Day 67 - 2nd Tues - PADI Open Water Dive 4

Better do my log book! PADI Open Water Dive 4 completed! Two huge black and white birds circled above us over Koh Koun (the smaller island we dive next to) today. They are either hornbills or grey headed fish eagles, as far as I can tell from Google. Either are amazing!

It was raining when we surfaced and returned to the boat. Comparatively lightly, for here, but it got cold quickly. Then it poured as we picked up 3 other groups. Still, we had finished and it is a relief! I  had to ask Kim outright if we had passed our PADI as she forgot to mention it at the team meeting.

I fell asleep in the hammock and almost snored. I'm reading 'Stealing the Elf Kings Roses' by Diane Duane. Not too bad, very Si-Fi. I'm still reading Inferno too. After lunch I set up my underwater camera box finally. It seems to work, I'm a little hesitant though, my camera is worth more! 

We watched the much vaunted Seahorse documentary about Keelan whatisname. Interesting and saddening. Still not sure of the ethics though. Still, I guess the seahorses haven't got time to quibble. At least he poses some sort of solution and it was well done to gain access to the Chinese and Hong Kong market in this way (by selling tank bred, dead, dried seahorses). Cynically, I guess even if something went wrong mutation-wise with the breeding, they are actually so ignorant of the truth about seahorses that they would not notice for a while. As long as the bred ones were not released into the wild, it might be a path to follow. I did find it amusing that, of course, the 'delicacy' of seahorse soup was disgusting!

We also had a demo of seahorse survey methodology which was quite interesting. They survey in teams of five divers, 5mx10m area, divided in half so that one diver covers a 2.5m x10m area. Often the visibility is so poor they cannot see each other.  I did not anticipate, even though I had heard, how much the visibility can affect the dive quality. It's disconcerting now and will be disappointing in hindsight. 

Butterflies near the bungalow: a tortoiseshell type that I am sure is a leopard lacewing, according to Richard Seaman of the Cambodian Bugs blog. Brown/orange, with white and a black border. 

Picture by Richard Seaman.

Tended to my toes (again!). Pinkle-purr wanted to sit on my lap but he was very pinkle-poo today. Scrambled for charging space. Retired to hammock. ;o) les Francais (Laure, Elodie and Kevin) are in the hammocks next to me. It's muggy and damp.

Some of the others went swimming last night off Long Beach to see the bio-luminescence and had all their stuff stolen! iPhones, torches, cigarettes ;) etc!