Diving Tenerife ~ Divemaster intern update August 2012

During the month of August we said good bye to Jason & Joe after spending 8 weeks here in Tenerife and leaving with their Divemaster certifications and Joe with his Assistant Instructor level too.

They were both great students and divers and it was a pleasure to work with them. We wish them both well for the future and hope to see them both soon.

So we was then left with Suzy & Lucy who both decided on staying on for another 5 weeks to gain more experience and confidence in their new found certification.

Both girls have done a great job and have grow from strength to strength. They have been guiding dives, taking Scuba Reviews and also doing Discover Scuba Divers as part of the DSD Leader certification. this will also give them a great start for the Assistant Instructor cert and they will gain credits towards any Instructor levels they choose for the future.

What else has been happening at Amarilla Divers..... Well we was joined by new Intern Duncan who has just finished his Masters in Maths at Warwick University.

 

Duncan joined us as a Rescue Diver and Master Scuba Diver. He will be with us for 6 weeks during which time he will be diving lots :) and training for his Divemaster & Assistant Instructor Course.

The first day in the shop and Duncan was already signed up for a 'Worldwide Night Dive' organized by Marine Innova at Los Cristianos beach. he was joined by Neil, Colin, Billy, Lucy, Suzy & Chris and another 150 divers!!

The idea was to search at night for gift tags that offer prizes. Neil found a few and shared them out with group afterwards and then we all had Paella & Beer!!!  Neil also won a nice BIG box for his Camera equipment, Chris won a days water sports and Colin won a Debris collection bag !! :)

It was a great night dive with lots of fun and Duncan even ended up on Spanish TV after 24 hours on the island!!! Well done Duncan.

We have also had Billy back with us who we are proud to announce has now finished his Divemaster course with Neil and did a fantastic job with his skill circuit and stamina. We are so happy that he has finished as Billy has had to split his training between holidays, but worked hard and did us ALL proud.

Billy & Duncan were working together on their stamina and kit exchanges and managed some excellent scores with some very good skills too. 

We now say Ciao to Billy for a while but will keep on working with Duncan for his completion date.

We have had a very busy August with the return of some of our regular divers including our younger Bubblemakers, who have now turned Discover Scuba Divers and ventured in to Open Water. 

We also sadly said goodbye to Colin for a while at least, as he returns to the UK but I am sure we will see him soon and he is joining us in Egypt in January.

It has been a real blast throughout this whole month and we would like to say THANK YOU to the Amarilla Divers Dive Team.

Neil, Chris, Suzy, Lucy, Jason, Joe, Billy, Duncan, Colin & Mary.

Well done Guys......go Team AD

Diving Tenerife ~ Unexpected Divemaster Interns

Well Amarilla Divers was all prepared to start their summer Divemaster Intership program with Suzy & Jason and we was well on the way with their training.

All of a sudden we had a phone call from a rather crazy young lady called Lucy who was asking if we had any places available on our intern program, as she wanted to complete her Rescue Diver course & divemaster...

After a very strange chat on the phone and then bumping in to Lucy at the harbour whilst we was doing a Night diver Specialty, Lucy joined our Divemaster course the next day.

Lucy is a student at Plymouth University and is studying commercial Engineering. She has been diving for a while and has her HSE Commercial ticket as well as BSAC qualifications.

Lucy's first dive with Amarilla Divers was to El Puertito to see the turtles and she had a great dive there.

Since then Lucy has completed these courses.


PADI Rescue Diver
PADI Divemaster
PADI Enriched Air Nitrox

Lucy has been a delight to have in the shop and has not stopped laughing or smiling since day one. She has even decided to stay on for another 5 weeks with Suzy to get more experience of working as a Divemaster.

Lucy has been to many different dive sites, has been on night dives, boat dives, shore dives, wreck dives and even Mermaid dives, yes we will add some pictures to our Facebook page.

Next we have Joe who arrived a couple of days after Lucy, but was recommended to us by Lucy herself.

Joe arrived as a Rescue Diver too and is also from Plymouth Uni and is studying Marine Biology.

He went straight out for his first couple of dives and again ended up at El Puertito with the gorgeous Turtles. He also decided whilst here to set up a Urchin Control project on our house reef and so the Divemaster interns have been carefully setting this up and monitoring it's progress over the past few weeks.

Joe did an excellent map of Tabaiba whilst here and managed to get lots of diving in with lots of different dive sites. He also went on to complete his Assistant Instructor Course with Neil. This is something we offer our Interns FREE if they have been certified for a minimum of 6 months already.

