Hey there blogmasters and Blogmistress's!

Hello again blogmasters. Welcome to another instalment of fun filled tales from sunny turtle island! As you can see from the photo’s we have moved house. We have moved out of the wooden shed and into a larger bungalow with a separate small kitchen and bathroom, it is concrete so a bit more secure than the last place which had a huge hole under the bed! To save on wood once they had constructed the bed the mattress was supported by wooden slats around the edges, and in the middle was a gaping hole which led to outside, you only had to push up the mattress from underneath and you would be in our home! Not very safe considering all the expensive equipment we have. We have hung our hammock up outside, its lovely to sit there and read all afternoon. Even studying diving Physics and Physiology doesn’t seem to bad when you do it in a hammock!
I am coming towards the end of my divemasters, will be done by the end of the month. Had my Physics exam the other day, which wasn’t easy, but I passed. Have been assisting the instructors at the shop on Openwater and Advanced courses which is good fun and I am learning a lot. Kieran has been working at a school called Big Bubble and has also been offered some filming work with one of the production companies on the island so its all good news.
We now have the camera housing which we have only taken out a couple of times but the pictures we produced are great quality as you can see. These pictures were taken at two different dive sites, Chumporn Pinnacle which is about 40 minutes from Koh Tao by boat and Twins, which is closer. Both sites are beautiful and teeming with life. The weird looking flat grey fish are called Long finned Batfish, a school of them always hangs around one of the Buoy lines at Chumporn. The Saddleback Clownfish is a close relation of Nemo and lives in an anemone at Twins. There used to be a whole family there but legend has it that one day three of them disappeared and only one remained. No one knows what really happened, some say an anchor was dropped on them and they died (!) but the most likely explanation is that someone thought they looked pretty and took them home for their fish tank. But now it seems that the remaining one has somehow reproduced, as now there are two tiny babies. The small Pink anemone fish is also a cousin of Nemo and guardian of the anemone. On the darker picture there are Blue Angel fish and the white and yellow fish is called a Banner fish. As it has a long white ‘banner’ trailing from its head. I also saw my first turtle the other day while diving, I have seen them before but not 20 metres below the sea, it was really cool! It had two large grey fish attached to its back (Grey Remora’s) that I thought might be cleaning it but apparently they just cling on for a free ride!
We also had the pleasure of Lorna and Joe’s company for a few days when they came over from the mainland. I didn’t know they were coming as I hadn’t checked my e-mails and then randomly bumped into them in one of our favourite cafes! Anyway I took a few days off diving to party with them. Hope the English summer is treating you well Lornz! Also there are some pictures of our Italian friends Ana and Gully who have now sadly moved on from Koh Tao (as is always the way on an island like this) but we will keep in touch. Also our crazy Finnish friend Atte whose birthday it is today so we are having a small party in the tree house bar, Happy Daze.
Once my Divemaster is finished we are going to head over to the mainland to go to the tiger temple, really cannot wait! Stay tuned for some amazing pictures! We may also head up North to Chiang Mai for a few days but it has been raining a lot up there recently so we’ll have to check the forecast!
Well that’s all for now folks, keep in touch and stay happy. Have a great summer