The team have been in Trinco for nearly a week now and we’ve all been very busy at the dive school. On Sunday, Ruadhan and Nico began their advanced open water diving qualifications with buoyancy and navigation dives with Praveen at Poseidon dive school with the rest of the team exploring Trinco town and the surrounding village of Nilaveli. We’re lucky enough to share our house with a lovely Sri Lankan man called Michael who cooks us delicious and interesting dinners each night, so we sourced some eggs for breakfast and a man on a tuk tuk to bring us lunch every day and food logistics are officially sorted!
On Monday, Rosie began her rescue diver and emergency first responder course with Erin while Nico and Ruadhan continued their advanced and Lily, Chloe, Paddy and Celine went out on the first scientific dives! The aim of diving in the first week was to familiarise all the team members with the equipment and methods underwater and this has been going really well. After the first scientific dives we started having a look at the pictures and videos and how we are going to analyse it.
Over the following few days, Nico and Ruadhan passed their advanced open waters with flying colours and Rosie also completed her rescue diver! On Wednesday, we sent 4 team members to the second site we intend to study, Pigeon Island. All four of them came back sunburnt but raving about the beautiful corals and black tip reef sharks swimming about. As the reefs are shallower around this area, data collection will be done by snorkelling which is a nice change from trying to have conversations 10 metres underwater!
After a week of diving and snorkelling, the team finally deserve a bit of time off so we’re off for dinner and drinks tonight to celebrate Nico’s birthday tomorrow! Work will start again on Saturday when Debbie, our academic advisor, reaches the end of her 2 days journey to Trinco and we begin the real data collection!