Day 7 - A whole new world under the sea!

First day of training toward my PADI Open Water. I am introduced to a totally new and fascinating world. It is wicked. But...the better part is my instructor is a fit and handsome French Italian guy who looks like Beckham!

Spent the morning in class learning theory and the afternoon with confine water skills classes. The setting is much sweeter than back home in Vancouver. This condensed class allows students to finish the class components within 2 days and start on their 4 training dive at the reefs in the next day and a half. What's better than learning to dive in a tropical location at one of the 7th Wonders?

Pro-dive is a pretty good company to go diving with. With the price of $695 AUS, you can have the classes, 4 training dives, 5 other dives at the reefs on a 3-days-2-nights boat trip, and all the meals during you time on the boat. You can seat and relax to learn how to dive in a air-conditioned room with the pool where you do your confined water practice right outside of the classroom. Everything are well-organized and they even do pick-up and drop-off everyday. One down size is the Pro-Dive shop people try to up-sell you snorkelling and scuba equipments. And they are not very friendly when you are not buying much. You just have to learn how to say no. However, the instructor is totally AWESOME!!!!

You may or may not know that at the rate the reefs are being contaminated. There is estimation that, at this rate, the reefs in Australia will dispear in 30-40 years. Coral rely algae that grow on them to make food to live. However, when the temperature of the ocean raised too much, the algae starts to over-work and actually will toxicate the coral. Hence, the coral spit these algae out of their body. At the same time, the algae, which is the source of color of the coral, will leave the coral. This is a condition call, bleaching. Since the coral rely the product algae produced as food, they can't survive long after the algae is gone for a long period of time if the temperature do not return to normal. This is the negative effect of Global Warming to our lovely Reefs at Australia. If you haven't seen the reefs, I suggest you do it soon before it is too late!