Week 6 in Pez Maya– Monitoring, Newbies & Lionfishes

Week six started with a long weekend for us volunteers. Most of this was spent in Playa del Carmen, to celebrate the five week mark, and to say goodbye to Tegan and Niki. There were a few tears as they left us, but we can only hope that they are reading this, sitting at home with air-conditioning and running water, thinking of us and our bucket showers. We miss you!

While we were in Playa, a couple of people went to Cozumel to dive. Even though there was an incident, involving the decompression chamber (no-one from Pez Maya), everyone had a great time and saw lots of interesting fish and coral.

When we came back to base, on Sunday night, five new volunteers had arrived. They had already had a week in Tulum doing their confined dives for their Open Water course and completed it, along with Susan, this week!

The rest of us are progressing as well, with six of us monitoring so far! We have already managed to finish one of the sites, Paso Juana 10, and have moved on to the next one. Also this week, the people who are doing Rescue Diver have started their practical dives. This involves us flailing around in the water, pretending to panic and generally making a lot of noise while our brave divers attempt to rescue us.

As some of you might know, lionfish are a big problem in the Caribbean. We try to keep track of where and when we see them around here so we can go back and catch them, and this week we have caught two! The first one was caught on Saturday and had a juvenile Slippery Dick in its stomach, and the other one was caught on Wednesday. Other interesting sightings this week were a couple of turtles, loads of rays and a Great Hammerhead Shark!

Since the weather has allowed us to dive without any interruptions this week, the compressor has been running almost non-stop to supply us with air. Unfortunately, this led to both of the compressors breaking down Thursday night. The only good thing was that people were going to Punta Allen to teach and could bring the broken part with them, get it fixed and bring it back, so we have got at least one up and going again.

So life goes on as usual on our beach, and we are not complaining as it is a pretty damn good standard. We’ll get back to you next week; try not to miss us too much.

Peace and love, Crouz & Maja

Week 6 in Pez Maya– Monitoring, Newbies & Lionfishes