It’s Evin here reporting from the charming little island of Koh Tao in the gulf of Thailand. It’s been almost a month since I hopped on a plane and headed for Southeast Asia with my backpack in tow excited for my next adventure. After a wopping 30 hours of traveling via Car, Plane and ferry, I finally arrived on Koh Tao. After arriving I received my SSI Advanced scuba license and then began my internship with the New Heaven Reef Conservation Program. Normally the interns are much older university students so I was unsure of who I would hang out with, I was pleasantly surprised when I found out that almost every night the conservation team, that is made up of all the interns and volunteers, has dinner together and hangs out, weather its watching a movie or playing poker there is always something to do. My favorite activity we decided to do so far has been playing pirates. This entails renting multiple kayaks and going out into the bay and pushing each other off the kayaks, needless to say an extreme amount of laughing and shouting ensued. All in all the conservation team is a very diverse group of people who all have love of the ocean and its coral reefs.
Right now is an exciting time to be around on Koh Tao, all of the corals are getting ready to spawn, this only happens once a year and a few days after the full moon. It also means…. NIGHT DIVES! As you can tell I am really excited about this. It is a once in a lifetime opportunity to see the spawning, essentially once one of the coral starts to release eggs they all do, the eggs are pea sized and bright pink. Imagine being surrounded by that…
A typical day for me as an intern goes something like this:
9:00- Arrive at the dive shop, pack my dive bag, order breakfast and talk with other volunteers and interns
9:30- prepare for a lecture from Chad (the leader of the conservation team). The lectures are about many different subjects from seahorse surveys to work with the coral rope nurseries.
11:30- prepare to go get on the boat that will take us to our dive site for that day
12:30- do a briefing for the dive and what we are trying to accomplish for that day and then hop in the water and start the dive!
2:00- Finish the dive and pack up.
2:30- get back to the dive shop, clean equipment and enter any data taken
3:00- go to lunch, go take a nap, shower ect….
8:00- meet up with everyone for dinner and hanging out.