Earth Day during our Whale Shark week

Whale Shark week…. sightings every day!!!!

Whale shark sighted at Blackhills with sonar tag

It’s been a very exciting week on Utila and there have been daily Whale Shark sightings all over the North and East sides of the island.  In the last week there have been several Whale Shark sightings all day long, also accompanied with Manta Rays and several Dolphin sightings on the boat rides, even our April Instructor group who had been studying hard the last 2 weeks were rewarded in their Monday fun dive with a sighting.  This magnificent Whale shark was photographed by PADI Instructor Michael Bichsel, during a surface interval at Blackhills dive site on the East side of Utila, on April 18th. It was estimated to be 40-45ft/12-13mt long. What’s interesting with this photo is the Whale shark has a SPOT (Smart Position Only Tag) tag attached to it, and you can actually track this creatures movements on this site http://www.seaturtle.org/tracking/?tag_id=50768.  This data is collected by scientists to further their understanding of the Whale sharks movement and behaviours.

As yesterday was Earth Day is seems fitting that we are reminded this week of the beauty that the Oceans provide us, and just how dependent we are upon them for survival and enjoyment.  This year we have been working with PADI’s Project Aware and the University of Queensland, on their Coral Watch program, and UDC Instructor Madeline Thiebauld has been working hard with our Divemasters to survey corals around the island on a weekly basis and upload the data to the UofQ coral database.  This data will also help us on a local level to determine the state of corals at certain dive sites and how we can best protect them.

Another outstanding performance from our April Instructor candidates!!!!!

Now we're Instructors!!!!

Congratulations to our April Instructor candidates and IDC staff from Utila, at the completion of the PADI Instructor Exams at the Mango Inn pool celebrating their success and continuing our success rate in 2010.   You see many smiling faces in this photo, taken at 5pm on Wednesday 21st April, and rightly so as all our candidates worked so hard to reach this milestone in their dive careers, now the faces on Thursday am told a different story after an amazing party night and celebration!