Posted on August 6, 2020
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I have always had a passion for swimming and water. Even though I wasn’t very good at it in the beginning, I improved until I managed to get onto the swim team at my old school. When my family moved here, they suggested I take my passion up a notch and try deep-sea diving. I had previously snorkeled in Egypt and other places and had really enjoyed it. I was given two possible options: doing it in Bangkok in a swimming pool or going to Rayong and doing it in the open water. Although I knew Bangkok was safer and closer to home, I decided to do it in Rayong, opting instead to experience the ocean’s natural beauty up close, something I had only glimpsed from the surface. The prerequisite knowledge and beginning tests were likely similar to Bangkok, but what really made Rayong worth it was the final test: diving in the ocean. I was struck by the raw and untouched beauty of the ocean and everything in it. I had never seen such biodiversity in any other environment as I did in the ocean. Although the dives mostly focused on testing, my instructor noticed my enthusiasm and allowed me as much time as possible to see marine life. Bad weather (a storm) prevented me from finishing the course and I had to wait almost six months before I could return to Rayong to get my certification.
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Once I had received my Open Water, I was thrilled and wanted to pursue more, although I didn’t really have as much time as I would have liked to dive. I stuck to snorkeling for a while until I heard of the Action Week trips for Y12. For a while now, NIST has offered a trip to Koh Tao for Y12 Action Week. To many participants, it is a fun and meaningful trip that involves learning about the reef in and around Koh Tao and participating in some conservation activities. However, to be able to go on the trip, you need an Advanced Open Water license. I decided to get my license and go on this trip to be able to continue diving.
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Initially, I had planned on going to the October trip, which was a trip in October meant for students to get their certifications before the trip and enjoy life on Koh Tao. However, some personal issues came up and I could no longer go on the trip. However, I still wanted to go on the trip in December, which meant that I had to get my license on my own. I chose to do my license on one of the long weekends in September, which was essentially the only time I could do the license without being overburdened by work and without missing school. Next, I had to find a dive center close to Bangkok so that I could leave straight after school and be back the night before school started again. I decided to go to Pattaya. This also meant that I had to do the content portion of the course on my own and spend my time on the boat learning the physical skills.
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After a long night driving to Pattaya using Google Maps, we went to the dive school and began with content. My brother, as he was coming along, decided to do his Open Water license while I was doing my Advanced, and we both did our location planning and initial content with the dive instructors. The goal of the Advanced course was to build on the skills developed in the Open Water course. I had to choose five skills to develop further, keeping in mind the ones I needed to do conservation. I chose to do Peak Performance Buoyancy, Drift Diving, Underwater Navigation, Deep Diving, and Wreck Diving. I also planned to do two dives the first day and three the second, to ensure that I finished all the necessary requirements.
Despite all of this planning, I had to go home and finish the skills assessments for at least two courses. In addition, it turned out that my dive instructor for the Open Water license did not teach me any navigational skills, even though they were part of the course. This meant that I had to learn those new skills as well while building on my knowledge for the advanced course. This was a challenge for me, considering that I still had to do my homework for school. Luckily, I managed to complete all of these tasks that night.
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As predicted, I managed to learn all of the skills, although I had a slight handicap with Peak Performance Buoyancy and Underwater Navigation. Even though I struggled slightly, I still really enjoyed the dives, especially seeing the wreck. We had to go about 30m below the surface of the water and it was almost completely covered by coral. I had never seen such biodiversity or colors. Even though I struggled a little to complete my certification, it was worth it to rekindle my passion for diving and excite me for the Koh Tao trip.
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To make the Koh Tao trip more meaningful for me, I learned that the reef had experienced a massive bleaching event just a few months prior, due to the increase in water temperature. This had caused the reef to become more susceptible to drupella snails, the crown-of-thorns, and other coral predators. This isn’t the first bleaching event that has occurred. Over the last 20 years, there has been a 90% decrease in the population of branching corals in the island’s largest bay, resulting in the creation of an algal reef and the subsequent loss in biodiversity. Without giving the corals a chance to recover, it’s predicted that most of the world’s corals will be gone by 2050.
This information really made me passionate about the trip and ready to make a direct impact. When I went on the Koh Tao trip in December, I wasn’t disappointed in the slightest. We learned a lot about coral and the marine ecosystem, and we also learned conservation techniques. The first dive we did was a research dive, which involves going across a certain section of the seafloor and measuring the numbers of certain organisms within this section. This required us to learn how to carefully create a section, count creatures, and do so without disrupting marine life. It involved using the skills from Underwater Navigation and Peak Performance Buoyancy. We also learned how to create coral nurseries using cement, however, we did not have enough time to actually transplant the coral into the nurseries. Lastly, we also collected coral predators such as the Crown-of-Thorns and drupella snails to slow down coral bleaching. In total, we collected 3,420 snails and 3 CoTs. The positive externalities of this trip were that every one of us now knew how to do some conservation, and would be better equipped to do similar activities in the future.
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However, after returning to Bangkok, I realized that these positive externalities might not amount to much. The 3,420 snails that we collected may sound like a lot, but there could be potentially hundreds of thousands of snails in and around the reefs of Koh Tao. Although it seemed to be a lot at the time, it hardly made a dent in the population. Also, as we were all slightly rusty at diving and this was our second dive of the trip, some of us still struggled with weighting and buoyancy. We only had one pair of small tongs per buddy group, so the person who was not using the tongs would have to use their hands to collect the snails. As inexperienced divers without the proper tools, many of us accidentally broke and damaged coral while trying to retrieve the snails. By doing so, we actually caused several negative externalities that could balance out the positive externalities. Upon more reflection, however, I realized that there was one positive externality that I hadn’t accounted for: passion. Everything we did, everything we learned, even the negative externalities that I found out about, they all made me as well as all the others on the trip more and more passionate about the ocean and its conservation. This trip helped to grow the community of global citizens who now know the impacts their lives have on the marine ecosystem and are now ready to help further in a meaningful way.