booze cruise last night. That had to rank one of our most fun.

The weather wasn’t ideal, but at least it didn’t rain and the participants certainly made up for it in terms of personality.

Mixing the first of many lethal buckets

I made my lethal rum bucket and it was passed around many times. We got to 13 straws in our patented drinking game, which is quite something. But this still did not beat Klaus’ group record of 23 straws and I doubt we ever will.

JN, jumping in for the first try of the first straw of the first bucket, its a slippery slope...

Ashley - what a man!

We stopped at Lighthouse and at first it seemed like no-one was going to venture into the sea, but as soon as Tzachir jumped in, there were girls from Singapore flying in thick and fast (usually after being pushed by Tzachir). No one escaped the wrath of Tzachir, including myself, despite being fully clothed.

She really didn't want to go in

WWF - should that be wrestling or wildlife?

Big smiles all around

Later that night at the Pub after a hearty dinner of steaks (U.S. Angus – yum!), we turned up the tunes and there was dancing late into the night…

It has been a pleasure having Rose and Lynn here from the UK and we are sad to say goodbye. They have been here 2 weeks and done nearly 80 dives between them. JN (their new adopted son) has shown them an incredible array of marine life – as well as the usual sharks and mantas they have seen a mimic, a stargazer, pygmies including a possible denise, endless nudis including a Dancing Doris (Hypselodoris) that was about one foot long (according to Lyn anyway!).

They both completed the Thresher Shark Specialty course which they enjoyed tremendously and had some great shark sightings on the course dives. Rose also did her Night Diver Specialty while she was here, both courses contributing towards her Master Scuba Diver rating.

We are looking forward to seeing your photos and hope to see you again sometime.

We welcome Course Director John Taylor and are proud to be the location for the FIRST EVER IDC HELD ON MALAPASCUA! John comes to us with many years experience as a CD and many successful students, including past, present and we hope future members of staff.  David and Sarah are our first two candidates, with our instructor Charlie doing her IDC Staff Instructor course and Mike and myself staffing.

Best of luck to them both!

Trevor returned from Puerto Galera having completed a series of tech dives in preparation for his upcoming search for wrecks and sharks in Malapascuan waters. His deepest was a dive to 90 meters on an industrial strength DPV. Boys and their toys – zooming round the canyons like teenagers….

This week is the main Malapascua Island fiesta of the year and everyone has been in high spirits.

This morning was the “Fluvial Parade” where all the boats from Malapascua get together and do a trip around the island in celebration of the Virgin Delos Desemapardos for whom the fiesta is in honor.

View from our boat Esther

Customers, staff and their families joined us on our boats Amy and Esther as we went around the island accompanied by the Malapascua marching band (though obviously not marching as they were on a boat) and lots of fireworks and bangers. Boats ranged in size from the biggest dive boats which were overflowing with people, decorations and palm fronds, down to tiny one-man fishing boats, some of which had been souped up with huge engines so they were almost taking off out of the water.

The small boats in the parade

Sally and Oliver – our two labradors – were also part of the procession and sniffed the air excitedly as they pulled at their leashes trying to jump in the water and swim all the way.

Last night we went into the community and presented an evening on conservation to the local children of Malapascua. We estimate a turnout of over 500 kids of all ages.

Project Aware sticker giveaway

We started the evening by giving out Project Aware information cards and stickers to the children – Carly was mobbed and eventually had to just throw everything into the crowd!

Next we showed a documentary about thresher sharks and Malapascua. Although the kids all have some inkling that the economy of their island depend on the elusive creature called the thresher shark, it is perhaps the first time they have seen what they actually look like underwater. The documentary highlights the beauty of the sharks but it also talks about the problems of dynamite fishing and destructive fishing methods that are prevalent all over Asia.

Because they probably did not understand most of what was said in the English documentary, next off was a talk in Cebuano, the local language. The talk reiterated some of the key points of the documentary, and tried to get across the importance of conservation and preservation of Malapascuan waters for their future.

Many of these kids are sons and daughters of the island fisherman who will become fishermen themselves one day. Our hope is that in educating these children, we can find a way to a) help them practice more sustainable forms of fishing and b) move into other areas to make a living, more specifically we emphasized tourism, which depends on preserving their environment.

The evening was rounded off with a showing of the Will Smith cartoon movie “Shark Tale,” which was received with huge cheers. This is particularly appropriate given that its main characters and sharks and cleaner wrasse! It was possibly the first time these children had ever seen a movie on a big screen and the looks of joy on their faces was something to behold.

Many thanks to Hippocampus for providing the kids with cakes and drinks and to Sunsplash for the projection facilities.

The evening was judged by all to be a big success and we hope to make this a regular event.

Stickers!

Another successful cleanup day for Dive for Earth day with a two part effort.

In the morning we cleaned up the beach collecting many sacks of rubbish. TSD staff and customers along with enthusiastic local children got well stuck in.

In the afternoon TSD offered free cleanup dives for all volunteers. We sent out 2 boats to different sites to collect rubbish. As the boats pulled out we were hit with a torrential downpour, but it cleared up quickly. As is usual, we luckily were NOT able to collect huge amount of rubbish as our dive sites were pretty darn clean! That is always good news.

The worst place was Cemetery where we do confined water. It seems an extraordinary amount of old plastic pipes had been swept into the sea in the recent storm and so we managed to collect all of those. Also after the storm there was a lot of surface debris so Gareth & Co went out in Big Jim and did their best to bring that in.

Participants from our Underwater Cleanup

Afterwards we gave out certificates and I mixed my usual lethal ‘Clean-Up Punch”. Many thanks to all our volunteers - customers, staff and locals alike.

Certificates and cocktails all around!