Study and Introduction day

Today we were introduced to our new education (Dive Con), plus we were introduced to our many new colleagues (so many names I need to learn). We received all our material for the education (extensive!). And we officially got at tab in the restaurant. We now get 15% discount on the already cheap food in the restaurant belonging to the dive resort. But we also get the 15% discount on equipment which is worth quite a lot. Dive equipment is really expensive, and not following the normal Thai prices.
We are 3 'newbies' in the DMT community; Greg from South Africa, Jennifer from Sweden and me. In total there are around 15-20 people currently taking a dive master education at Big Blue Diving - Big Blue is one of the biggest Dive Schools at Koh Tao.

As mentioned in previous blog entry, the other day we went to continue building a 'structure' under water; more specifically a lizard. It was a kind of 'team building day' with all the Dive Master trainees plus some of the Dive masters. At Koh Tao near the dive site called Twins, the different dive schools are creating a boyancy training area, where you can dive through, above or under certain obstacles placed at the bottom. It is being built for divers to practice their boyancy (boyancy is the ability to control your position in the water while diving). And boyancy is a difficult but core competence for all divers: controlling how deep you are in the water and staying there. It can be highly dangerous not to master this skill. If you e.g. are at 30 meters depth and start going up uncontrolled, it can lead to Decompression sickness (Danish: Dykkersyge) - and potentially it can be lethal. 'Bolting' to the surface as it is called does happen once in a while, since the air you have in you diving suit (BCD) will expand when you start going upwards and this will accelerate your speed to the surface. For non-divers it may seem weird, but the deeper you go, the more air you need to have in you BCD, since the air is compressed by the surrounding pressure from the water, and therefore the air in your BCD will give you less 'uplift'. Especially dive masters and dive master trainees experience decompressions illnesses; basically since they dive much more than most other people (up to 4-5 times a day)