The Green Fins Coordinators, Chloe and JJ, met the Sea Bees dive staff and customers at the Dive Shop in Ao Chalong on the busy Saturday morning. They were accompanied by the welcoming PR manager for the day’s activities.

Once onboard the Excalibur II they were greeted by the friendly dive staff and introduced to their assigned dive guides for the day. Following a hearty breakfast, the tourleader gave a thorough boat briefing paying attention to their “nothing goes overboard” rule, pointing out their many bins and also the safe direction to their very inviting sun decks.

On the way out through the Andaman Sea all dive guides gave their groups thorough briefings including great safety instructions and environmental policies such as no touch and careful buoyancy control. The rented equipment had plenty of clips to avoid any dangling kit and the boat’s anchor was quite rightly not used due the availability of mooring buoys. After a dive enjoyed by all, everyone retired to the top deck to enjoy a great lunch relaxing in the knowledge that no leftovers would be thrown into the sea to feed the fish.

During a lunch time snorkel JJ collected some 15 floating plastic bags from within the bay area. Musa, the boat engineer, pointed out another bag floating actually had two juvenile fish trapped inside. Once released they remained around the stern of the boat for some time until their swimbladders had a chance to readjust.

All members of the Sea Bees staff showed themselves to be environmentally conscious while maintaining an element of fun and above all, safety throughout the day.

Just before the second dive two young, freshly qualified divers volunteered themselves to do a Reef Watch. After a quick briefing by Chloe they popped the Reef Watch slates in their pockets and carried out a simple scientific survey for ongoing, worldwide monitoring which they both thoroughly enjoyed.
Following the dive, their dive guide enthusiastically went over their results and used the ID books available onboard to help identify the key species for the assessment.

The Sea Bees Staff proved themselves to be very accommodating and obviously care about and have a lot of respect for the marine environment. Green Fins is looking forward to receiving future Reef Watch data.

You can do a reef watch on your next dive here with Sea Bees Diving as well, just let your dive guide know and he/she will brief and show you what to do.