With Christmas out of the way and the New Year on the horizon Octopus Diving is wishing everyone a brilliant festive season.

Team Octopus enjoyed an awesome Christmas roast, with champagne and all the goodies.

But now its back to the diving and Octopus Diving is as busy as ever as we enter the New Year.

Courses continue, and we would like to congratulate Sofia and Joey for passing the PADI Open Water Course on Xmas Eve.

We also have three other Open Water candidates that are on course to be finished before 2009 is upon us.

As a Dive Centre we are always looking for ways to give back to the nature that provides us with our livelihood and so it is with great pride that we can announce that Octopus Diving will be working with the St Martin Marine Reserve to study the marine turtles around the island. Look out for more news on this in the New Year.

Enjoy the festive season and have a great New Year.

Team Octopus

BEFORE AND AFTER PHOTOS OF SHOP

Well... I am really happy to finally be posting pictures of the shop before and after our renovations. As many of you know Chris and I bought the business on the 1st of June, and since then we have come leaps and bounds in renovating the shop and generally raising everything to our extremely high standards.

So... BEFORE outside.

And AFTER outside.

What do you think? I think it is awsome!

(Sally blogging)

As promised.... here's a photo of Kelly

Here is... from the left (Kelly, Maxime, Chris, Me and a really weird looking Craig). You can see that we eat healthy lunches of ribs, chicken and macaroni and cheese!

Thanks for all your help Kelly, let us know if you ever need a reference!

PS you left your bathingsuit! Max tried it on, but it didn't look right :)

Coolest Octopus Ever!

Hey everyone. I just got back from diving Le Pont (the Bridge) and it was a really cool dive. Ijust wanted to blog about it right away. I was diving with Camilla, Jim and Justin (from Wilton, Massachusettes) and there was just so much to see. We saw a huge stingray, a giant Loggerhead turtle, loads of lobsters, and... the coolest octopus ever! Of course, it is just my luck that I took my camera out yesterday and not today, but I don't care. Even though I may not have a physical picture of the coolest octopus ever, I have a mental one that I will carry forever.

An octopus (plural octopuses, octopi, and octopodes) is an amazing creature. Did you know that they can grow up to 1.3 meters? Or that they can lose a limb in order to avoid an attack by a predator? They are also amazing at camouflaging themselves and can change colors instantaneously. The one we saw today was the Common Octopus, or Octopus vulgaris.... (I don't think that the latin name is very suiting). The Octopus was so awsome today because it was all splayed out on the side of one of the little wrecks at Le Pont. You could see all eight limbs and the giant bulbous head with pink eyes. At first it was a rusty brown color, but then, once it saw us, it flashed white... green... brown... white. It was too cool. I think I scared my divers as I screeched in my regulator.

Other news.... We would like to congratulate Kelly for finishing her Divemaster and entering the wonderful world of diving professionals. She did a fantastic job during her internship here, and we will miss her. If she sends me the photo she took of all five of us, (Craig, Max, Chris, myself and Kelly) then I will post it for all of you to see.

I also have some photos to post of the dive we did yesterday (when I did have my camera) at the Gregory. The visibility was just perfect, about 100ft, and everyone had a great dive. We were diving with Emma (from Wales), Karen and Jack (from the American University of the Caribbean) and Dominic (from Britanny, France).

From this photo you can see how great the visibility was. The Gregory is an upside down barge and lies at about 55 feet.

Are those Chris' long legs? Yes.... I believe they are. The man in black!

This was actually taken at Le Pont. There are always so many lobsters here... and big one's too! But we never ever take any, or else you wouldn't be able to see them when you dive with us.

This hawksbille turtle was posing for me, for ages. You can tell he is a Hawksbill because of his "beak" and also the darker shade of green on his shell.

OK. I'm filling tanks now, so I better get back to it! We cascade fill here, (that means that instead of turning the compressor on and off everytime a tank is full, we close one tank, and then immediately open the next tank, without turning the compressor on and off). Anyway... with cascade filling you have to be attentive or you will miss it, and the compressor will automatically shut off at 3,400 PSI. Did you know that by cascade filling you can extend the life of you compressor by years? I didn't think that you did know that, I wasn't aware of it either, until I purchased my own compressor and found out how expensive they are! Now I am extremely aware of anything that will extend it's life.

Thanks for reading.... I should really say.... thanks for reading, mom and dad. As I think they are the only person that do read my blog. So thanks mom and dad. Miss you and talk to you later!

(this blog was written by Sally).

Parents visiting, new sign... diving!

I haven't written anything since Thanksgiving....sorry. I don't want anyone to think that is because we haven't been diving, but I was a little distracted as I had a visit from my parents.

As you can see in the picture above there is (from the left) Chris, me!, my dad (Wes) and my mom (Gilliann). They had a great time here and it was really nice to see them. A little hard to juggle running a business, diving all the time, and having fun with my folks, but we managed it. My parents don't dive. My mom is just a happy snorkeler, which she did a lot of while here with us, and my dad had a bad experience once. He went on a resort course (Discover Scuba Dive) in Mexico... I think... and he couldn't equalize properly. His group of divers was really big and the instructor didn't take any notice of him, so he kept descending as he didn't know what else to do. In consequence he had a really painful ear.

For me, hearing stories like this really makes me cringe. It is criminal the lack of safety and attention that some diving centers and instructors give their divers. I always try and teach my students to make safety their number one priority when diving. Although there are thousands of fantastic, safety conscious diving centers out there, there are also some that are way below par. So.... if the tanks are out of hydro date, ASK FOR A DIFFERENT ONE. Take a look at the compressor, is it clean? Ask them when they last changed the filter. Look at the boat. Our motto is... if the boat looks like *&#%! then it probably is!!! For Chris and myself, one of the best parts about finally owning our own center is we get to have the equipment, the boat, the compressor and everything else at the extremely high standard that we want. Hey... we are diving with the air and using the tanks a lot more than our customers are, so you can guarantee that we want good, clean air! It is more expensive for us, but worth it!

Anyway... enough rambling about safety, I'm sure you want to hear about the diving! We went to Tintamarre yesterday with a group of four divers. It was fantastic. The waves were a little large on the way out, but Max made everyone feel safe on the boat. Once we were under though, there was no current, great vis and lots to see. At the tug boat we saw.... a big loggerhead turtle, then immediately after there was a nurse shark just cruising by. Then once we got over the reef and headed towards the tugboat we saw a giant southern stingray in the sand, followed by an eagle ray right above it. It was a great dive!

Craig has been teaching like crazy... not like a crazy man... just lots of classes. Well, maybe he is a little crazy sometimes, but in a good way. He's really into spontaneous bouts of singing and dancing at the moment which is always entertaining. Here is a picture of Craig teaching his students below.

We are also really happy to have Kelly here at the moment. Kelly is completing here Divemaster with us, she is from North Carolina and is well on her way to joining the professional world of diving. She is definitely a great addition to the team while she is here, and I appreciate it as it is always nice to have another girl around!

Alright, enough for now. I want to post some before and after shots of the shop, but am waiting until tomorrow as we should be getting some new signs for the shop today. Nice.... new.... sign designed by Julien. He does all our fliers, business cards and now sign. The sign will look like the one below, just a whole lot bigger!

It is ten, and the divers and snorkelers are back in about an hour and a half, so I better get back to work and start crossing things off of my list.... It's a long list!

(Sally wrote this blog, can't you tell).