The Great Phi Phi Clean Up.

Its the Kings birthday in Thailand today, so as a mark of respect the bars were closed last night, making it a quiet evening on party island. Much to the dismay of all the holidaymakers who come to PP to cane it for a few days.

Anyway, im diving, so none of that matters, but i took part in the great clean up that takes place each year.

My shop sends me and the other dive master Carlie, to represent our company of illegal workers to take part in the underwater cleaning section as a goodwill gesture to the local police. This meant joining about 25 other divers on a boat with a bag, diving for free and picking up anything we could find on the reefs.

Think of me as a kind of underwater Womble. Orinoco probably, he was definately my favourite.

First we went to Maya Bay, the beach of the ubiquitous "The Beach". With this beach getting over 500 visitors and 100+ boat trips a day you can imagine the reef being a bit dirty, but actually in an hours dive i only found one chocolate wrapper. Pretty easy job really. Great Uncle Bulgaria back on the boat was not happy , but as i speak no Thai and he speak no Inglish. I got away with it!!

Second dive was on the site of the Tsunami Memorial on the bay closest to the harbour. At first we just dived the memorial which is a house underwater and a couple of large stone plinths telling the story of those that perished, both from Thailand and the rest of the world on Boxing Day 2004.

With over 2000 dying on that day almost 4 years ago it was well worth the visit. And at 20m deep, quiet a moving experience. In the house there were 5 huge Lionfish, beautiful bur very dangerous. We didnt stay long needless to say.....

The cleanup continued and we found loads.....bottles, torches, umbrellas(!!), cigarettes. But some great diving with Dorys cousin from Finding Nemo, turtles, and all manner of Nudibranches.

A good day all round.. got to meet all the other divemasters from the other comapnies and we had a good day. Wedont make much of a difference, but every little helps and im glad i took part.

It continues tomorrow, so im looking forward to that, rumour has it we are transplanting Nemos. We have to look for orphan clown fish and take them to a new anemome somewhere else.

Which reminds me a story i heard today about Nemos.....The largest in the anemone will be the female and all others will be male. They largest male will be 20% smaller than the female and the next 20% smaller etcetc. If the female dies the largest male takes over as they are hermaphrodites. He becomes female and all the other males grow 20% accordingly. Any that fail to make the grade are ousted to live on their own.

Strange world eh!!

Signing off till tomorrows episode of Animal Planet.