Blog from Tyler C
Writing this hiding from the heat that’s only getting warmer as the days go on. The rainy season on Koh Tao is over and the dry season is approaching with only my fan to keep me cool. But don’t worry many cold showers are being taken to try to stay cool.
I arrived on this island kind of lost and with very little idea of where I was going. The only thing that came to my mind was getting a taxi straight where I needed to go – even though I knew they were going to overcharge us severely. Upon arriving at New Heaven, we were greeted with a very warm welcome and a brief explanation on what our lives would be accompanied by in the next few weeks with me personally getting my advanced certification in two days, then shortly being thrown into the conservation with the rest of the interns and conservationists. Things started hard but I realized very quickly that everyone is very friend and that all I had to do was ask for them to show me around and how things work. Everyone was so happy to do that for me.
My mornings usually contain me heading over to New Heaven to get things ready for a day of reef work. This includes getting people’s stuff ready, including my own, and preparing the daily restoration items that will be used during the dive. Another thing that I actually really like to do is drain and refill the tanks with clean sea water. It’s just very calming in the morning and takes enough time for me to wake up and actually start things in the morning. Usually after that I get something to eat around the shop and head back to be off on the long tail to the boat that’s named King Kong 3 to start the dive. This usually consists of hitching corals to structures that we’ve made or even taking EMP surveys. I have learned so much that has to do with identifying types of fish and coral, it’s so cool. When I was first diving I had no idea what any type of fish were or the corals, but now I swim around and see all the butterfly fish and parrot fish. It’s been so much fun. After the dive we just have to clean up the gear and then we are done for the day. Unless we have turtle feeding duty which honestly is really easy. Just take the turtle out of its tank and feed it tuna that we cut up, apply its eye infection medicine, and its daily vitamins. Then after the turtle feeding we have to put away the gear. After all this the evening/night is all to myself and I can get dinner and just hang out with the cool friends that I have made so far.
Everything’s great here and I couldn’t have picked a better place 😀