Joe had a visit from his parents whilst here in Tenerife and we took them for a Discover Scuba Diver course with Neil and also Lucy had a friend Tash here at the same time, so we all went down to El Puertito to see the Turtles.

For more information about our Divemaster Internship programs you can contact Mary at mary@amarilladivers.com

Check back for more regular updates from Amarilla Divers and check out our Facebook page for pictures.

Diving Tenerife ~ Divemaster interns for July...Update

WOW was it really that long ago I updated our blog!!!

Well we have been busy busy with the Dive Master interns and also with the hotel Contracts, Discover Scuba Diver courses, rescue Diver Courses, Open Water course.............and Wedding Proposals!!! yes we had an underwater wedding proposal, but I will tell you about that in our next installment.

So During the end of June we ended up with the unexpected arrival of 2 new Divemaster Interns Lucy & Joe. Both these guys were HSE Commercial Divers before hand and Lucy had also been down the BSAC route, whilst Joe had started as PADI Open Water.

They both study at Plymouth University and Joe is actually studying for Marine Biology, which is great news.

Lucy & Joe joined Jason & Suzy to work through their rescue diver course and Divemaster courses too.

We started out with a couple of dives to El Puertito to see the Turtles. This is a great site to see and we now have a new baby turtle here too, which is lovely. We have been doing many Discover Scuba Diver courses here, as it is a very popular choice dive.


So here is a quick update on our Interns and what they have achieved over the past few weeks.

Jason came to us as a Non-diver and has now completed the following courses.

PADI Open Water
PADI Advanced Open Water
PADI Rescue
EFR primary Care
EFR Secondary Care
EFR AED's
PADI Divemaster
PADI Deep Diver
PADI Underwater Navigation
PADI Night Diver
PADI Enriched Air Diver
PADI Search & Recovery
PADI Master Scuba Diver.

He has racked up the 60 dives needed for Divemaster Certification and has been to many different dive sites. Jason has been shore diving, boat diving, night diving and snorkelling too. Jason has been very hands on in Amarilla Divers center and has been a great student. He has been doing lots of briefs and dive guiding and has improved his skills to a high standard.

We have seen huge growth in Jason and are proud to say he is nearly at the end of his Divemaster internship. He will then return to the UK and back to his day job.

Next we have Suzy who came to Amarilla Divers as a Rescue Diver. Suzy has completed the following courses.

PADI Divemaster
PADI Deep Diver
PADI underwater Navigation
PADI Night Diver
PADI Digital Underwater Photography.
PADI Search & Recovery
PADI Master Scuba Diver.

Suzy have completed 60 dives and is now staying with us for another 5 weeks to get some extra experience as a Qualified Divemaster.

Suzy has been a great student and is veru confident in the water. She has enjoyed using the camera and we hope now that she will take lots more photos of the underwater life in Tenerife.

Suzy has recently completed her 800 meter snorkel swim with a fantastic score and managed to beat all the other interns times. She was a little rocket in the water.

Suzy had a quick visit from her Dad Stephen whilst she was here in Tenerife and so we went for some nice pleasure dives with them both. 

 

So Jason now leaves us a Divemaster whilst Suzy is staying here for another 5 weeks to gain some more experience working as a DM with Amarilla Divers.

Check back to hear about Lucy & Joe.

See ya soon

Diving Tenerife ~ Shark Fin company Tenerife

OK so the latest news is that a new Company is to open up in Tenerife, this company is to be set up to offer a drying service for shark Fins cut from living sharks!

The company will face a lot of opposition from locals, dive centers and anyone with a sence of decency.

We urge anyone and everyone to sign this petetion and help us stop this company from starting.

Sharks are very inportant to the life cycle of the seas.

We need not kill sharks un-necessarily to make soup!!!....come on!!!



This company could also be detrimental to the tourist industry here in Tenerife.

If you agree that this should be stopping, then PLEASE help us to STOP this


SIGN HERE

Diving Tenerife ~ Divemaster Intern update for June 2012

So after a busy month a May and saying goodbye to 3 of our interns Dannii, Hannah & Manon, we was left with Chris & Alex.

 However we have also been joined by Suzy a Rescue Diver & Jason a non-diver.

So lets start with Alex who joined us in April.

