Yes, I do know how to use the internet!

Hello everybody,

Ok, I'm sorry, there was I saying that I'll be on the internet more often and a month goes by with nothing! After being very windy and quiet for a while, where I took the opportunity to learn some indonesian card games and started to teach myself how to do introductory dives in French, we suddenly became manically busy and today was my first day off in over 2 weeks. I really needed it!

It's been good though. We had a group of Indonesian divers (all women!) with us for a few divers. They were lovely people but had some funny ideas about what was good/bad for the coral. One of them actually lay on some! A lot of the coral has died around here so we do our best to preserve whats left and this was my favourite reef! I nearly totally flipped out but by the time we had returned to the boat, I had managed to retain my cool and told them all a story about how precious the coral instead. Hopefully it sank in!

A fishing boat, apparantly from Lombok, has started using nets again on some of the reefs we use for diving. The area is supposed to be a marine park but there's little you can do to stop this kinda thing. We were on one of my favourite reefs when they started fishing with us there! I steered the group away from the nets but it was worrying. Earnest, boss, got caught up in a net before on a dive and they had to surface so they could get out of it!! More than anything else, the damage to the reef was unbelievably upsetting. Seeing areas where they used to be beautiful table corals and now it's all broken up on the ground. Whenever we get back from a dive, Kath or Earnest will ask how it went. I purposely let the rest of my group go on ahead, because instead of the usual "great", I said it was horrible and burst into tears.

It makes me sick and has seriously put me off this island. The locals just don't do anything about it. Please don't give me any of that "they've got to make a living lark" cause it's bullsh1t. I'm the first to appreciate that people in developing countries do unenvironmentally things to make a better living and the western world is hardly in a state to criticise, but this is so short-sighted and THEY KNOW IT. The reefs here are nearly gone. If they go completely, there will be no fish and no tourists. End of livelihood for a few thousand years. I'm not sure if I mentioned this before, but current prediction is that all reefs will have died within 75 years. Coral (an animal by the way - not a plant) is pretty resilient, but tempretures are just getting too warm and they can't adjust to it fast enough. However, there is a small grain of hope. Reefs that were destroyed in Fiji are growing back remarkably quickly and they're trying to work out why that is.

It's amazing how millions of "educated" people can ignore these problems (and I'm referring to westerners here because it's westerners who are creating the vast amount of pollution and that has done far more damage than fishing practicies ever could). Quite frankly, it's just too depressing. The "fishing" dive has upset me deeply and has created a big rip in my perpetual optimism that humans will finally get their act together and start helping the earth recover.

Anyway, the diving here is still great and I still love it. Have become much better at finding frogfish, a rather cute fish that looks like a big piece of sponge. Memeber of the same family as the deep=sea fish in Finding Nemo that had the "fishing line with a light". That is actually true. The frogfish doesn't use a light though but has a piece of skin which he wiggles about to look like bait!! : ) They can change colour and at the moment, one is a beautiful pinky mauve colour. V. cool!

on a completely different note, my mate Rob and his group Temposhark has just released their first single in London. I'm not going to tell you to go out and buy it cause they're simply an awesome group and are going to be HUGE in their own right without any charity sales! However, if you want to get in at the beginning on the next big thing, check out their website which is www.temposhark.com and you can also buy their single at www.roughtrade.com ROCK ON!

There's not a lot else to talk about cause not been doing much except working and today I was sleeping and lying on the beach! My social life has become slightly more exciting than going to bed at 9.30pm as I started organsiing nights out with some of the guests, we've had some good dinners - sometimes just 2 people, sometimes 10! People from all around the world, but primarly Dutch, lots of Dutch cause it used to be a Dutch colony. I still sneak out at 9pm though ; ) Just can't hack the pace.

I also went to a full moon party! But left at 11pm after having drunk 3 beers. A record! The music was a bit pants and the beach was just too sandy to dance on properly. Good for a change though!

Hope you're all well and happy,
lots of love
kathryn xxx