The first 2 weeks of my Divemaster training have been busy, reviewing skills learned in previous courses, as well as learning a lot of new things as well.  I started with the Drift Diving specialty course, which is one of my favourite types of diving as I love feeling like I’m flying through the water, watching an underwater movie!

I’ve assisted with several courses, an Advanced Open Water, re-activate and an Open Water course.  Watching someone diving for the first time was fantastic, seeing him looking all around in amazement, and then surfacing and raving about how much he had enjoyed the experience – it was a great feeling helping someone discover the underwater world I love so much!

The other Divemaster trainee and I organised a Project AWARE beach clean up which was a great success with about 20 very dedicated people collecting rubbish on a very hot afternoon.  Around 15 large garbage bags of plastic, rope, bottles and other items that could hurt fish and animals if it ended up in the water was collected from the beach at Lembongan Bay and surrounding areas.

I’ve also started guiding dives – at the beginning I was quite anxious about finding enough things to point out to my divers, but with the abundance of interesting sea life at our dive sites it hasn’t been hard to keep them entertained!

Of course the highlight has been getting up close and personal with manta rays – no matter how many times I dive with them I’m always transfixed!  A pregnant female has been around the Manta Point dive site recently, which has been a particularly special experience.  One day she swam right over the top of where my instructor and I was hovering.. I was so excited!  I still have 4 weeks left of Divemaster training, but that will be hard to beat!