Well after the last blog my face has recovered from the jellyfish sting. Just had to have my head in hot water for 2 hours top break down the toxins. Since then I have passed the reef ecology course so can now contribute to the research effort here. The past 2 days I have been helping with coral reef monitoring and have being getting a boat and travelling for about 30mins to some more remote dive sites. It means that the waters have very strong currents but with strong currents you get a hell of a lot of fish. On these dives I have been looking for nudibranchs (little colourful sea slugs like the picuture) and taking photos of them and recording there depth and substrate they are on. Also we have been laying out transects and counting different invertebrates, like starfish, along the transect. With the strong currents though its really hard to get the right buoyancy to stay close to the reef without touching it or that defies the point of being there if we are damaging the reef.

A few nights ago a few of us walked along the beach looking at all the different crabs and things that come out a night. Jokingly I flashed my torch o what looked to be a long bendy stick and shouted snake, then realized that it was a sea krait ( snake that spends most of its time in the sea but comes on land to lay eggs). So of course we took lots of pictures (although my battery died) and then we told some people back at the main hut. Some guy quickly runs off to get a box, some gloves, and a long pole and asks us to show us the snake as he is collecting them for research on how they can breathe underwater through there skin. Bearing in mind these snakes would kill you in 30mins he decides to do what I call a 'Steve Irwin' and grabs the snake by the tail and waves it about until he gets it in the box. The snake collector is going home in a week though so I may take over in my final week although I wouldn't have to collect the snakes if I didn't want to, I could just help with the research.

On the whole still have a fantastic time and its great to meet lots of new people (Indonesian, English, American and Canadian). Every weds we have a de-gas day where there is no diving so we just have a day of chilling on the beach. The night before that we have a bit of a party and the theme was Toga Hoga. However I had nothing to make a toga out of, so bought hammock and wrapped that around me, even though I was a little short on material.

Again just to say thanks for all the messages and keep posting them!!!

However the internet is really slow and expensive so I won't be able to reply to all if any of them.

Thankls Tom