He joined us as a non-diver and was previously working on the Cruise ships as a photographer. Alex has managed to complete lots of PADI courses whilst here with Amarilla Divers. Here is the courses Alex has completed

PADI Open Water
PADI Advanced Open Water
PADI Rescue
EFR primary Care
EFR Secondary Care
EFR AED's
PADI Divemaster
PADI Deep Diver
PADI Digital Underwater Photography
PADI underwater Navigation
PADI Night Diver
PADI Enriched Air Diver
PADI Master Scuba Diver.

He has also had over 70 dives at many different dive sites and has spent lots of time with his skill circuits, skill demonstration, theory exams, dive guiding, customer services, try dives and much more.

Alex has come a long way and we are very happy to send him off into the world if diving as a confident Divemaster. He will be leaving for Scotland this week and then will be travelling and we think his first stop will be Thailand.

The team at Amarilla Divers wish him the best of luck and safe diving. Well done Alex


Next we have Chris who also joined us in April from the North of Tenerife.

Chris came to Amarilla Divers as an open Water diver with only 5 dives. Chris is an avid surfer and normally spends most of his time on top of the water. This has changed since he joined our Divemaster Internship. Chris has been very busy whilst down South and has completed all the following courses.

PADI Advanced Open Water
PADI Rescue
EFR primary Care
EFR Secondary Care
EFR AED's
PADI Divemaster
PADI Deep Diver
PADI Digital Underwater Photography
PADI underwater Navigation
PADI Night Diver
PADI Enriched Air Diver
PADI Master Scuba Diver.

Chris has accumulated over 70 dives whilst on his internship and has been guiding dives, briefing dives, conducting try dives in the pool and much more. 


We now have 2 new Divemaster interns and we start with Jason, who is from the South Coast of the UK and came to Amarilla Divers as a referral...in both meanings.

Jason is a close friend of Mary's sister who recommended he join our team for the summer. He also had just completed a PADI referral from the UK where Jason completed the pool sessions and theory for the PADI Open Water course. He then joined us here for his open water dives and the rest of his PADI courses to meet requirements for Divemaster status.

We will be keeping you updated with his progress over the next few weeks.


Our latest divemaster intern to join our team is Suzy.

Last year we met Suzy' Dad Stephen who came over for some dives. Stephen met some of our divemaster interns at that time and mentioned that maybe Suzy would like to join the team for the summer as part of her Gap Year. 

Suzy is already trained to PADI Rescue Diver with 20 dives and will be spending around 6 weeks here at Amarilla Divers to complete her PADI DIvemaster certification and also her PADI Master Scuba Diver with the 5 PADI Specialties.

We will be updating the blog with the divemaster interns progress over the coming weeks.

If you would like to join our Divemaster Internship, or know someone who may be interested, then please contact Mary directly on mary@amarilladivers.com 

We have internship placements throughout the year and ALL training is FREE aswell as all the diving. Interns are responsible for their own material costs, PADI fees and living costs.

Check back soon.

Best Fishes...

Mary

Diving in Tenerife May 2012

WOW has it really been that long since I last blogged!!!! Well here is a quick round up of what has been happening at Amarilla Divers throughout May 2012.

You may have guessed we have been rather busy ! and yes we have been doing lots of diving and lots of courses. So lets start with the courses we have been completing.

We had some of our regular divers back for their Rescue Diver course and also some Specialties. Chris Kelly was here for 10 days and managed to complete his Rescue Diver, Deep, Navigation, Night, Project Aware & Digital Underwater Photography courses. All this amounted to Chris being able to achieve his Master Scuba Diver certification too. Well done Chris.

Chris was joined for his Rescue by Tanya & John who all did a great job and it was very lovely to them after spending a great week in Egypt back in January.

We also has a visit from Karen, Bob, Sam (Doc) & Gareth (Pat) during may and Pat & Doc also completed their Rescue Diver course and their Emergency First Response course too.

It has been a great month for course and had Gary doing his Open Water course, lots of Discover Scuba Diver courses, Advanced Open Water course with Sarah, Divemaster courses finished with Dannii, Hannah & Manon and also some Assistant Instructor courses with Dannii too.


We had lots of Specialties going on including Project Aware, Fish Identification, Deep, Night, Nitrox and lots more.


The Amarilla Divers Team has been collecting rubbish all month for their Dive Against Debris and managed to accumulation lots of debris and we are still logging this with Project Aware currently. We estimate that we have found over 60 Kgs of rubbish at various dive sites and this is only a small portion of the debris left in our oceans.  We will still be collecting on every dive and all our divers have been helping raise awareness of this cause.
















We have been to lots of dive sites this month but El Puertito has  been the favourite and here are some of of our divers enjoying seeing the Green back Turtles.

