A review on recent Conservation events

Nearly 2019 already?

Somehow, we have all made it through the year and find ourselves at the end of October! If I had 100 baht for every time someone said ‘I can’t believe it’s October already’ I’d be hotfooting it to Aquamaster to splurge on some new Aqua Lung dive gear! And what a year it’s been- eco triumphs, competitions and some awesome diving… but more of that in a couple of months when we round up the year. We still have eco work to do and this month our focus has been on our PADI Divemaster Candidates. We have been really blessed with our recent intake of committed, keen, environmentally focused divers that want to learn as much as they can while they are with us.

Turtles

With this in mind we organised a trip to New Heaven Dive School for a presentation on Sharks and Turtles, and then had an opportunity to feed the baby turtles. This is potentially my favourite thing of this year!

The team ready to learn

At New Heaven Kirsty leads the eco team to take on baby turtles donated from DMCR (Department of Marine & Coastal Resources) to help them grow to an age where they have a better chance of survival when they are released. Only 1 in 1000 baby turtles make it to adulthood in the wild! Kirsty was fantastic at providing us with detailed information on shark and turtle life cycle, the challenges they face environmentally and what we can do to help. Especially with Koh Tao’s very own Whale Shark and Turtle ID projects. Then came the feeding. I have to warn you in advance that there are some super cute baby turtle pictures coming up.

Our Divemasters feeding the baby turtles

Keeping Koh Tao Clean

After this massive high we thought it was only right to give a little back to mother nature and do a beach and street clean of our local area. Our Master Divers Life winner, Katie, did an amazing job of organising this and as a team they collected just over 5 kgs! This is something we do on a weekly basis, but it felt even more special knowing that 50% of turtles are found to have ingested plastic at some point in their lives. On Koh Tao we are doing our best to make sure it isn’t happening here.

And last, but most definitely not least, we got our PADI Divemaster Candidates to quiz us. This was a fun replacement of my monthly eco quiz to give them the opportunity to mess with our team of certified PADI Instructors and Divemasters. Not only did they demonstrate their fantastic eco knowledge for the environment round, but also how devious they are when they created the ‘name that baby round’. Fantastic team work from them and we all had a great time!

All of this just goes to show what an amazing group of PADI Divemaster Candidates we have, and how committed they are to increasing their awareness of the environment, and being super PADI role models. Thank you – you guys rock!