It was wonderful diving with these two awesome photographers, Amr and Mariz this week. They have a great eye to find things and have perfect buoyancy while taking photos! Great role models for the underwater photographers! These photos were taken by Amr here this past week. Amr A. Abdul-Majeed, Lives in Jeddah Saudi Arabia. He’s been an avid diver since 2009 and became an underwater photography instructor in 2011. He’s also a senior member in Aquaviewksa underwater photography group. Check out his website to see more of his photos:  http://www.amrmajeed.com/

Despite a bit of windy weather the diving conditions have been awesome. Some days we’re getting 25-30 meter vis and the water is still a nice 27-28 degrees. Here are a couple nice photos that Chen took this week.

It’s always nice to have a group sent here from our travel agent WILD WATER DIVING HOLIDAYS from Belgium. Plenty of sun, great diving, wonderful food and amazing new adventures made the holiday a success.

Fernando was on a “mission” this week, exploring the reefs and wrecks beyond recreational limits, going deeper and staying longer, successfully completing the PADI Tec 40 course with Sabine. Great job dealing with 3 tanks instead of 1 and learning about decompression procedures, gas shares on long hose and other new skills and equipment to play with. Serious fun over a short 3 days.

Wonderful to have a sneaky visit from Jeff Barker recently and just in time to earn a 900 t-shirt!

Congrats to Annete Schultz who who got her 300^th t-shirt with Chuck, Troy, Herbert and Mikael cheering her on!

Well it’s that time of year again… the water is cooling down and the extra layers of neoprene are coming out of the cupboard. But not all is bad, as the water cools down the dives heat up in a big way, with two amazing Thresher Shark sightings and a Giant Manta Ray in the Canyons! Check out the link to a great video made by our own Andy Xie: https://www.facebook.com/asia.divers/

Did you know that sea turtles don’t have sex chromosomes? Instead, sex is determined by temperature at which eggs incubate. In the case of green turtles, at 28oC, hatchlings develop into males; at 31oC the hatchlings grow into females. This has great implication in conservation.

To read more on the other six”wonders”, please see: http://sealifebaseproject.blogspot.com/2015/06/seven-sea-turtle-wonders.html
You can become a SeaLifeBase collaborator. WHAT is a “SeaLifeBase collaborator,” and WHO can be one? In a nutshell, SeaLifeBase collaborators are the people who help us by: a) sending or alerting us to references and photos, which we have not yet used; b) assembling data from published sources using a preformatted template; and/or c) verifying or correcting data that we have extracted and incorporated into the information system.  Some of them are — but not limited to — biologists, taxonomists, scientists, and other experts.  Some are aquarists, photographers, businessmen, and marine-life enthusiasts.  Truly, we welcome contributions from anybody who has a passion for marine life.

Puerto Galera’s signature wreck, the Alma Jane keeps divers happily entertained. Although she has begun to collapse a bit from years of weather, she is still a most lovely dive. The huge school of resident batfish, a couple resident frogfishes, many lionfish and trumpet fish

If you’re on Facebook check out Rob’s video of the Alma Jane: https://www.facebook.com/calypso.multimedia

A very warm welcome to Jose Jorge Rodriguez, Pedro Jose Orellana-Cuadra, and Antonio Del Rio who came here through our new travel agent in Spain, Rutas Loyangalani. It was good fun diving with these guys and we hope to see more divers from Spain here in the future. OLA!

China’s National Day Golden Week holiday comes to a fun filled end for Andy, Qun Qun and their group of very happy certified divers.

Good to have you back Jing Chen (Jane) &Tao Chen (Leo)! Jane finished off her AOW course with an awesome scooter dive while Leo was feeling quite energetic to complete Nitrox, Deep and DPV specialties. It’s been super fun and looking forward for your return of Dive Master training next time:)

The excitement of completing OW course overcame the rainy weather–congratulations to Qimeng Mu, Hengyu Li, Zijiao Long and Yingying Fu! It’s fate to meet here and go through everything together as a team. This is definitely just the beginning of a long term friendship as dive buddies.

You may have noticed that there was a lack posts with smiling candidates during the last IDC. No, it wasn’t because they were not happy, it was because they had asked to keep it under wraps so they could really concentrate on their studies. We’ll, all that study paid off today, so congratulations to Ian Diaper and Alex Siegel. If you have a keen eye you may have noticed a little give away in one of the photos, see if you can find it?