 

Divemaster Update.

OK So whats been happening with the divemasters here at Amarilla Divers in Tenerife!

Dannii who has been with us since October has completed her Divemaster course and also her Assistant instructor course. Dannii has been great to work with and has been a fantastic Dm and diver. She also completed 5 Specialties to reach her Master Scuba Diver certification too and now leaves Tenerife to travel to Thailand and then on to Australia & New Zealand. We are very proud of Danni and we wish her all the best of luck with her travels and we know we will see her again soon for her Instructors Course.

Well done Dannii xx

Hannah also completed her Divemaster course and went back to the UK for 2 weeks and is now back again and has decided to saty in Tenerife. She will be helping round the shop and gaining her 100 dives and experience in readiness for her Instructors course. Hannah managed all her courses from open Water through to DM and even some specialties too.

We also said goodbye for now 'abientot' to Manon after she finished her Divemaster course with Amarilla Divers too. Manon went away with all her courses to Divemaster and also her Master Scuba Diver certification after completing her Deep, Night, O2, Digital Underwater Photography, Nitrox and Underwater Navigator Specialties.

We are hoping that Manon may be back with us for the Summer as she is searching for a job now. We wish her all the best of luck and look forward tyo seeing her again soon.

Chris & Alex are alomost there and only have a few small tasks left to do before completing their Divemaster course and we will update you with that shortly.......well so long as Mary wakes up again !

Thanks for reading and if we have missed anything, I will update again !

Ciao
Safe Diving

Diving Tenerife ~ Life

So before we go in to the latest developments in Amarilla Divers, lets have a look at some of the dive sites and underwater life that we see here in Tenerife.

We are fortunate enough to have a great deal of life to see on our waters of the coast of Tenerife. We do not have much in the way of corals, like Egypt for instance, but we do get a fair share of fish, turtles and sting rays. We also have some stunning under water scenery and a few wrecks to visit too.

So what is our favourite type of site??

Well for me it is definitely the reefy volcanic areas of Abades Beach, Poris Beach & El Faro Del Poris. These sites have loads of life to see, lots of fauna to look at and a wreck ! yes it pretty much has everything in the one site.

Abades beach.

Depth 3-15 meters. All levels of diver. Beach entry.

This is a very good site for beginners and newly qualified divers, as well as for underwater photographers. This site offers so much life, its like swimming in an aquarium. The reef is beautiful and full of life. Angel Sharks and Rays live here, with the reef offering everything from Damsels to Moray Eels.

 

 The sea grass and soft corals on our volcanic rocks can be very colourful indeed and make for very good photographs. It is always a popular couple of sites for our divers old & new.

We of course have the popular turtle site El Puertito and have regular visits here for Digital Underwater Photography and also other training for Peak Performance Buoyancy courses.

The turtles here are of the Green Back variety and we have a family of around 7 turtles. We also noted recently that there are 2 new turtles at this site and one looks like a Logger head turtle, but we only caught a short glimpse of him :(

 El Puertito

Depth 8-14 meters. All Levels of diver. Beach entry.

A short drive away from our dive center and a short surface swim, brings you this fabulous experience of diving with a family of 6 Green Back Turtles. They are very inter-active and regularly come to investigate the divers. Also found here are Angel Shark (Nov-March) Trumpet Fish, Butterfly Ray and Moray Eels.

Turtle Videos on our YouTube page here.

 

We can often catch sight of the gorgeous Stingrays in Tenerife too and they are so graceful as they glide past us. Sometimes they are a little inquisitive and come in close, they are very beautiful  animals and we can often see them at night time too. 

We also have some nice wreck here in Tenerife and we recently visited El Condesito with a group of our regular divers.

There is not much left of El Condesito as the boat is fall apart as we speak, however this does not stop it from being full of life around the wreck and in the reef areas to the side.

 El Condesito

Depth 12-18 meters. All level of diver. Boat

This was a large coaster carrying a cargo of cement bags, which crashed into one of the walls at the lighthouse. Lying between 12-18 meters, the wreck is in advanced stages of decay, but still an exciting wreck to visit. The wreck is home to a family of Trumpet Fish and Octopus, with the top of the wreck surrounded by thousands of Sardines and frequently sting rays under the cement bags.

Tenerife has a selection of nice Star Fish too and we can often find them on the rocky areas or even in the sandy parts of the dive sites. Some are very large and colourful, whilst others are very tiny.

So here is a small selection of some of the life seen in our lovely waters. Enjoy :)