Staff diving days!

We have had great fun whilst teaching our new Cambodian staff members diving! Sophea and Ren who started working with us did their first scuba diving experience in a PADI Discover Scuba Diving program together with our awesome instructors.

Both boys were very good, learning the skills necessary for their safety in the shallow water just off the beach very fast.

As we call ourselves The Dive Shop, we do what we do best and try to teach diving to all of our employees. Even our accountants in our office in Sihanoukville have tried scuba diving already!

Welcome to The Dive Shop's Team Steve and Nari

Back at the Dive Shop is Steve from South Africa who has been working for us as instructor already in 2011 when we have still been based at Koh Rong island.

Also we have Nari joining our kick-ass team working in the office in Sihanoukville as accountant.

Steve was born in Cape Town/South Africa and fell in love with scuba diving in 2001 when he was Koh Tao during his vacation in Thailand. From there he decided to take diving as a career and a PADI Dive Center in Cape Town was found to train him all the way up to PADI Divemaster. For becoming PADI Instructor Steve traveled to Thailand again to pass his IDC at the Samui International Diving School. After living the dream in Thailand for another 8 years, now Steve moved to the Kingdom of Cambodia to dive its almost unexplored sea!

Nari has been playing with the thought of working in The Dive Shop since a long time. She is good friends with Vesnea, a good friend of ours and also Sothea's husband. Nari is now practicing her swimming skills and in future her dream is to become a certified diver. We can't wait to take her through the academics and into shallow water soon to make her experience breathing underwater!

Working on a Marine Protected Area around the Koh Rong Archipelago

In a meeting around one week ago, Dennis has been elected by the community of dive operators to be the representative of the industry in the upcoming discussions regarding the location(s) of the marine protected areas which will be set in place soon.

Thats good news for all the creatures in the Cambodian sea, the only questions is where will it be best to have conservation area's? Which islands and sites offer the highest biodiversity and where can endangered species be found?

Lots of questions to be discussed, of course also involving the local fishing communities, government officials and the long established local conservation organizations.

We might in future loose some of our divesites but in the long term the quality of diving in Cambodia will become better!

Island Species Database Cambodia

Since a long time friends of our are working on classifying terrestrial species found on the Cambodian islands. Especially Gil who is running trekking tours on our former island Koh Rong has made an enormous amount of pictures.
 

http://kohrong-samloem.com/

During the Khmer rouge times much of Cambodian national heritage, particularly in the fields of science and technical knowledge. So far little effort has been taken to classiefy animals and plants in Cambodia.

We are not-professionals but living for years on and around the Cambodian coastal area and of course we have been interested in finding out more about our surroundings.

After a rather fruitless period of research, we realized that there is little in the way of reasonably documented wildlife. Well, as we are in a favorable position…..with good knowledge of the terrain…we should be able to create a general survey.

So we just started to record the wildlife on the islands of the “Sihanoukville Group”. Definition and archiving is going to take place on this site. Anything we do here is essentially standalone – pioneer work.  Certainly some support could help to speed things up – on the other hand we are free to follow our vision.

This is, where YOU come in – if you wish. In order to determine, verify and categorize species, have ideas… we are grateful for help and advice of – anyone, who wishes to get involved.

This message also goes out to all our guests, it would be much appreciated if you could send any pictures taken of plants and animals to info@diveshopcambodia.com or directly visit http://kohrong-samloem.com/.

Introducing Adele Dixon PADI Dive Mistress!!!

Adele did her Junior Open Water aged 10 and has been hooked ever since. 

She has been diving now for 13 years, more than half her life!

She completed her Dive Master training in 2012 in Cyprus and has also worked in dive centers in Greece.

In addition to being a PADI Dive Master she also has a degree in Marine Biology.

Last Year she spent 6 months doing conservation work with Frontier in Cambodia.

She loved Cambodia so much she decided to come back and join The Dive Shop team as our Dive Master!!!

Welcome Adele!!!

The first yacht visiting the Sunset Beach

At New Years we have had the first yacht visiting the Sunset Beach on Koh Rong Samleun. Bernd, a friend of us, sailed all the way from the Sultanate of Oman to Cambodia. It took him several years and made him undergo plenty of adventures when sailing via the Maldives and Thailand towards the Kingdom of Cambodia.

By now we are planing to build two mooring buoys to grant an easier and safer access to our beach for yachts.

This years whaleshark season has begun

On this years first liveaboard trip to the outer islands of Koh Tang and Koh Prins we have spotted a whaleshark!



Whalesharks are quite common around Koh Prins island and can be spotted best in between January and April. This animal was a quite small one, around 3 meters in lengh. Hopefully we will be given the chance to dive with its mother soon!

During our high season we run several trips every week to bring our guests to the best dive sites in Cambodian waters. For further informations please don't hesitate to contact The Dive Shop Cambodia via info@diveshopcambodia.com.