No rain, no wind, no cooler weather, great for the tourist but not s good for the corals. With 2010 looking to be the hottest year on record for the past 650000 years the nature around us gets affected. With the unusually hot weather the se temperature has also increased slowly over the year and at this time is reaching around 33-34 degrees Celsius. What an effect this is having on our coral reefs, coral bleaching (where the corals become really stressed and turn white) can be seen on every reef. From our reef surveys we can estimate that up to 70 % of the corals around the island have been affected. We hope for cooler weather once the summer is over.

Apart from the coral bleaching monitoring we have been conducting our regular marine conservation dives, helping the University of Songkra and the DMCR (Department of Marine and Costal Resources) in constructing coral reef nurseries from broken corals. The project was a great success with 4 other dive schools from Koh Tao also helping out. September saw the sinking of the Trident, a long time Koh Tao resident boat that had come to its final days above the water. The owner Jamie came back from the UK to see his old boat go down to create Koh Tao’s first wreck dive. The trident now lies at 30 meters off the south end of Shark Island. Hope you can join us there for a dive one day.