Phi Phi orientation dives

Our first day of diving began with a briefing in the shop.  Andrew Hewett (left) is the proprietor of the Adventure Club on Phi Phi Island. He was instrumental in cleaning the local reefs after the 2004 tsunami. Now he runs an educational program for us in addition to having a local, environmentally minded dive shop.  

Andrew giving the orientation session before our first day of diving.

We have fantastic instructors and divemasters to lead us underwater.  Daphne (left of Andrew), Jade and Karen (right of Andrew).  On the far left is Sam the videographer.  Chris (another instructor) is represented by his toes on the bottom right.

Here is Chris showing Macy, Shanon, Raechel, and Shae how to set up their equipment.

On our first dive of the program, we descended to the reef and a venomous sea snake immediately swam between my legs.  I was not pleased.

A pair of large cuttlefish was nearby depositing eggs into a crevice under a  rock.

The first order of business was to give everyone a quick refresher on essential skills to be sure we're all up to speed.  Here is Daphne (bottom) giving demonstrations to Ajarn Wayne, Dom, Mor Mark, and Landon.

Many huge schools of fish were  seen today, such as these yellow snappers.

Here's a view of the sea floor with bubble coral on the left, Acropora coral to its right, and anemones upper right.  Lots of damsel fish are everywhere on the reef.

Scorpionfish have venomous spines and are so cryptic that we seldom see them, but they're quite common here.

I think this is Lexie.  It's difficult to determine who's who in underwater photos.

There were lots of fish everywhere you looked.  Here are a moorish idol, lattice butterflyfish, rip butterflyfish, black damsel, and others.

This octopus shared a hole with a white starfish.