Welcome to the team Aaron and Matteo

Ready for the move from Koh Rong to our new shop at the sunset beach on Koh Rong Sanloen we have two new PADI instructors joining the dive shop's team.


Aaron, our new French instructor, who started diving around 6 years ago in the Forra Dive Center at Koh Lipe in Thailand. After this he traveled Asia for a while and dived in most of the sea around. He started his professional diving career 2 years ago as a PADI dive master in the Philippines.

"I'm born in front of the sea in France, and I can't leave far from it! I think i can say that I'm a son of the Big Blue. I traveled since I'm 20 years old, and the Dive Life Style became my life. I like to share my hobbies and talk of dive storys in front of the sea, on a boat with other travelers and divers! I arrived here in April, and wouahouh....! I felt in love with the Cambodian islands, the place is beautiful... Koh Rong Sanloen is a truly paradise island, we conduct interesting dives and the team is amazing. By now, Cambodia became my second home!"

Matteo, our Italian instructor started diving when he was 15 years old with his father in Turin. He did most of his dives in Italy, Sardinia, Puglia and Liguria. His fist diving trip destination was the Red Sea in 2009. Afterwards, in 2012 he became a Divemaster and started his career with PADI.

"I'm born in a place close to Turin, I have been traveling since I was 17 years old and I know many people all around the word but just this year I started to travel and did the instructor course and meet divers from many places. I arrived in Cambodia just a couple of days ago so I haven't had time to discover the undersea world of this beautiful country yet. But I'm here for this."

Awesome Graffiti

Several artists have been helping to make our old office colorful again! Here is my personal favorite, a diver rescuing a pretty girl. :)

Thanks a lot to the artist PSHE from Russia who has sprayed it in just a couple of hours!

The Dive Shop ART EXHIBITION

Urgently we need to get back on track and have a stylish office again. So here we go: LETS DO AN ART EXHIBITION!

We would like to welcome every artist, painter grafitti sprayer and anybody else creative in Sihanoukville to paint our left-over walls!

We will photograph all the paintings and upload them onto our facebook page and vote which is the most pretty one. The winner is welcome to stay in our resort, the Robinson Bungalows for two nights, of course free of charge!

Please spread the word, if you are interested just see us at the old office or at Ana Travel, or, even easier, just start painting!

The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire!

The day before yesterday we have had a very tragic situation in our main office in Sihanoukville. A fire broke out at Monkey Republic, the bungalow resort next door to our shop. It was impossible for the firefighters to stop the fire before it went to us. Our whole office burnt down...

The good news is that nobody got injured what we have lost can and will be build up again soon. Anyways we did not stop diving, the dive center on Koh Rong island as well as the Robinson Bungalows on Koh Rong Samleum are fully operational! Luckily the boats, dive gear as well as all our infrastructure on the islands is still intact.

WE KEEP DIVING AS THIS IS WHAT WE CAN DO BEST!

Thanks to Ana Travel we have a provisional office again, you will find us just opposite the road still in the Serendipity Beach Road.

A big thanks hugs and kisses go out to all our friends, students and divers for all the help we have had during the last two days. A special thanks to Ana Travel for setting up a desk for us to have a running computer again, thanks to Marco Polo for the tasty pizza and all the others who have helped us morally and physically getting things sorted.

Exploration & Research Trip to Koh Kong, Shark Island, Koh Sdach and Condor Reef

The Dive Shop Cambodia has just been exploring the far away islands together with Shallow Waters Conservation by running a trip to the most unknown divesites in Cambodia. Also we have been happy to host Kath Kelly and her team from Thailand conducting survey dives and taking water samples with the idea to found a large marine protected area in the Gulf of Thailand. Also Jelena, the PADI instructor from Koh Song Saa private island has been invidet to join the trip. After picking up the Shallow Waters staff as well as Kath and her team at Koh Sdach, we went straight to Koh Kong. This island close to the border to Thailand has been hardly dived so we took the plunge and went for some dives straight away. As expected, the visibility was not too great but we did find some sites rich of marine life.
We spent two days exploring Koh Kong before we went to dive one of the highlights of the trip: Shark Island, a very small island far off the coast which has been a premiere for The Dive Shop's staff as well. Diving at Shark Island was superior, visibility of around 25m made the survey dives easy and the fundives more than enjoyable. The highlights at Shark Island were the enormous amount of purple soft corals found at a pinnacle close to the island as well as the Bullshark which Jelena spotted close to the shore of Shark Island. Apart from the pelagics, the amount of different nudibranch species around the island were remarkable.
After dropping the scientists off at the Shallow Waters base at Koh Sdach, we could not resist to also visit Condor Reef, an offshore pinnacle west of Koh Rong. This site is famous for the excellent visibility, we have had up to 40m during our dives. Searching for a shipwreck which must be located close to Condor Reef did not end with gold and tresure but instead we have seen a turtle and we managed to find the cargo of the sunken ship, thousands of bags of concrete piling up almost like a reef.
The conclusion of the trip: We need to go again! The next trip to Shark island, Koh Sdach and Condor Reef is scheduled for the 20. of April, limited space is still available.

Molika's wedding

The whole Dive Shop team would like to say well done to Molika who has become married yesterday evening! It was a good fun wedding with plenty of tasty local food, beer and a great DJ not only planing Karaoke but also a few 'normal' songs for us few westerners!

Especially our Divemaster trainee nano enjoyed the company of sooo many beautiful ladies around him! :)

Congratulations again!

Shark Stanley

Shark Stanley and his friends
were playing on the reef
When down came a net that
swept them away.
But at last when they escaped,
they saw to their grief,
Their home had no sharks!
Leaving it barren and grey.

Now Stan and his buddies are
searching the ocean
From Canada to Cyprus and
Colombia to Cambodia
For friends to stand up and
cause a commotion
Because the world needs
sharks to help save the seas!

If you would like to help Stanley with this mission, you can print this picture of him, cut it out, and take a photo with him anywhere you wish. Then please send the photo along with your name and nationality to info@sharkdefenders.com . Stanley's supporters are compiling your photosfrom around the world to share on their blog and web pages, and sending them to governments voting at CITES to get their support! Help us to reach the goal of collecting at least 5000 photos from all 176 CITES countrys. You can download the Stanley graphic here: