Dubai American Academy Week Without Walls Divers certify!

Sunday and Monday the 5th and 6th of April marked the final open water dives for most of the DAA Week without walls group. Bright and early excited divers put together their equipment, with butterflies in their stomachs, feeling a bit nervous to make the transition from the Confined to the Open water environment.
Once everybody arrived we moved into the Pavilion Dive Centre Classroom where had 2 special friends from EDA visiting us. We met Reema Abbas and Rita Bento from the EDA team who gave us an very interesting talk about Marine Protected Areas and how we can work together to protect marine areas in the U.A.E protected .Rita the resident Marine Biologist shared with us some of her research and concluded with a beautiful video of some divers rescuing a school of sperm whales caught in fish nets with nothing but small scissors and tiny dive knives. The underlying message was that even with little or no tools we are able to make a huge difference as divers when it comes to protecting the underwater environment.
Next we went through a briefing of the skills we were going to do on the dives. We split into 2 groups where half of us went diving while the remainder of us spent time on the beach building the EDA logo with sand and material that we collected of the beach.
The conditions were great! We saw a huge sting ray, nudi branches, Arabian Yellow Bar Angels, Hermit Crabs, loads of different species of blennies and gobies, long spined urchins, STARFISH and about 5 different anemones with transparent anemone shrimps and 2 massive cuttlefish!
Some divers had some ear problems but most of them tried again the next day and managed to catch up
Congratulations Chiara, Mahnoor, Nadia, Alex, Heinrich, Senor Mauricio, Shawn, Dorothy, Naomi, Yaara and Ryan from DC for all certifying as PADI Open water divers on Monday!
Youssef managed to finish on Thursday and once Khaled and Parishae are over their colds they will be ready to try again!
We would like all of you to please share with us 2 things:
1. One thing you learned about yourself
2. And one thing you learned about nature during your open water course!

Now that you are all certified we are looking forward to be diving with you again in the near future! Keep watching Tawasul for more information on the next Advance Open water Course and National Geographic expedition to the Mighty Musandam!

See you in the Blue!

Ernst