The business bits

I woke up with a puffy upper lip again this morning, it had occured once earlier in the week and I just chalked it up to irritation from the regulator piece on my lip during diving. Since we did not dive yesterday and only spent a minimal amount of time in the water swimming around, I guess it can not be the regulator or jelly fish. Maybe there is a bug in my room that likes to bite me in the middle of the night. It is a little uncomfortable to wake up with a puffy lip but at least it reduces back to a normal size in about 2 hours. I am sure my daily anti-histamine tablet is also helping. We reported down to the dive shop at 8:30 as usual to be told that the next 2 days will be very busy with tourists and we will not get any dive time but instead will be assisting with operations. Learning dive site management is an exercise for this course that will involve rotating through the dive shop. This includes assisting in front desk with new diver orientation and operations, equipment room with rental retrieval, sizing and transporting, boat operations, and compressor room with tank filling and transporting tanks. Jeff and I started with the equipment area which was fun to meet the new groups and assist them with setting up a crate for their equipment and sizing them for any rentals they needed. This also gave us an opportunity to get the guests excited to dive by asking them if they have ever been here and explaining the neat creatures they may encounter. Two children were also being certified which gave me an opportunity to give them high 5's for deciding to take the open water course and get them excited about some of the fish they will see. I explained how there are many different clown fish species here that they may see and some are the type that look just like Nemo, I also added in that the Nemo fish are my favorite. The huge smiles that brightened their faces were quite rewarding. The girl was 10 and is eligible for the junior certification with a 12 meter depth limit where as the boy is 12 and can receive a full certification to 18 meters. Both children were the same height and tall for their age which made sense given that their dad is a towering 6'9''. I chatted with another lady who was excited to see seahorses, I told her to make sure she tells this to her guides since they are really good at knowing where to spot certain creatures. I also told her about the first time I saw a sea horse and about the pigmy seahorse species here at these dive spots. Our next job was to be boat assistants, during this portion I was able to talk to a couple from England that have dear friends in Wisconsin in which they are visiting after this trip for a wedding. It truely is a small world. We were in charge of loading and unloading all of the equipment from the boats before and after the dive. While on the boat we helped to set up peoples equipment then assist getting them in the water. When the dive was over we helped people onto the boat and disassembled the equipment for them. At the end of the day the dive operations manager wanted to meet with all the interns. I imagined it was to give us a pep talk on helping out during these busy days with tourists. To my surprise it was about Project Aware which involves participating in helping perserve our marine life and habitat with different projects. The manager started the discussion alerting us to some recent footage on the internet of a person surfing on a whale shark's back. Whale sharks are beautiful, large creatures that mainly eat plankton. Recently I was diving in Honduras in which we had a few whale shark sightings where we slid in and snorkeled with these amazing marine animals. The rules of how we should behave around the sharks were very clear prior to when we entered the water. We were to be aware that though they are large creatures they are very docile and will quickly swim away or dip deep into the blue if they feel threatened. To allow a safe, inviting atmosphere we were all advised not to splash or swim with our arms to ensure not to scare them. There was also a limit of 8 snorkelers at one time in the water that were to carefully slide into the water and to always stay at least a few feet away from the whale shark. All of these precautions are made to allow generations to have the chance to observe such beautiful creatures in their natural habitat. A video of a person surfing on a whale shark's back is definitely the wrong message. It was also stating that groups were feedng the whale sharks which is detrimental to their long distance migration patterns. The whale shark discussion was a prelude to our Project Aware assignment for tomorrow which addresses another detrimental practice of hunting sharks. At our leisure we are to inform tourists about Project Aware and our petition to help protect the Philippines' Thresher shark population. I already have my script worked out in my mind which I think should be pretty simple since many divers here are willing and excited to be at the dive shop by 4:30 AM to have a chance to see the area's unique Thresher Sharks. Without protection these sharks may not continue to be around for long. Of course to continue the comparison to reality T.V., the person with the most petition signatures will recieve a nice polo shirt with reference to the project aware achievement along with the winners name. A little friendly competition amongst the interns will start tomorrow. Since the shop is incredibly busy both Jeff and I were not able to get on the night dive therefore my early evening consisted of catching up on typing which it seems there is less and less time for. Jeff was able to go on the night dive, everytime one of us gets to go on a "fun dive" we are listed on the board as an assistant divemaster. This basically leaves you feeling obligated to keep a close eye on all of the guests. This tends to take a bit of enjoyment out of the dive. He had a rather good dive, there were no problems with the divers and they got to see several crabs, a couple squid and lots of other little creatures. After he got back from his dive, we went to go and eat dinner at Maldito's. I ordered the bruschetta which was very good (it had melted cheese on top) and Jeff ordered the chicken cordon bleu. The cordon bleu turned out to be a very large helping and came with a big pile of mashed potatoes. He said it was the first time he has been completely full since we got here.