As divers we care about protecting the environment. One of the ways we can do this is by improving our diving skills such as good buoyancy control. To help with this, today we began our PADI Advanced Open Water training.
Our first divesite was Sebayur Kecil. Before the dive we did a buddy check to make sure all our equipment was correct. I learned a good way to remember how to perform a buddy check. “Breakfast With Rice And Fish”! This sentence helps us remember all the things we must check. BWRAF – BCD, weight belt, releases, air and final check.
At Sebayur Kecil we conducted a refresh dive, and practised our basic dive skills like mask and regulator clearing. Then we practised the skills from our Peak Performance Buoyancy speciality training module. Komodo National Park has a wonderful underwater environment, including coral reefs that are very sensitive to damage. During the Peak Performance Buoyancy training we learned how to improve our buoyancy control and avoid damaging the reef. I think this is a really important skills that all divers should learn. If you are interested you can find out more on the PADI Peak Performance Buoyancy webiste.
Our second dive was at Tatawa Besar. At this site we learned about drift diving. The buddy system is even more important when we are drift diving. We have to pay attention to the position of ourselves and our buddy, to make sure we don’t become separated. This is especially important in Komodo National Park, as there are many currents. Check out these useful drift diving tips that I found on ScubaDiving.
We saw our first manta at Tatawa Besar! It was a real surprise, it swam up behind us and overtook us so quickly! We didn’t even have time to take a photo. Hopefully we will see some more mantas soon.
We found a manta during our fish ID training at Mawan Island
Finally we went to Mawan Island. Here we learned about fish identification. With so many species of fish in Komodo National Park, we have to know what species we meet so that we can write it in our logbooks. We saw so many fish and other species. Turtles, blacktip reef sharks, lion fish, clown fish, angel fish and also a manta!! In this dive we also struggled with a really strong current, which reminded us again about the important safety tips we have been learning.
